This is the transcript for the this podcast episode with Philip Winchester.
Allen Wolf: 0:03
Welcome to the Navigating Hollywood podcast. My name is Allen Wolf and I’m a filmmaker and an author. Navigating Hollywood encourages and equips entertainment professionals to live relationally and spiritually holistic lives. If you work in entertainment, visit navigatinghollywoodorg to discover how you can get involved. Today, we are joined by actor Philip Winchester.
Allen Wolf: 0:26
Philip trained at the prestigious London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art and his career quickly took off with roles in Thunderbirds and Flyboys. Philip received critical acclaim for his performance as Edmund in the RSC’s production of King Lear, which toured globally, and then he played the lead role in the psychological thriller In My Sleep that was written and directed by yours truly. His television career includes lead roles in Crusoe, the Emmy-nominated Strike Back, the Player, chicago Justice and Law Order SVU. He also stars in the films Rogue, endangered Species and is featured in the Netflix series Ransom Canyon. Welcome, philip, it’s so nice to be here. It’s great to have you Now. You and I have been friends for many years, yes, but I believe I’m in a rarefied class of friends who got to see you die three times when you performed in King Lear for the RSC.
Philip Winchester: 1:32
That’s right. Did you come three times?
Allen Wolf: 1:34
Yeah, in Stratford-upon-Avon, in New York City and in Los Angeles.
Philip Winchester: 1:38
Los Angeles, that’s right.
Allen Wolf: 1:40
Three times.
Philip Winchester: 1:41
Oh, so much fun.
Allen Wolf: 1:42
I prefer seeing you living.
Philip Winchester: 1:44
Thank you, thank you.
Allen Wolf: 1:45
It was an amazing experience to see you in those shows in those different cities, even going back to where Shakespeare got his start. How did that experience impact your growth as an actor?
Philip Winchester: 1:56
You know it’s funny. I think about it quite often now as I’m getting into my 40s. That happened. I was gosh. I was 25, 26 years old and I just thought, yeah, this is what people do. They, you know, go to you, train in London, you get into the RSC. Hopefully you’re lucky enough to work with someone like Ian McKellen and Trevor Nunn and travel the world. It was an extraordinary experience.
Philip Winchester: 2:16
I think the biggest takeaway from the RSC and from Ian McKellen being King Lear was that he would come out every night and do it differently, or at least try to do it differently. King Lear is extraordinarily complex and hard, like the role of King Lear in King Lear is I think it’s one of the biggest roles next to Hamlet perhaps and Ian would come out and he would change his inflection on one part or try and make it mean something else and try something else with the actors on stage every night and I remember sitting backstage or waiting in the wings to come on with some of the younger actors, as I was, and we would be listening and we would look at each other and go. He did it. He did it different tonight, he did something different and there was just this really steep learning curve of new audience. It’s the same material. How do we do it different? How do we do it different? How do we make it interesting?
Philip Winchester: 3:06
It was such an amazing experience to watch him do that and to watch someone so well versed in their craft just take command of that stage every night and do such a good job with it. I look back on it and think just how fortunate I was to be a part of that, because I wasn’t supposed to be in london for those auditions. I was going out to london with my mom to see, and while I was there the phone rang and I think it was kind of like, what are you doing next week? And I was like, oh, I’m getting on a plane and going back to LA. And they said, no, you should stay for a couple more days and you should come and meet Trevor Nunn and do this audition. And so I went and met him and it ended up working out, which was amazing.
Allen Wolf: 3:37
Wow, and what an adventure going all over the world performing that show Really incredible.
Philip Winchester: 3:42
We started in Stratford-upon-Avon and then we started going around the world. We started in Singapore at the Esplanade Theater in Singapore, we were at the National Theater in Melbourne and then we went to New Zealand. We went to Wellington and Auckland, then we had a bit of a break and we picked up the pace again in Brooklyn at BAM, and then we were at the Guthrie in Minneapolis and then we were in Royce Hall at UCLA and then we finished in the West End. So it was about a year of really depressing material. King Lear and the Seagull I remember looking at everybody. One day we were backstage in London in the West End and we realized we’d been slogging through this really heavy material for a year. But what a gift to work.
Allen Wolf: 4:31
I remember you saying I think you were on stage, maybe in Singapore, and you blanked out on your lines and you were thinking of beavers or something. Do you remember this?
Philip Winchester: 4:43
So we, you know they call it drying or going up or something like that, you know, and on camera it’s absolutely fine. You just say I’m really sorry, can I, can I, can we start over? So the funny thing about this this moment was we were in Auckland, new Zealand. Peter Jackson was there, he was in the front row and I was like, okay, I’m going to kill it tonight. We’re going to get into some Lord of the Rings action here and Edmund starts the play with this monologue. You know he starts out Thou nature art, my goddess, to thy laws my services are bound. Wherefore should I stand in the plague of custom and permit the curiosity of nations to deprive me? And I remember I kind of, I looked up, this spotlight that I’d never seen before hit me, it was like a laser beam burned through my head and I completely and utterly dried. I mean, I couldn’t have told you my name, I couldn’t have told you what I was wearing or the color of my boots. It was just gone and the first thought that came out of this quagmire of mud in my head was huh, I wonder why badgers have white stripes on their faces. And I went okay, and I, I think I kind of got thou nature art, my goddess and I just like the floor opened up.
Philip Winchester: 6:03
We, we trained at drama school. We train for these moments by telling jokes in front of the class over and over and over again. So you’d initially get a laugh and then the laugh would half, and it would half again, and then you’d just be standing there in this uncomfortable silence where time stood still Right. So I’m sure, in the grand scheme of scheme of things, it was like I don’t know, like a, like a five second drive, but in my head you could have driven a semi, through it, built a house, had a helicopter, land on the roof, thrown a party, and all I did was call out my, my partner’s name, who his name was ben mages, and he was playing edgar, and I just went edgar, and he came out. And he came out like right on cue because I think he heard it, he heard me go, and he came out. And he came out like right on cue because I think he heard it he brutal just went up and it didn’t come back.
Philip Winchester: 7:18
You know, and that’s the beauty of live theater, right? I think, secretly, the audience is hoping for that sometimes, because they get to ride it out with you and they’re like what are you going to do?
Allen Wolf: 7:28
That’s why I think, when an audience is watching a show where there are children or animals, they’re just completely fascinated, because you just don’t know what they’re going to do, what’s going to go wrong. Yes, yes, amazing that they trained you in drama school how to deal with situations like that.
Philip Winchester: 7:44
Well, yeah, obviously it didn’t work brilliantly. It didn’t, because I, I, I do remember thinking in that space like this is it’s shorter than you think, Take a breath and find it, take a breath and find it and it just, it just didn’t work.
Allen Wolf: 7:58
Now looking back when did you first decide you wanted to be an actor?
Philip Winchester: 8:02
I was raised by a single mother for the first like four or five years of my life, and I watched her really do everything she could to provide and she met a really great guy who she ended up marrying, who, while my mom was working nights at a nursing home this is I’m. You know, I’m six, seven years old. At this point, my dad, my now new dad, is taking courses at Montana State University and one of his courses was a drama course, and so my mom was working nights in a nursing home. I would come out of kindergarten or first grade, she would pick me up and drop me off at Montana State University with my dad and I would hang out backstage with all these theater actors, with Joel Janke, who’s he headed up Montana Shakespeare in the Parks parks here, and I watched these men and women learn their lines like go from a literally a blank stage with a ghost light to having boxes and scripts in their hands, and then the flats and that would come in, and then a few props would come in, and so the progression of building characters and things like that, and I just I grew up with actors and I thought, well, this is, this is, this is what people do, and then probably you know, now that I’m older, I can look back and see that acting was a great way for me to act out literally, quite quite literally, to act out on things that I wasn’t quite aware of, that were going on in my psyche and things I was dealing with about childhood and and other insecurities that we deal with as young adults and as kids, and it was a way of dealing with that, probably of being on stage and being silly and being the class clown but getting recognition for it on a bigger level.
Philip Winchester: 9:30
So I remember saying to my mom and dad in high school like I want to be an actor. My mom and dad were brilliant because they said okay. You know, they could have said don’t be ridiculous, the chances of it working are 0.001%. They didn’t. They said okay and then they backed it up with a brilliant proposition. My mom actually said if you want to be an actor, you have to go to drama school in London. And I don’t think she realized what an impactful statement that was, because to me as a young I mean I was a freshman or sophomore in high school at the time and was trying to make these decisions. Looking back, you’re just like, yeah, great, thanks, mom, she’s agreeing to what I want to do. I win.
Philip Winchester: 10:08
But looking back, it was this really brave thing that she did as a parent, because she said, okay, do it, go somewhere else, experience a different culture, spend time with family that you know but don’t know that well yet. And so my whole life was completely inverted and I was thrown into a culture that I thought I understood but didn’t. I got to hang out with family that I only knew through vacations and good times, and I got to go through life with them for, you know, about seven years. So it was a really incredible gift. I’m not even sure my mom knows that she did that or knows that it was that much of a gift, but you know, looking back, I can see what a brilliant offer that was from her or I guess it was a, you know. She said, fine, do it, but do it this way, you know.
Allen Wolf: 10:52
It is interesting how we can get so focused on, maybe, that career that we want, the training that we want, that we forget the important part of character building. That can actually be even more important than that, because it gives you the stamina, the character, to actually go through the journey that you’re trying to do.
Philip Winchester: 11:12
Right, you’re exactly right. And you know just to kind of jump onto the side of that it you know, as an actor, as a director, as people who are trying to emulate real life, if you have no life experiences, if you just you know, you’re just trying for that next goal and working towards success, success, success. You have nothing to draw from right. London was an incredible gift because it was hard, you know. So I was able to be broken into a thousand pieces and I had the love of a family. My grandmother was just the most incredible woman. She ran a bed and breakfast in England, you know, by herself, for probably about probably 40, 50 years. I lived at this bed and breakfast. So I had this really great life where I was at drama school.
Philip Winchester: 12:02
In the daytime I rode a motorbike back and forth between London and where my grandma lived, just outside of London, and then all the guests who were staying at the bed and breakfast, which is pre Airbnb, right, so it was. We had directors who were staying and shooting. There’s a television series out there called Carnation Street or East Enders, and we had these directors who would stay there because it was close and it was cheap. Grandma had a single. You had a single bed in your room and there was a box of Weetabix on the table in the morning, and so it was great. But all these characters came through the farm and I got to see them and kind of hear their stories about working in the business or businessmen who were coming through from all over Europe to do stuff in London. It was just a really neat culture of people and relationships that my grandma had created and I was so privileged to be a part of that. It was really beautiful. That’s amazing.
Allen Wolf: 12:48
One of your I think career highlights would be Strike Back. Would you agree on that? Yeah, and you performed many of your own stunts on the show. Can you share some memorable stunt experiences?
Philip Winchester: 13:04
Yeah, you bet. So Strike Back was funny, just like we didn’t know how good we had it on at the Royal Shakespeare Company. I don’t think Sully and I and some of the other core people who made Strike Back really understood how good we had it until we got thrown out of that system and put into the network system of television. You know, the thing that was so extraordinary about Strike Back was we’d get our scripts. Hbo would go go make it. Cary Antholis was the head of drama over there at the time and he was brilliant. He loved the show and he just said make it as close to this as possible. But I trust you guys You’ve had all the military training. We have military advisors on set. We have a core group of people who now make up Strike Back. If it’s not exactly like it is on the page, but it’s still fun, just do it, just make sure it’s fun.
Philip Winchester: 13:45
So there was this really this kind of unicorn world where we had a. You know the outlines of what they wanted, but we could also go off roading a little bit if we wanted to and have fun with it and it really worked and I think part of that was accidental. So I remember episode I think it was episode three or four of the first season this gal, that Stonebridge, the character I play in the in the series, she’s tied up and she’s got a bomb vest on and they know that they can’t undo it. And so he knows he has to say goodbye to her and he knows he has to leg it because the clock’s ticking literally on her chest. And we had this, this wonderful South African special effects crew.
Philip Winchester: 14:23
How close do you want to be? And we were like what do you mean? He’s like, do you want to be in the explosion? Kind of like, well, yeah, I mean relatively close. Right, we want to be in it, like how far? He said well, and the director came up and he’s like, you know, with zoom lenses we can make it look like you’re really close or we can, but we’re going to set up kind of close to you so it’s got to be within 30 or 40 feet.
Philip Winchester: 14:48
So we were like, yeah, I mean, we’ll be safe, right. It’s like, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, you’ll be totally safe, right? So meanwhile they’re setting the shot up, they’re filling the bomb pot up with you know all the stuff. They fill it up with the dust and the gasoline and stuff like that and we’re having gel put on our the back of our necks and all over the back of our. Anything that’s exposed gets fire gel on it.
Philip Winchester: 15:03
We’re in the shot, we run away, they hit it, boom, the thing goes off and we, it throws us to the ground and we look up afterwards and it was a really intense, emotional, emotional scene because stonebridge loses his, loses a friend. But after the shot and after the cameras were turned off, we were like, oh my gosh, that was awesome man, that was incredible. And I think the producers also saw. Well, if these guys are willing to do it, why don’t we keep doing that? Why don’t we keep going down that road and exploring what this means to have a show where our lead actors really do as much of their stunts as possible?
Philip Winchester: 15:34
I think the beauty of the Strike Back world and incorporating stunts with Sully and I was we definitely had stuntmen who did some really crazy dangerous things, but we also had these opportunities to do things that looked really dangerous. But I mean, you know, if you said, okay, we’re going to step off of a helicopter onto a train, then you’re like that’s, that’s completely insane. But when you have a really good helicopter pilot and the train’s moving at a constant speed, it’s just a step. It looks insane and it looks scary and it sounds bonkers. But all these things were really thought out so that they were actually relatively safe.
Allen Wolf: 16:11
I remember you sending me a picture of an explosion where it kind of was licking at the side of your face. Do you remember that I?
Philip Winchester: 16:22
I do remember that. I do. So that was the one case where we were chasing a bad guy down this stairwell and he was throwing grenades kind of up behind him past us. We were on this rooftop in Cape Town and it was really windy. We had a bomb pot set up down this stairwell and they said, okay, we’re going to light it off and it’s just going to come out this doorway and it’ll go right past you guys.
Philip Winchester: 16:47
But because that wind was circling around, that bomb pot went off and that gas and the fire and all that stuff which has made you know the propellants that they use burn really quickly so that if things like this happen they don’t stay on you. But it came up and it hit that wall of wind and it just splashed to the sides. Where Sully and I were. We kind of felt maybe something was off and so both of us were sort of ready for it. But you know our camera guys, they had protective gear on and it burned all their camera gear and it burned all their protective gear and that was the closest we got to things going wrong. We got a little, a little red, but we didn’t lose any hair, thank goodness.
Allen Wolf: 17:21
You were in multiple shows by. What was it like working in that world?
Philip Winchester: 17:27
I was in Los Angeles, bob Greenblatt, who was the head of NBC at the time, pulled me into his office and said look, dick Wolf is going to do a new show. It’s basically going to be Law Order. But in Chicago At the time I was like why are you telling me that? He said I think you should meet with Dick Wolf and I was like I mean OK, I mean fine, I’ll meet with him. That’s not what I’ve done and I kind of love this trajectory that my career was on. I really enjoyed the excitement, I enjoyed the silly stunts and I enjoyed that that world of being trained with the military and traveling around the world and stuff like that. And I was like I don’t know if I want to stand in a courtroom. So when I did meet Dick Wolf at his place, he pulled me into his office and he said right, bob Greenblatt says you’re the guy. And I was like this is news to me. The guy for what? And he said you know the guy, I’m doing this new show. And I said yeah. I said and I don’t know what possessed me to say this, but I said I don’t think I’m your guy. I said I jump out of helicopters and I punch people in the face for a living. And he goes. He’s brilliant, dick Wolf is brilliant. And he goes. Well, look, kid, if you don’t like it you can quit, and if I don’t like you doing it I’ll fire you. And I was like I think that’s a pretty good job offer. Do you have a script that I can read? And he went nope, but it’ll be good. And I went. I don’t think there’s anything else I can say. So our meeting was like it was probably like three minutes long. So that was my introduction to Dick Wolf and the Dick Wolf universe.
Philip Winchester: 18:54
And I was fortunate enough to be challenged in a completely different way. So we did a backdoor pilot on a show called Chicago PD which introduced my character, which was Peter Stone, which was Ben Stone’s son from the original Law and Order. It was a baptism of fire man. I mean that legalese. That’s like eight pages of dialogue every day and closing arguments and back and forth in the courtroom. It is a. You just got to get in there and do it, and I was not prepared for how hard that was going to be and the amount of work that that was going to be, but it was. It made me appreciate what I see on TV. When you see these people, you know get up there and do these closing arguments and do the courtroom scenes. It’s, it’s brutal.
Philip Winchester: 19:31
We did 13 episodes of Chicago justice and then you know the network world is funny, right, and it didn’t. It didn’t go. But Dick Wolf again was incredibly kind and I got a phone call from him and he said these are the way these things go. Sometimes we don’t know why. Would you like to go over to Law Order? And so he really gave me this life preserver when he didn’t need to. And I moved from Chicago Justice over to Law Order SVU with Mariska Hargitay for two years and was the kid who jumped out of helicopters and punched people in the face. And then I was getting punched in the face with the material and just the reality of how much work that was and it was so good for me as an actor to have to just buckle down and you know you just have to do your homework every night and it was a great learning curve.
Allen Wolf: 20:20
You’ve worked in both British and American productions. What are some differences that you’ve noticed between the two?
Philip Winchester: 20:27
Just because I’ve had the opportunity to live in England and I don’t know how you feel about this, but sometimes in the US, particularly Los Angeles, there’ll be more of an emphasis on looks and clothes and like the model element of a production, and with the European things or the English things, it really is about the work. Okay, what’s our, why are we here, what are the choices we’re making? And I love that sort of challenging that, coming to grips with that. It’s like, yeah, you got to look a certain way, but also it’s so much about the story and about the words on the page and serving the story and serving the project rather than being selfish and wanting it all to be about you.
Allen Wolf: 21:06
Well, you’ve worked in film, TV and theater. Do you have a preference between the three? They all scratch different itches.
Philip Winchester: 21:14
I think Theater is all about preparation. The way you know this, making independent movies it’s time, costs money. And with theater you get this beautiful window of two, maybe three months where you’re diving into the script, you’re working script, you’re working scenes, you’re going way out of the box and then way under and you’re figuring out what you want to do, what you want to do, what you want it to be, and then you whittle it down. Whittle it down and then you put it in front of an audience and you pressure test it and you go oh, we totally missed that, we need to go back and we try it again. And so you and then, in theory, you always get this immediate pressure test. So you go. I thought that was going to be great. The audience really didn’t respond to that. I’ll try something else tomorrow night.
Philip Winchester: 21:55
Film, especially indie film and television, is just I mean, shoot, you can get a phone call on a Wednesday night, you’re on set Friday morning, you’re doing a guest role and you just kind of have to pull something out of your socks and go. Well, this is what’s on the page, this is what I think this character should be like, and then I’ll see if it works and I’ll see if the director likes it, and so often you really are just filling a spot. That doesn’t happen all the time. I think the strength of Strike Back and the strength of Law Order SVU and Chicago Justice was our guest roles were incredible. I was a prosecutor and the strength of Law Order, svu and Chicago Justice was our guest roles were incredible. I was a prosecutor and the defense attorneys would come in. They were always guest roles for one or two episodes and I just remember thinking these people are incredible.
Philip Winchester: 22:42
Sometimes TV can be too fast for its own good and you don’t get to live it. It’s still fun because you get to travel and you get to meet cool people. Theater you have that time. That sweet spot maybe is film, where you and the director get to talk about things and you get to hash out your character and you get to hash out reasons and then you get to experiment with it in front of a camera.
Philip Winchester: 23:02
I still think about this, Allen. You know we did In My Sleep. We were, we were talking about Marcus and him working out of something called a core lie, that we all operate for better or worse out of these things called core lies. Whether you know that we shouldn’t believe, but we do and if we’re healthy, we work through them and if we’re not, we were like Marcus, we just medicate, or you know, self self-medicate, and I loved that process with you and with the, with the other actors, and I’ll I’ll never forget that that was a that was a real turning moment in being turned on to how powerful film can be because it can impact your own life and, hopefully, the people who who see it as well.
Allen Wolf: 23:41
Wow, that’s really encouraging to hear. It is amazing to think that the film came out 15 years ago. My director’s cut came out recently. What was it like for you to see it for the first time after all these years?
Philip Winchester: 23:53
Honestly, it was hugely encouraging and also I mean to big you up it’s marvelous storytelling. So often you turn on the TV and you’re like how did that get made? Or how did that end up here? And it’s hard to make stuff, how did that get made? Or how did that end up here? And it’s hard to make stuff. But to make it and to make it well, your character development and the fact that you didn’t leave anything untied was so clever and so thought out.
Philip Winchester: 24:21
Megan and I watched it the other night. We got into bed and we turned it on and we looked at each other afterwards and just went that is a good movie, that is. It’s a really great thriller. Sometimes hard work doesn’t pay off in terms of like the product gets. I don’t know. It gets jostled around in the edit or you lose control of it. Right, you were very smart and you, I think, fortunate enough to maintain that ownership of it, plus the control of the material, and so it it feels like correct me if I’m wrong, but it feels like it still is your vision, and so I think that’s why it’s so good, because it wasn’t touched by too many cooks and the director’s cut is. It’s great. I love, like the grade is just a little more modern, those big shots of LA that kind of really steep you in the character of the city of Los Angeles. That really helps.
Allen Wolf: 25:05
And you were in every single scene. I mean that was a lot of work. What were your hopes that the audience would experience as they follow your character’s journey?
Philip Winchester: 25:19
You very courageously gave a new actor his first lead role. I had not led a film, I had not led a television series. You know I had not led a film, I had not led a television series. You know, for me to turn around, and you know, and do this, I had to basically on the fly, go okay, what works, what doesn’t work, and I learned from, probably from In My Sleep, what I now use the rest of my career, which is scripts, can change. So I learned my lines two days out, I learn the next days and the day after that, and then everything else is kind of still potentially in the edit Sleep, food and sort of conservation of energy on set, especially because Marcus had to look a certain way, finding time to continue to train and also get sleep and also get food and also learn your lines, and also and realizing, looking at actors who I’d admired or roles that I admire, going, these people are either crazy or great at time management, or both, I suppose.
Philip Winchester: 26:19
And so time management was a real thing that came out of In My Sleep. After all of that, you want to serve the story and you want to do the story justice, and so my hope with Marcus was to tell this Hitchcockian tale and try and get you know. Try and try and make people be entertained. I mean, that’s that’s why I do it. I like to. I like to tell stories because sitting around a dinner table or at a coffee shop and seeing someone respond to something that you’re telling them I find really fun. And film is just a broader version of that, I feel.
Allen Wolf: 26:52
Well, you’ve had a busy career and you also have a family. You have two girls that you’re raising. How do you balance your acting career with your family life?
Philip Winchester: 27:03
Balancing my career and my family is sort of a job job choice. Sometimes you get a job in Bulgaria for six weeks and the girls are in school and my wife and I made a decision really early on in my career that we wouldn’t be apart for more than two weeks because we felt that our marriage was important enough to protect and our relationship was important enough to protect. And now, having kids, it’s just gone that one step further. But sometimes in the reality, I think COVID, certainly when we were bubbled up and doing these things across the world and you couldn’t have family near you or on set or flown around, it really changed that, and so that challenged our notion of what we thought was normal and what we made normal by having a two week rule. And so now we, you know, every once in a while I’ll have to go and do an independent film somewhere and it’s yeah, it’s five, six weeks and I’m away from my family for a big chunk of time.
Philip Winchester: 27:57
I’m really fortunate that when I’m home, I’m fully home. So my relationships with my kids, with my two girls I’m there for breakfast on the weekends. I’m there for breakfast on the weekends. I’m there for breakfast, lunch and dinner. We sit down every night as a family. We’re incredibly fortunate that we’ve made we do a job and we put it away in the war chest and we nibble away at it until the next job comes, but we do that in order to protect our family time. So really everything outside of work that doesn’t have me traveling or has me at home has me being as involved as I can with my kids. So I was coaching football. I was coaching my daughter’s or, sorry, the soccer team going to dance recitals, anything like that, reading stories at nighttime and just being as present a father as I can be.
Philip Winchester: 28:41
I married an amazing woman who is not only understanding of what I do but completely encouraging of it, and she knows that when that phone rings and it’s last minute and I got to go, I got to go. Our marriage slogan is to try and out-serve one another and she’s certainly winning. Not that we’re keeping score, but she’s like because I’ve been gone there’s so many times where I’m gone and she’s a single mom. The way we balance it is really present, really intentional on what we are and who we are when I am home. I had a moment the other day. I didn’t know my biological father. I was just completely overwhelmed by this really strong sense that God has allowed me to spend not only my time with my kids, but the time that my dad didn’t spend with me, with my kids, it was just this free gift, you know, and I just thought, man, I was so thankful for that moment because I just thought, yeah, that’s pretty incredible, and I know how lucky we are.
Allen Wolf: 29:41
You mentioned God. What has your spiritual journey looked like?
Philip Winchester: 29:45
I was raised in a really religious household and probably tried to buck it. As an adolescent, I had a really amazing experience of God in an Anglican church in the UK. It was a spinoff of, or it was a church plant from, a church called HTB and it was this small, charismatic Anglican church. If you can believe those two go together. It was really full of the Holy Spirit, really full of young people worshiping God and experiencing God and living in community together and I thought I’m going to show all you you’re all crazy religious fanatics. Long story short, like God just showed up and wiped the floor with me and that was 20 plus years ago.
Allen Wolf: 30:22
Why would you go to that church to begin with?
Philip Winchester: 30:24
A gal came up to me on the tube and I had been out partying with friends and was drinking and partying and being silly on the tube and she came up and was like, hey, you guys need to settle down. You’re gonna be careful, you’ll fall on the tracks, kind of a thing. And I was like, oh, pretty girl, let’s talk to her. And she obviously got my number. She called me a week later and said hey, you want to come up to London and meet me? I said, hey, you want to come up to London and meet me? I was like, yeah, pretty girl, let’s go, roll my cigarettes in my sleeve, ride my motorbike up to London, I’ll show you.
Philip Winchester: 30:53
We had a coffee in South Kensington and she said, look, the real reason I invited you up here was I would love to invite you to church. And I was like, oh, yeah, I’ll go to church and I’ll show you that you’re all crazy nutbags. And then went in there and God was like oh, and just kind of had a real experience of peace and purpose and I felt like I was home. You know what I mean? I felt a real sense of identity and purpose and comfort in the presence of this God.
Allen Wolf: 31:20
And this all happened going to church one time.
Philip Winchester: 31:24
I’d gone to church as a kid. I was being judgmental. It was judgmental, very religious, and I had no concept of relation, religion being people going to God. And there’s this relational element of Jesus, of Nazareth, who says no, no, I want to come to you and I want to meet you and I’ve actually made you in a way that, if you let me, I will best show you how to live this life. And there are boundaries in your life that make you better, not worse, and they’re there for your health, not to destroy you. And that concept of boundaries as a young drama school student in London was like yeah, right, and there was just this very real sense of I matter to God, we all matter to him. He cares about us and he’s created us in such a way to live. We can live these incredibly full lives.
Philip Winchester: 32:14
And it’s just trusting him Like trust the story. The story is actually good. If you trust it Like, I think, probably anyone with faith. Some days it’s like, yeah, rock solid, let’s go. Other days it’s like, oh my gosh, what am I doing and where are we at? And why did he put the tree in the middle of the garden? That’s a really mean thing to do. If he was a loving God, he wouldn’t have done that. And then you back up a thousand feet and go well, maybe it’s because we’re all one or two steps away from blowing our lives apart every day and he was just showing us that, hey, you have to make hard decisions every day. This is real Life, is it’s good? I’m here for you to lean on and to trust that spiritual journey is a daily. It’s a daily journey, brother.
Allen Wolf: 32:53
Did you have an impression of God that changed then through that experience?
Philip Winchester: 32:59
A hundred percent. I had a completely false view of who God was and of what my relationship with him was, and so it became much more. There is the God of the universe, but we’re also allowed to talk to him like a friend, and that’s truly incredible. You know that that really rocked me, when I realized that there’s this, there’s a creator, god who’s also a father, god who’s also a friend, you know, and that very much changed in those in those moments at um at St Mary’s Church there in London.
Allen Wolf: 33:30
You had mentioned earlier that you didn’t have a relationship with your biological father. Do you think that that experience impacted the way that you looked at God?
Philip Winchester: 33:41
Almost certainly and that was maybe perhaps affirmed during my younger years of going to a religious church where it was like, if God was there, it was there for punishment and I didn’t have a sense of what a good father looked like. So there was no sense of like why would a father be good? They leave or they punish? Those lies and those scales just kind of fell away in that moment in London and look, I mean, you know, I felt what I felt in that moment was just this voice that said I love you, I’ve always loved you and I want to be with you, and it was like, yeah, why would I turn away from that? That moment really transformed that initial pain and the initial lack of masculinity, lack of fatherhood or just a not true perception of what fatherhood was, and it was replaced by this piece.
Allen Wolf: 34:37
How did that new faith impact your artistic career?
Philip Winchester: 34:41
I remember having discussions with my pastors about certain roles or you know, can I do this, can I not do this? And not being sure about again what the boundaries were. So fast forward. You know 20, 23, 24 years now of being in the business, I have a much more stronger sense of who I am as a believer and just who I am as a man. What do I want my kids to see when they grow up? It’s not about quote unquote success and all that stuff and the shiny things in the magazines, and it was at one point.
Philip Winchester: 35:13
I always feel no matter what grateful for the work, no matter what it is I really do, because I think that work begets work. I think that you learn on every single job and my faith has influenced my work because now when I go to a job, I say in my prayers I say Lord, thank you for this job. Now, what’s the job? And without fail, I’ll meet someone who’s just super dope and just I’m like, oh my gosh. And like we, we hit it off about life or we hit it off about something that’s going on in the world, and I’m like, okay, this is the reason I’m here, you know what I mean.
Philip Winchester: 35:48
And making really cool relationships on jobs, like the work is the work and it’s important, but the people and the relationships like that’s, that’s everything. I’ve been really honored to be a part of, everything that I’m a part of, and allow the Lord to go all right. Now, here’s this, over here. I need you to do this while you’re doing this or we’re in this place for this reason, and so I think that’s what’s changed, certainly in the last few years, certainly probably since COVID, especially where we were like, are we ever going to work again? And so every job’s a gift, you know, and the people you work with.
Allen Wolf: 36:19
How do you stay spiritually healthy while working in entertainment?
Philip Winchester: 36:23
I have a group of guys that meets every Friday morning when I’m home. We hash it out. We’re not all professionally involved in media or in film and television, you know, they’re all dads. So I have accountability. I have people I can talk to and say, hey, this thing’s pinged up and great guys were like, yeah, you should probably not do that, you dumb ass, or just like to stand with you, you know. So it’s accountability.
Philip Winchester: 36:42
I talk with my wife multiple times a day and I set aside time to be in front of God. I set aside time every, especially when I’m away. It’s really like, you know, before the gym, before breakfast or whatever it is. It’s like I spend time in scripture and I spend time with him trying to figure out what he’s trying to tell me, or you know what’s going on with the day, and so it starts that way. And then I think thankfulness, just having a heart of gratitude, because this is silly and you’d never know how long you get to do it, and so I’m really grateful for everything that I get to be a part of.
Allen Wolf: 37:11
Can you tell us about a moment in your career when you felt discouraged and you wondered what would happen next?
Philip Winchester: 37:16
There was quite a few years where I just went back to back to back to back to back projects and they were like making it like they were offers. The phone would ring and there would be other offers on the table and you and your agent were doing that insane thing of picking between projects, of going well, this one’s this and that one’s that, and what do you really want to do? And so six, seven, eight years of that, just like boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. And then my daughter, james, was born. I had two weeks off. The producers on SVU gave me two weeks off, which was incredible. I came home unclicking James from the backseat and my agent called hey buddy. And you can always tell right with agents, cause they’re like hey, man, it’s like greatest thing in the world, or yo buddy, yo. And I was like, oh, I got the yo buddy, or yo buddy, yo. And I was like, oh, I got the yo buddy, and he goes. So, uh, they’re not going to renew you on svu. And I was like what do you mean? They’re not going to? What do you mean? We? We have a four-year contract. It’s two years in is the other? They’re not going to renew you. Okay, well, surely there’s a mistake, like, well, this is what do you mean? This is what we do. I haven’t done anything wrong. There was no indication that that was going to be the case.
Philip Winchester: 38:28
And then I had to go back to work three more episodes, it was fired and I had to go back and be like, hey, let’s keep playing ball. Everybody Like it was just brutal, you know, and that was worse than because the business can be the business, right? You hear these horror stories like with with player, quite literally on the way to work. We had a 13 episode order. We were shooting episode I can’t remember now it was eight or nine and on the way to set I get the yo man and I was like what are you talking about? We haven’t shot 13 episodes. They’re like, yeah, they’re pulling the plug. And I was like, well, look, we’ll finish, you know a few episodes plug. And I was like, well, look, we’ll finish, you know a few episodes. Like, no, no, they’re pulling the plug tonight. And when I got to set they were pulling trailers off of set, like the studio was wasting, like we changed in the bathroom for the final day, kind of a thing. You know. It was like they were like we’re done and you just go wow this business right, you can’t put your worth in it because it’s just, it’s pixie dust.
Philip Winchester: 39:24
So there there were some hard hitting moments. You think you’re not putting your hope in it, but when the rubber meets the road you’re like, oh man, I put a lot of eggs in that basket. Man, my identity is really, really has been in Peter Stone. And then you got to just go back to basics and you eat good meals with people you love and who love you, and you lick your wounds. And my dad said something when I was younger and I don’t think he understood the magnitude of it he’s, he’s a big golfer. And he said look, buddy, you just got to hit it and forget it. And there there’s definitely an element to hitting it and forgetting it in this game. Right, hope it goes where you want, but you can’t spend too much time thinking about it.
Allen Wolf: 40:02
At the end of your life, what kind of legacy would you like to leave behind?
Philip Winchester: 40:06
I alluded to earlier, like when I was at drama school, when I was 18 years old, I wanted to be famous and I wanted to be a movie star or a TV star or whatever that meant. I am not opposed to success, in whatever form that it does or doesn’t come. I have been incredibly fortunate and incredibly successful. My goal was always if I can put food on the table and I can keep a roof over our heads and provide for my family, that is incredibly successful and I feel very, very fortunate to be able to do those things as an actor and I’ve just been an actor, you know, in terms of legacy. Now it’s about my kids. There was a great quote that I heard a long time ago on a podcast. I think he was a. He was a British guy who worked in the banking systems and I can’t remember his name, but he packed it all up and he moved his three daughters to the woods and to literally to live on a farm in the woods with him and his wife, and some one of his friends was like, dude, you’ve worked your whole life to be as successful as you were and high up in the banking and business, and he was like we all give our life to something, all of us. No matter where you are in this world, you’re giving your life to something. It’s your job, it’s your addictions, it’s your something. You are giving your life and your energy to something, and I wanted to give my life to something that mattered. I love that and I think the meaning of life is relationships. If I can give the things I learned to the next generation, if I can protect my daughters in as much as I can from the things that the world is trying to do to them or trying to steal from them, and if I can be an honorable husband to my wife and love her all the way to heaven, I think that’s a pretty good ride, man. Maybe that’s a little cliche, but it really is like man, just like heaven. I think that’s a pretty good ride, man. Maybe that’s a little cliche, but it really is like man, just like. Okay, all this stuff here is sort of temporary right.
Philip Winchester: 41:51
So I remember being in LA for the premiere of Batman and it was the one with Tom Hardy, so Bane and all that and I remember the fanfare, like the buildup for Dark Knight was like this is going to be, oh my gosh, everything. And then it came in. I think it was at the arc light, right. The premise was there, and it came and went. And guess what happened the next day? Nothing happened the next day. It was. It came and went. It’s a great movie, okay, that’s it.
Philip Winchester: 42:16
I remember really, it planted a seed and I went huh, I’m going to spend my whole life trying for that next success or trying for that next job. And that lie of the next job is going to make me happy. That next job is going to make me better. That next job is going to be the thing where I don’t have to work as much and I can focus on my family. It’s all rubbish. I love my job, but my family man that’s just become. It’s my reason to get up in the morning. You know, if I can be a good dad and a good friend and a good husband, that’s a good way to go, I think.
Allen Wolf: 42:46
Absolutely Well. Thank you so much for being my guest.
Philip Winchester: 42:49
Oh, Allen, it’s so good to see you. It’s a great trip down memory lane.
Allen Wolf: 42:58
Oh, yes, and I loved hearing your stories and just how encouraging your career and your life lessons have been.
Philip Winchester: 43:01
I feel really honored to share them with you, and we have shared a lot and it’s been fun to see you go as well, man, and to become a great father and a great husband. It’s really beautiful, brother.
Allen Wolf: 43:10
Thank you, I appreciate that.
Philip Winchester: 43:12
If you work in entertainment.
Allen Wolf: 43:13
If you work in entertainment, check out the complimentary courses and other resources available at navigatinghollywoodorg. Please follow us and leave us a review so others can discover this podcast. You can find our other shows, transcripts, links and more at navigatinghollywoodorg. I look forward to being with you next time.