Kevin Sorbo: Hercules On Parenting and Politics | On the Homefront with Jeff Dudan #92

Today on the home front, we are thrilled to be joined by one of the most iconic actors of all time, known worldwide for his role in the TV series Hercules. He has two new movies coming out in August, the Firing Squad with Cuba Gooding Jr. And Reagan alongside Dennis Quaid. Welcome to the home front. My good friend Kevin Sorbo. Kevin Sorbo, welcome to the home front.

Good to be here. Thanks for having me on.

Yeah, absolutely. Really appreciate it. I met you at the Liberty CEO Summit. You did a panel with a group of people from the Chosen. It was fantastic. How often do you get to get a chance to get in front of young people? Today.

Actually quite a bit. I do a lot of different speaking events, kind of, I probably I limit to about 15 a year and sort of half of it is pro life, the other half is Christian education. So certainly Christian education is me speaking to mostly under 18 years old kids, which is great.

Got it. Yeah, it was a great event. I was there for three days. We did a panel, incredible speakers and really gives you a lot of confidence going forward as to what we see happening in the world today. So we're sitting here in July of 24. Two weeks ago, there was an assassination attempt on former President Trump. Over the weekend, President Biden dropped out and recused himself from the election. You've been very upfront throughout your career about your faith and your worldview. What are you seeing and hearing now as to kind of what people are looking for? Is the pendulum swinging back a little bit more towards a conservative stance? It feels like it is.

Oh, I definitely feel we've reached a tipping point. And you know, you know as well as I did there was something wrong with Biden even when he so called won the election four years ago as the most popular president of all time. I always, I've always wondered what he did as a senator for 40 years. And I've asked people that are such big fans of the, of the left and I said, well, listen, list his accomplishments. And they can't list anything. It just seems most of the time, especially the last nine years, everything is to just not let Donald Trump win. And that has been, you know, just bred into people every single day for the last nine years for reasons I can't quite figure out. It's amazing to me how the press has just attacked this guy. And here's a guy that for decades, every talk show, everybody in Hollywood wanted him to cameo on their TV shows or movies. But the minute he said, I'm going to go run as a Republican president, they just go after the guy every day. It's unbelievable. I don't know him as the best buddy, but I have golfed with him, I've hung out with him. I've got to emcee a couple events at Mar a Lago. I probably been to Mar a Lago, I don't know, 30 times in the last five years. And I see a guy that is so nice to people and such an amazing, you know, most people age in reverse when they run for president. This guy just seems like a younger with it for some reason and you know, God bless him for fighting. And I think, I think people are waking up more and more. The destruction of America has got to end. And I think people are finally waking up. Even a lot of people on the left, a lot of people are middle line voters are realizing, hey guys, I go to the grocery store now and a good steak is going to cost me $30 just for a steak when it was 18, just a little while ago. So people are starting to wake up.

Well, I think that's it. And you know, how does it affect people on Main street usa? And I always tell my kids, you know, you need to run towards things, not run away from things. And you know, it's, look, nobody's perfect. And when you get in the public eye, everything you've done is going to have intense scrutiny on it. The world's a tough place and you know, we, to be taken seriously, we, we need strong leadership and people need to know that, you know, we're serious and we're capable. And you know, I, I tend to keep things relatively simple, you know, in terms of, you know, how, how I look at that stuff. And I'm, I'm really good friends with the Ben Carson family. We've done a lot of business together. My son is on their board for Carson Scholars and we're committed with the Carsons. I've. Part of our goal here at Homefront Brands is to give away a million books to children and by 2037. And then we're building multiple reading rooms under the Carson Scholars Program across the country and underserved and under resourced schools. So we're passionate about children, we're passionate about education. And I remember hearing Dr. Carson speak one time, he said, you know, the world comes down to three things or the country comes down to three things. It's the media, it's the schools, and it's the courts. And, you know, you can't lose all of those in terms of, you know, creating a positive, powerful future for the country. And I've heard you say, you know, what is it Hollywood or is it politics reflects culture and culture reflects Hollywood or Hollywood, what is that?

Andrew Breitbart said that politics runs downstream from culture. Who runs a culture? Well, Hollywood does, right? And you got the bubble of Washington D.C. over here. You got the bubble of Hollywood over here. You. And they work together and they pay no attention to the flyover states whatsoever. And you know Dr. Ben, I got to meet him years ago. He came and spoke at event when I was still living in la. And I got to sit with him at the table. I got to introduce him to speak in front of our group there. This was the old FOA group, the Friends of Abe. Abe Lincoln group that Gary Sinisen and John Voigt. Number of the people were going. And it was the ultimate photobombing ever. I sat next to him. I said, can I do a selfie with you? Dr. Ben said, sure. So he took the selfie and Jon Voight was in the background doing a little hand wave and stuff, which is kind of cool. So Dr. Ben and I, actually, we. We both spoke at the opening night of the Moms for America 20th anniversary in Dallas, Texas. And I've been to his house. I know you're friends with him as well. Don't ever, don't ever challenge him to play pool because he's old.

Yeah, no. Well, I was on his team. It was me and him versus two. Yeah. So we did fine.

It was Jan. It was. It was New Year's Day. And he invited my wife over to meet with it, you know, me with him and his lovely wife, of course. And we go into his pool room. He opens up this oak case, takes it up, pieces it together, puts on these gloves. I said, wait a minute. So it took me seven games to win once.

Well, you know, he. He deserves it. You know, let him take them. Look, you're incredibly busy. You do a lot of great things. I'd love to hear a little bit about Sorbo Studios because I know you've got projects coming out right now. You've got the firing squad coming out. You're also going to be in the movie Reagan with Dennis Quaid coming out here. I think August 2nd is which one comes out the 2nd. Which one comes out the 30th.

August 30th is going to be Reagan. And people go to Sorbo Studios. Sorbo Studios.com Please sign up, keep up to date. But we have a lot of. That's my wife's side along with myself. She's obviously a homeschool advocate. She's written a number of books on it. But we have a lot of things coming up through Sorbo Studios. I actually have three more movies booked this year. I've got another four movies in post production right now, not counting the ones that are coming in theaters. And I have three documentaries all coming out over the next year as well that are in post production right now. So I like to stay busy and I'm going to keep making movies with a message.

At Sorbo Studios. You're, you're, you have, you have smaller budget films, three to $5 million budgets to make a films. How do you keep talented crew and people passionate and aligned what you're trying to accomplish there and what is, what are you trying to accomplish?

I want to do movies that Hollywood used to do. You know, movies that have love and hope and laughter and redemption and faith or whatever may be. They don't have to be Christian movies. Every movie is a faith based movie. If you're an atheist, that's an incredibly strong faith to believe in nothing. It's kind of sad in a way, but I think it's kind of a tough way to go through life. But every movie is really faith based. But the movies I do, really, Hollywood used to make these kind of movies that had more positive messages to them. And right now Hollywood's got a very bizarre agenda they're pushing up. Disney took well over a billion dollar loss last year because people are tired of going to these theaters and having all these agendas that really just break up the morality of the country. And I want to do movies that Hollywood, like I said, like they used to do. So 3 to $5 million budget, yeah, it sounds like a lot, but they're not obviously that's like catering budget in Pirates of the Caribbean. But we do very good movies with that kind of money. And the reason we keep those kind of costs, production value is just as good as anything Hollywood does because camera equipment today is not expensive. And you, I mean I can record off my phone, I can get a, you know, a very high def movie made. And you'd be amazed at how many people reach out. To me, we're talking people that do these big budget movies, whether they're, they're directors of photography, where they're makeup people, where they're lighting guys, camera guys. They contact me through Sorbo studio and say, look, I want to work on one of your movies because I'm tired of the crap I'm working on. I'm someone that believes the way you believe, that there is, you know, a positive moral value that kept this country on course to begin with. And now of course we're flying up the wheels.

How many scripts do you get and how does a script catch your attention?

Well, I get at least 20 scripts a day sent to me through my website studios and I keep telling people I'm not looking for new products. I've got enough scripts of my own that I've already fallen in love with. Not when I say of my own. They're in my production company. I didn't write them. These are ones that I fell in love with over the last 10 years and these are the ones I'm trying to make right now. So I don't try to do anything. Get new ones. I say, look, if you're funded and you got a place to shoot, then I'll look at, look at it. You have a real offer, but none of these people. I got an idea. Oh, I got a great idea. Oh great. Everybody's got a great ideas. I just don't have the patience for seriously ground level projects. I got enough of my own. I just signed on to a six picture deal to do shoot two movies in the next three years each year. So we're new. I'm booked for the next three years. Unless someone's got a two week roll for me over here, a two week roll for me over there.

Are those outside of Sorbo Studios?

Are they outside of my studios?

Yeah. Are they in your studio?

Within. They came to me. They want to fund the scripts that I have. Okay. Some of these scripts I've had for, for 10, 15 years. Okay. I would say, you know, last year we put out a miracle in East Texas and Left Behind Rise of the Antichrist based on Left Behind Bars. And those are, that was in my, my, the Sorbel Studios family. So the people brought those to me. We fell in love with the scripts. We found the funding. Thank God we found the funding and we made the movies. They were in theaters last year. So everything I'm doing pretty much right now, if it's not through my production company, it's through other independent production companies. Because Hollywood booted me out 10 years ago. The hypocrisy of Hollywood said that we can't work with you anymore because you're conservative and a Christian. And I just kind of laughed at that. What's so funny is this country was founded in Judeo Christian values. Our documents, our constitution was faith based men that Put that together. Our laws come from the Bible. And now we have half this country that wants to get rid of all that stuff and turn this country into a third world country, which is unbelievable to me. And that comes down once again, what you mentioned, Dr. Ben mentioned. Our education system is absolutely pathetic, and it's been brainwashing people for decades. But the last 20 years, they've just exploded with this insanity, what they're doing to kids and doing. I think one of the blessings of COVID is that some parents finally woke up to realize how crappy the public education system is, and they took their kids out. And 2 million more families are now homeschooling, and we need more people to do it. Bill Maher came out two months ago and said, don't send your kids American universities. That was Bill Maher, right? He's not wrong. He's not wrong. Get rid of the schools. Get rid of our public education system and let our education system become a business and not a how, not not run by the government. Because I think one of my favorite Ronald Reagan quotes, of which there are many, he said, these are the greatest words to fear. Hi, I'm from the government. I'm here to help.

That's right. Well, look, Bill Maher is very. He's clear about his position on things, but he also, you know, like, for me, it's everything you learned in fifth grade. It's. Be personally responsible. Take. Take accountability for yourself. If you know the right thing to do, do that. Be a servant. Put other people's needs first. Look for areas where you can. Like, these are basic principles, right, that we like. Every coach, every. Every football coach, every teacher, anybody that was in our parent group, they all were, you know, we were. We were all, you know, that was what we were taught. And it seems like it's gone all the way. The other side was worry about now worry about what everybody else is doing, correct? Everybody else. If you don't like what's happening to you, you know, screaming, throw a fit advocate, you know, it just. It seems like it's gotten. Sometimes the kids are running the asylum.

When we went to war against the most powerful country in the world at that time, which was Britain, the British monarchy, we go to war against them over a small tax. And when that kicked off, I look at today's government, our government treats us far worse than the British ever did. And we just, like, we just sit there like frogs in the kettle in cold water as they keep slowly turning up the heat. And we keep saying, everything's okay. Everything's okay. They only want this. Only one that. Well, every time they take an inch. Through the decades, they've taken miles upon miles of freedoms away from us, and people just sit back because they're nothing but sheep. And I gotta tell you, Jeff, every time I do these movies I've been doing last six, seven years, I'll get another actor, a director, a makeup artist, whoever it may be, comes up to me and says, hey, Kevin, thanks for being a voice for us. I go, be a voice for yourself.

That's right.

Stop letting fear control your lives, because that's government's favorite weapon. Outside of actual physical threat. They love fear and control over everybody's life.

Look, I try to get outside of my echo chamber, but the enough is enough already is seems to be spreading. It's like, okay, you know, I mean, look, we teach our children to speak up. We teach them to, you know, advocate for themselves, but, you know, they need to do that respectfully and they need to earn it. I mean, you get people to come into a company and they've been there three, three months now, and they're telling you how to run the business and that they need to be a vice president. Where, you know, when we were growing up and I don't know what kind of jobs you had growing up, I assumed you played sports. I mean, I've seen Hercules.

Right.

So.

What did you play growing up? Basketball? Baseball.

Guy Basketball. Baseball, yeah. How tall were you? Like, how tall are you?

I'm six. Three, six, three. I was 230. I'm 210 now. I'm an old guy now. I can't keep that kind of muscle mass on. But I still work out every day. I still love to do it. You know, actually, I got the Hercules sword here right behind me that was given to me the very last day of seven years on Hercules. It's got the dates 1993 through 2000 on there and says, the journey may be over, but the legend lives on. So it was very nice for them to give me that as a gift as I left the series.

What. What was that wrap party like?

It was emotional because, you know, you're honest. You know, you work 14 hours a day. And then I was lifting weights an hour and a half every day. I mean, a typical day for me from door to door is anywhere from 16 to 18 hours every single day. It was a grind, but I loved it. I lived in New Zealand for those seven years. It was fantastic. The people are great. My crew is phenomenal. In fact, My entire crew went on to work on Lord of the Rings and half of them went out, went on the win Oscars and Golden Globes. So it was an honor to be part of that series. By season three, we're the most watched TV show in the world. Not many actors can say that. So I was blessed with that, but had an absolute blast doing it. But you know, I'll tell you one job I had growing up in college. For two summers, I was a caddy at a private country club. My dad was a school teacher. I'm the fourth of five kids. We didn't have that kind of money. You know, these guys. But I asked all these guys. But one thing my parents, both my parents instilled in us was hard work. They grew up in farms in Iowa and they told all of his kids, you need to work hard. Don't expect handouts. Work hard in your life. They put a very strong ethic. Work ethic, all five kids. But I asked these people I catered for, how did you become so wealthy? How do you become so successful? They all said the same thing. Oh, I failed, Kevin. Oh, then I failed again. By the way. I failed for about 10 years before I found success. That taught me, don't give up, keep plugging away. We have too many kids. They just lazy. Beyond lazy. This privilege stuff is absolutely nuts to me. And it's part of the wild. It's part of this. What we're talking right now, our phones, computers, all this instantaneous. I want to be successful. Now you got people on, you know, TikTok or whatever, flashing their boobs or shaking their butt, and they're making money off of that. So every kid goes, I'm going to do that. It's all about displaying bad behavior and stupid behavior. And everybody wants to be a star right away. They don't have the patience to work hard. They want instant, like you said, they want to be instantly. They want to. They want to, you know, Rolls Royce right now in a hill that's got a 14,000 square foot house on top of it. And people need that. It's not going to work out that way. So what happens? They get angry and they become blm. They become antifa. They become people that are disgruntled that their lives didn't turn out so well. So it's your fault they don't have success. So they're going to attack you. I mean, it's just, it's really amazing to me how screwed up that our television and movies and our governments and press have Done to make people impatient and angry.

You've touched on it a couple times. Education. What experience can you share about raising children? And I know you have three, not specifically asking about your kids, but to parents in general, trying to discern. Teach them to discern, like, what's true. And you know, what types of things would help somebody raising their kids in this really confusing time where there's lots of social media, there's lots of distractions, there's lots of points of light to look at. Like, how do you keep it simple? And what experience could you share with parents today?

Well, number one, homeschool them out of the school. But you know, what we did every day with our kids is we start today at breakfast reading the Bible for half an hour. Read the Bible. You don't have to be a Christian to read the Bible. It's the most popular book ever written of all time. Every year, it's the number one best selling book. Read the Bible. And you'd be surprised that this Bible that's thousands of years old with his literature in there applies to everything that's happening in the world right now, right now. I mean, teach your kids some values. Teach your kids hard work. Don't. Don't be your kid's best friend, okay? That can come later in life. Right now, be their parent and learn the word no. You know, no and failure are good things because you learn from those things. And people are afraid to discipline their kids. Now, in today's world, my parents weren't. When I was going to school, there was SWAT boards at every public school that the parents were giving that teacher. You want to whack my kid a good one in the butt for being a jerk, go for it.

I hated those ones that they had drilled the holes in it, you know? Yeah, they drill the holes in it and it would whistle.

That's funny. Yeah.

Well, hey, let's talk about the firing squad. Is. Is that your project coming out? I know you've got a. You've got a role in it.

I got a rolling. That's all. Tim Che, the director, came to me. We've been talking for years about a project. I love true stories. This is a true story. I play a guy that was over there in his late 20s. He was surfing. He got angry at some guy hitting on his girlfriend. He got in a fight and he killed a guy in Indonesia. He was in Indonesia. He got the death penalty. He was in prison for many, many years. And during all that time, with all his hate and anger, somehow he found Jesus he found God, he became a pastor, and he started preaching daily to other inmates and the guards. He ultimately was executed in 2015. So it's not that long ago because they still have the firing squad in Indonesia. So it's a wonderful true story. Cuba Gooding Jr. Is in the movie as well. And it's a movie about, you know what, you can find redemption and hope in the darkest of places. On death row, in a foreign prison. You can find it anywhere. So it's a wonderful true story. Touching story. It's not made up. And August 2nd, people go to Firingsquadfilm.com that's Firingsquadfilm.com to get information on it. It's a great story.

Yeah, I was there and I found something. Millionsouls.org yeah, Tim Che, Tim Che, the.

Director, very heavy, strong Christian guy. He said that, I hope that this movie will save a million souls. And so it's good to have that kind of goal. And, you know, it's funny, I used to get stopped all the time through airports, hotel, lobbies, whatever. People would say, oh, I loved Hercules or I love you as Captain Dylan Hunt and Andromeda, you know, but 80% of time now it's, God's not dead. What if Soul Surfer, Let there be Light, Miracle in Texas. It's the movies I'm doing that have a good message. That's what people want me to keep doing. So it's been a blessing to go down this other road that I never thought I'd be on.

Well, awesome. I know we're heading towards the end of our time. I got two questions for you. One, is this one of regression analysis? So, like, I kick off our training with all of our franchisees, and I talk, I compare them to Elon Musk. Like, what's the difference? And, you know, Elon Musk, he doesn't have filters to tell him no. So when he decides we need to go to Mars, he just works backwards and does a regression analysis to figure out, well, we have to launch one rocket an hour. How do we do that? And it just fills in the gaps. If you were to look forward 10 years from now, what is the change that you would have wanted to see in the world, and what are you willing to do during your time here to make that happen?

I think the change I want to see is the change I'm starting to see right now in slow motion, but it's starting to happen. Is that tipping point we talked about about now? I'm hoping 10 years from now we're back to where we were at least 20 or 30 years ago. I mean, if you can look back to Reagan's presidency, it's always. There's always going to be battles, all that kind of stuff. Even Clinton's presidency. Clinton was, Bill Clinton was smart enough to at least work on both sides of the aisle. I would, I would say he was actually more of a centrist than anything else. He didn't want to take away a lot of stuff that Reagan was already building up on. I think Bush kind of blew it, you know, in terms of the things he said, you know, read my lips. No. No new taxes. And he did get new taxes out there. And, you know, Clinton initially got in with the lowest percentage of votes of any president. I think it was like 38% because of Ross Perot running against Bush.

I know my wife won't let me forget that I voted for him, voted.

Where that Bush would have had. So, you know, we got to be careful about, you know, we have enough division going on right now. And I'm hoping now this whole fundamentally change America that Obama wanted to do goes back the other way. Because I told my wife, you would have said the morning of our wedding that you're going to fundamentally change me the minute we're married. I would have been a runaway husband right away. Trust me. I wouldn't have stuck around.

Outstanding. Kevin, last question. If you had one sentence that you could speak to someone to make an impact in their life, what would that be?

Don't let anyone set your limitations, especially yourself.

Perfect. Kevin Sorbo, thank you so much for being on.

Thank you so much. Appreciate it.

This has been great. Kevin Sorbo, what's talking?

I got two documentaries coming out.

Okay. When?

Mid November. They come out.

Okay. Awesome. We'll look for them. This has been Kevin Sorbo with Jeff Duden and we have been on the home front. Thanks for listening.

Future.