The Catalyst interview: Actor Patrick Wilson

You could count on less than one hand the number of St. Petersburg families that include a bona fide movie star.

Celebrity, of one sort or another, is a hallmark of the Wilson clan. Patriarch John was the evening news anchor at Fox 13 for three decades. Mark, his middle son, has been the station’s anchor since 2005; Mark’s older brother Paul owns Tampa Bay’s successful advertising, marketing and public relations firm Wilson Media. Paul is also a film and TV actor.

Patrick Wilson, the youngest of John and Mary K. Wilson’s boys, graduated from Tony-nominated performances in Broadway musicals to above-the-title roles in A-list films including Aquaman, Insidious, Running With Scissors, The A-Team and all three of the mega-hot movies in the Conjuring series. He received a Golden Globe nomination for the FX series Fargo.

A graduate of the city’s arts-centric Shorecrest Preparatory School, Patrick Wilson earned a BFA in Drama from Carnegie Mellon University. His first big cinematic role was opposite Al Pacino and Meryl Streep in the Mike Nichols-directed HBO adaptation of Angels in America (2003).

You can take the boy out of St. Pete, but you can’t take St. Pete … well, you know the rest. Wilson and his brothers will reunite this weekend as their collective alter ego, a rock ‘n’ roll band called The Wilson Van (the name is a sly nod to Van Halen, another hard-rocking brother band).

Featuring Paul on vocals, Mark on shredding lead guitar and vocals, Patrick on drums and vocals – with longtime family friend Bill Malik playing bass – The Wilson Van performs Sunday at 7 p.m. at Jannus Live.

Like all the band’s infrequent performances, this show (tickets here) is about jamming out and having fun – and about raising money for the Wilson Family Foundation, which to date has raised more than $200,000 for local charities.

The Catalyst spoke with Patrick Wilson from his home in New Jersey.

St. Pete Catalyst: What was it like growing up in that family?

Patrick Wilson: I grew up in a house where we all played sports, and we all had to leave early to go to choir. And we all played instruments. I had equal amount of jock friends as I did theater friends. Part of that’s going to a real small school, but a lot of it was growing up in an environment at home where you were just supported, whatever you wanted to do. The only thing I remember is Mom making a choice to put us into piano just to make us understand some basic music reading and theory, before we transferred to other instruments.

What was the goal while you were taking theater classes at Shorecrest? To get to Broadway?

You know what’s weird? I couldn’t even fathom how movies were made. So I had no dreams of like, ‘I want to be in movies,’ I wanted to be an actor. I wasn’t even specific about wanting to do musicals. There were plenty of other guys at Shorecrest that knew musicals a whole lot better than me. ‘So, you like Sondheim? Who’s Sondheim?’ I was listening to Van Halen and ‘80s rock; I was not a musical theater guy. I loved singing, but I never put two and two together. I loved doing musicals in high school, but it’s not like I knew any of the musicals I was doing before I did them. I just wanted to be an actor and wherever that took me.

It wasn’t until I auditioned for Carnegie Mellon, and got in, and the head of the department said ‘Our program is both – it’s musical theater and it’s acting.’ That really narrowed my focus. When I was there and getting exposed to all this musical theater I was like ‘Oh, OK. This seems like a good lane to start in.’

And that’s really where I formed actual goals: I want to be on Broadway. I want to do an original recording. I’d like to be nominated for a Tony, all that stuff. And I felt like I would get into movies in my 30s. If I can, if Broadway will have me, let me do the Broadway thing and then I’ll get into movies later. Which is what happened.

But surely the whole time you’re cognizant of the fact that the percentage of people who ‘make it’ – for whom that happens – is very small?

When I came up, you didn’t come to New York to be famous. You came to New York to be an actor. And your goal is ‘Can I support myself doing what I love?’ In a weird way, I’ve never left that mentality. Look, I can go into some rooms and be an absolute star, I can go into some rooms and they don’t have a clue who I am, and you gotta be OK with both. Because ‘Oh my God, he’s successful’ is fleeting. It’s all someone’s perception.

I can have little moments in my life. I can be on a beach in Crete and have a guy from Russia come up and say ‘I’m a huge fan of you in The A-Team.’ Then I can walk around New York and mostly nobody gives a crap. I wanted a career based on versatility and longevity versus ‘I want to be famous.’

Would you say that Angels in America is what did it for you? Was that the door opening?

A hundred percent. Mike Nichols gave me my film career. There’s just no two ways about it. I have so many friends in theater, and specifically musical theater, that don’t get that opportunity. Did I make the most of it? Sure, we can argue that. Maybe I didn’t!

With The Devil Made Me Do It [which also features brother Paul and St. Pete actress Eugenie Bondurant] the Conjuring movies are a franchise now. How do you feel about being associated with horror films?

Well, the easy answer is I feel great. I’m in pre-production for Insidious 5, which I’m directing. The thing about Conjuring, specifically, is it’s just a different breed. I don’t like a lot of gore. I would say of all he Conjuring movies, that’s probably the most violent one.

I love my co-star there, and it was a dream to have Paul on set, and meet Eugenie. She was fantastic. I have no problem playing a role over and I over that I enjoy playing. And the films are successful.

Look back at the St. Petersburg of your youth. What was it like?

A little sleepier. For a kid in Shore Acres, it felt very small-town. More segregated, not as diverse, meaning you didn’t see all the artistic side of St. Pete downtown. I love going back and seeing that now. I was never one of those saying ‘I hate my hometown, can’t wait to get out.’ I knew I would leave – I haven’t lived there since ’91 – but I’ve loved going back.

I loved the way that my parents chose for us to live, in a pretty easygoing community, on the water. That’s just how we grew up. It was a much simpler time for us. I love to see my friends that still play in Northeast Little League – one of my friends has a kid there, and I’m like ‘Yeah. That’s how I grew up.’

The Wilson Van: Patrick, left, Mark and Paul. Photo provided.

Let’s talk about the Wilson Van. How did you wind up being the drummer?

I do about half the set behind the kit, and half in front, singing other stuff. So it satisfies both my desires … and sometimes I do both! Why did I gravitate towards drums? Probably because Mark was into guitar, Paul was playing the trumpet at the time, and I think I just wanted to take out my aggression on something, I guess, I don’t know … I always wanted to play, and my parents did it in stages. It’s not they said I couldn’t play, I think they just didn’t want to go all-in on a kit if it was just gonna sit there. My dad had one cymbal, so I put it on an old stand with a nail on top to hold the cymbal in place. And then used Larry’s Ice Cream cartons, double-coated with tinfoil and cardboard to make kind of like a snare-ish sound. I played that for a while, and then they found somebody that gave us an old, old set for like a hundred bucks or something.

Yes, I loved rhythm, and I loved to play, and I got out aggression and all that … the other side is, when you’re four and a half and six years younger than your brothers, you don’t want to spend a ton of time with them. But if your brother is playing guitar … if I play guitar, he’s not gonna want to play with me. But if I play drums, he kinda needs me. ‘Oh, OK, this is cool. We can play together.’ So especially with me and Mark, that’s where the Van Halen thing came in. Yes, we loved the music, but once we found out ‘Hang on! Those are brothers? This is awesome!’ … it wasn’t conscious, it wasn’t ‘I’m going to play drums so I can spend time with my brother,’ but I bet that was subconsciously part of it.

The name originated as a play on the name Van Halen; it’s an ‘80s cover band?

Yes, the majority of the stuff we do is ‘80s cover band, but every time we perform there’s always three or four songs that we’ve never played live ever and have only rehearsed once. So that’s always a crapshoot! But we’ll do some Van Halen, Journey, Bon Jovi, but I’ve done Adele, Carrie Underwood, Beatles, Billy Joel, Tim McGraw. We’ve got four originals. It becomes a mish-mosh of stuff, which is kind of like us!

There are far better bands that would do an ‘80s cover band, so that’s why we never got locked into that. We do some crazy stuff, just to make it interesting.

You’re a busy guy – it’s cool that you still make time to come back to St. Pete and do this, and you still enjoy it.

Well, of course I’m busy. We’re all busy. But we fell into a … I won’t say a goldmine, but certainly it’s some kind of mine. Some precious gem. We played for Mark’s birthday, it went well, and we thought ‘This was just for chuckles. I got an idea. As much as we want to give back to the community, and between what I do for a living, what Mark does for a living, what Paul does for a living … hang on, we can do these as charity events.’ So here we are, what is it, 12 years later, having done 10 or 12 shows. This will be the first time we’ve played together in four years.

But it’s also an excuse – when am I going to hang with my brothers? We all have our own lives, so it gives us a great reason to come together, do what we love and give back to the community, and spend some time with your family. Check, check, check, you know?