Last week I got the chance to speak for a bit with actor Jay Karnes whom you might know from his great role as Detective Holland “Dutch” Wagenbach on the FX show The Shield or as Lieutenant Ducane on Star Trek: Voyager. The occasion for this interview was the showing of the short film he recently starred in Donkey Punch at the Hollyshorts film festival in Los Angeles California – last weekend. Now a short film, with a name like Donkey Punch you kind of know what your in for. That combined with his role on The Shield I have to say this interview is not for the easily offended. I had a lot of fun with this interview, Jay was a great guy and very easy to talk to, I hope you enjoy this interview as much as I did conducting it. I will keep the naughtier sections of the interview after the more tag and I also will be reviewing Donkey Punch later this week.

Can you tell me a bit about your background and how you became an actor?

Wow, that goes back. Well I was in school at the University of Kansas and I had done some plays and things like that. I was a terrible student. Towards the end of my tenure there I auditioned for a little Shakespeare festival in Omaha, Nebraska and I got in. While I was there I met a couple of actors there who traveled around and did little jobs that paid a little bit of money – various regional theatre and small regional theatre festivals, and I thought “I could do that, what a nice gentle life that would be.” So that’s what I decided to do. It was kind of an epiphany for me and I have been an actor ever since. I was 24 at that point. I had done plays in high school and college, but that was the first time I thought, “Wow, I could make a living doing this.” So, for about another 10 years I traveled around the regional theatre and finished up at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in Ashland, which is the biggest regional theatre in the country, and then I got married. My wife worked in Los Angeles, so I moved to Los Angeles and tried to get into TV and film. I was in my early 30s and suddenly how I looked didn’t matter as much as whether I could play a convincing doctor, lawyer or cop and I started to get jobs.

How was the transition from Acting in the Theater to TV and Film?

Well it’s not like going from being an architect to being a lion-tamer, but it’s very much like going from being an architect to being an engineer. Some of the skills are the same, but it is a completely differently group of people and it’s really not the same job. It was frustrating from me because I had a big career in the regional theatre, and I am playing title roles in Ashland one moment and the next I am auditioning for co-starring roles on Growing Pains or whatever the show was at the time. I really didn’t want to do it even if they gave it to me, and yet I had to establish myself by doing the small jobs and working my way to getting the larger role.  For 3 or 4 years I started to gradually get bigger roles starting with the co-starring roles, then the guest star, then a big guest star, then my first job that I booked where I was playing a serious regular on a pilot was The Shield. So I got hit right between the eyes with a big ol’ lucky stick, and that show went seven seasons.

You were my favorite character on The Shield, what was it like working on The Shield? And how have things been since the show ended?

It was terrific! The Shield was one of those experiences, which I doubt I will be able to match in terms of my career – artistically. It was a perfect combination of great writing, actors that were talented (and that I enjoyed being with and working with and not just as actors but as people as well) and a great crew that was with us from start to finish. It was just a terrific experience on every level, and if I am lucky enough to have a group of people or to have a show that I think is good, having everything together like that is an awful lot to ask for.  As for how it’s been since it ended, its been awful since The Shield ended. I have been working a lot which is great but a guest star role or even a recurring guest star role like Sons of Anarchy or Burn Notice you’re a guest but your not really part of the family, you don’t really feel like part of the group. It’s tough, I was actually just talking to Michael Chiklis about it last week and he is in the same boat as I am. He has all kinds of work but he’s not unhappy about how his career is going artistically or financially but you know he misses his guys and I completely get that, I feel the same way.

I saw you did a spot on House another of my favorite shows, how did that come about?

It was one of those rare things, my agent emailed me the script and said they want you to come in and read for this. Normally I don’t go to read for guest stars so my first reaction was, “I’m not going to do that” and then I read it, and it was a terrific episode. The script was really fantastic, and I thought well you know if its good writing you should read for it and try to win the role. So I went in, and I guess they liked what I did so I did the job and really enjoyed it. They have a nice group over there, I worked with Hugh a little bit and he seems very nice. He’s sort of a comedy god for me. I didn’t watch the show House much, although I watch it now and really enjoy it. So when I went in, I was only familiar with his earlier stuff. See, when Hugh Laurie goes on the Fox lot he is an American the whole time, he will only speak with the American accent. I have all those A Bit of Fry and Laurie and Black Adder sketches some of them memorized completely and I kept, when the cameras would get ready to roll I would say ” So where do we gather from Hugh? The buttocks!”.

He would give me a dirty look and the cameras would roll. I had a fantastic time and we would do a take and I would look at him and say “What went wrong there Hugh?”,  and I am sure it was a colossal pain in the ass for Hugh, but it was a great moment for me, I had a terrific time.

I honestly have to say the tone of Donkey Punch really brought me back that moment in the pilot of The Shield where we first see your character Dutch for the first time and he talks about groping the woman he just found deceased on the crime scene, there is a really dark humor at play which I have to say is also the tone of Donkey Punch.  Was that intentional?

I think so, the writer of Donkey Punch was John Hlavin who was also a writer on The Shield and I think they approached me because of that tone. It wasn’t quite “Dutch on a date”, but it also wasn’t far from Dutch on a Date. Does that make sense?
I think that tone to a certain degree was intentional.

How did the idea to do the short come about?

Anthony Russo and Ann Russo, his wife who plays the woman in Donkey Punch and John were all friends before this. They approached me, and I read the script and was a little like, “Wow!”. It was very interesting to work on it and I love John Hlavin’s sense of humor. It was a wicked almost cruel sense of humor I think it’s a very funny piece. I also think there is a real sadness underneath it but it was a very interesting sort of short.

How long did something like that take to film?

We shot it in one night. We started at 9pm Saturday night and finished up at about 6 or 7am. It really was just a bunch of people who got a camera, had an idea and we just shot it. I really have to say Annie Russo put in so much work on it, producing it and getting it out there and setting up these interviews. I think it’s terrific its having a life after shooting it. Because some of these shorts just disappear, and you never hear about them again after they’re done. You shoot it and your kind of like, “Oh well that was all right, that was fun, moving on.” I think its funny so many people from The Shield were involved with it. We had Jordan Goldman who was an editor on The Shield and an editor on The Sons of Anarchy editing this short. I am just so glad it’s having a life of its own.

I read that the role of the “Man” was written specifically for you.  So are you more the levelheaded voice of reason like your character in the film?

You know it was written for me but I think it was written through the eyes of John watching me play Dutch.  Obviously anytime you start getting into those kinds of questions, I am a reasonable guy but anytime you start talking about someone’s sexuality I mean you really can’t tell much about a person just by looking at them in that sense. So I would say yeah, that is one version of me on that film absolutely.

How did you feel about some of the colorful dialog in the short?

I will tell you this, I did not know what a Donkey Punch was before I read this. So I went online to look it up and it wasn’t discovering what the donkey punch was, it was all the other stuff that was on the same website. I was like “OH MY GOD!” Which was interesting. The other dialog no, nothing that was said in the film I didn’t have a problem with any of it.

It’s funny because my friends and I had this same conversation; we went down the list one by one couldn’t believe that A. these terms existed and B. They had such colorful names.

Yeah at some point you begin to think someone is just making this up, this is not any sort of thing that people normally do. This is a bunch of people in a room, probably a bunch of guys that are just like, “Okay this and this and this what are we going to call it?”. I would guess half the stuff on that list nobody has ever done.

Here is my question you’ve seen the 40-Year-Old Virgin right? The Cincinnati Bow-tie, I found the definition for it, do you think the term existed before the movie?

Have you ever been on a date that went that badly?

Not in that way. That would probably be a date that went well when I was single. Yeah, I have definitely had dates that went south. It’s been a long time since I have been single. We have all had those dates just maybe not to this degree as in the short.

Do you know what was the significance of the Chocolate Cake that is suddenly dropped in front of your character in the film is?

There is a little thing that goes on there that I don’t think made it into the final short. We shot it, and we did one cut of it and we re-cut it again. I think the idea was that the waitress kind of had a thing for him and she was honing in on the date a little bit. I don’t think that notion made it into the final cut of the film, with the exception of the cake. So the cake became some symbolic, something or other. When you do something in one night, sometimes things get lost, you know. If you have an idea and maybe it doesn’t play out when you cut it together, and of course you cant go back and reshoot it. So it was kind of fun as it played, because he didn’t order the cake and yet it just shows up and the reason is why? It’s a huge piece of cake. Lets agree that it was a metaphor for the potential of my character having sex with Annie’s character. That’s my own interpretation.

Do you have any plans to release the short after it has played the festival circuit?

You’ll have to talk to the producers; I think it’s going to depend on the reaction we get from the film.

At the end of the film did he go off with the girl at the end or did he run home?

I don’t know. I think we kind of left it up in the air, I think it depends on the viewer, if that makes sense?

What’s next after Donkey Punch? Any plans to turn it into a full-length romantic comedy?

Yeah, starring Josh Brolin and Sandra Bullock.  I’m teasing.  Actually, John Hlavin has talked about a Donkey Punch feature. I don’t know what it would be, or what his ideas are but he’s a really wicked smart guy so if he’s got an idea I will bet its good.

And my final question have you even been to the city of Philadelphia, and if so what are some of your favorite stops?

I have never been to Philadelphia, and I am a huge history buff there are so many things in Philadelphia I would love to see, Independence Hall at the top of the list.  I hope to get there. But no, I have never been.

Well if Donkey Punch becomes a theatrical feature you can premier it here and get a to see the city on the studio’s dime.

I love it. It’s a plan.

Check out the Donkey Punch website for the trailer and more info!