BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. _ Two and a half years ago actor Jay Hernandez was about to quit. He'd been acting since he was 18 and while he could always wangle some sort of acting job, he wasn't excited by the work.
"I was ready to walk away from it," he says. "I had a lot of moments like that because Hollywood is not a meritocracy. You can't earn your place anywhere. You can get to a place, but you have to constantly fight for that. You're constantly treading water. And I don't love jumping through the hoops," he says, seated on a frieze couch in a coffee bar here.
Hernandez had other interests like writing, producing, and business. "It was one of those slow periods and there was a moment where I felt I just don't want to deal with this stuff right now. I was very close to stepping away," he says.
But a juicy role in "Suicide Squad" landed in his lap, then a part in "Bad Moms," and a seven-episode run in "Scandal" kept him on the books.
It's a good thing he kept plugging because two years later Hernandez landed the role of a lifetime: recreating the part of the winsome Thomas Magnum in CBS' new version of "Magnum P.I.," premiering next Monday.
Slipping into Tom Selleck's Hawaiian shirts was no easy trick, admits Hernandez who grew up in Rosemead, Calif., with two older brothers and a younger sister.
"It was probably a month before this happened, I was just watching TV, flipping through it, and saw 'Magnum, P.I.' and thought, 'Man, I remember watching this when I was a kid.'
"It was Tom on the surf ski riding in a bay somewhere outside of Oahu. And two months later I was doing that exact same thing on the set as Thomas Magnum. So it was one of those very surreal moments," says Hernandez who's wearing a bronze shirt with white curlicues and Levis.
He was fearful about taking on such an iconic role, he admits. "I wanted to make sure it was going to feel distinct from Tom Selleck in a way because you can't replace Tom, you can't do that," he says.
He wanted the character to be distinctive yet maintain what he calls "that sort of enigmatic charming thing that Tom had." "I knew whoever was coming in there would be a lot of criticism, I think ... So I was leery of that. I wanted to make sure the creative people knew that they had to do something a little different."
Ever since he first started acting, Hernandez has tried to do something different. He experienced a fairy-tale beginning when he was discovered in an elevator by show business manager Howard Tyner.
Tyner told him he had the right "look" for Hollywood and gave Hernandez his card. "A couple weeks later my mom asked if I'd called him. I hadn't, so she kind of pushed me to that, and said, 'Let's have a meeting with this guy.'"
While his mechanic father objected, Hernandez persevered. "That was the beginning of my career really. He put me in acting classes, got me headshots, started schooling me in the business of Hollywood, and all that. My first experience ever acting was in a class he put me in when I was 18 or 19."
Unlike many unscrupulous talent agents who ask for a fee, Tyner paid for it all. "He said he would front the money for everything, and when I started making money, then I could pay him back.
"And once I started working, which was like three or four years later, I finally started to pay him back all the debt I had accrued over those three years," he grins.
Tyner had been a heroin addict, says Hernandez, 40. "When I met him he'd been a couple of years sober. When you're a drug addict you screw over people, but I was his first project or thing in his life that was unsoiled by that. So I gave him this positive relationship, and he gave me this career path. And I was able to go off and have this business in film and television," he pauses.
"I was in New York doing press for 'Crazy/Beautiful' which was my first big movie, and got a knock on the door at 12 or 1 o'clock in the morning. And he had passed away."
Looking back, Hernandez thinks he was influenced by his older brothers when he was a kid.
"My early teen years were a little tumultuous because of family stuff," he says. "I had two older brothers who were crazy. I got into a little bit of trouble. I saw what was happening to other people around me and I thought, 'All right, I don't want to do that.' So I went on a different path that in some ways, pursuing acting kept me on the good path," he says.
His older brother just retired from the Navy after 22 years. "I realized, looking back on it, that him signing up for the military and taking off was about the same time that I really started getting serious about trying to pursue this," he says.
"My one brother was gone, and my older brother had just gone off to the Navy and what was I doing? I was trying to figure out what I was going to do with my life. I think him making that decision and being serious about his path and his life, I think probably looking back on it, that definitely had some sort of impact in terms of what I wanted to do with my life."
FONDA DOCUMENTARY TO TELL ALL
Everything we didn't know about Jane Fonda will purportedly be described in "Jane Fonda in Five Acts," premiering on HBO next Monday. Created by former PBS documentarian, Susan Lacy, the series details the colorful passages of Fonda's life gleaned from 21 hours of interviews with her, as well as talks with relatives and those who know her.
Though she's depicted as this independent, strong woman, she married men who were often powerful and controlling like business tycoon Ted Turner, filmmaker Roger Vadim, and politician Tom Hayden. "They were all so brilliant and they could teach me things and take me farther than I had ever gone and for me ... they weren't boring," she explains. "I don't know ... I didn't have very much confidence, and I thought that if I was with those kinds of men that I could be somebody."
'TURTLES' RISE AGAIN
The new "Rise of the Ninja Turtles" arrives on Nickelodeon this week. Done in 2D animation, the show features, voice-over champ Ben Schwartz as Leonardo. Schwartz's real face appeared on-camera when he played Jean-Ralphio on "Parks and Recreation." He also the voices Dewey Duck on "DuckTales" and Rutabega Rabitowitz on "BoJack Horseman."
Schwartz says he got into voice-over work after college. "I started trying to act, and I did improv and stuff, but I used to audition for voice-over commercials and the same with on-air commercials. And then you try to get anything, and you fail quite a bit. Then I auditioned for so many cartoon shows until I got my first lead, which was 'Randy Cunningham: 9th Grade Ninja.' But it takes a while. It's just like any other part of this industry. You get told 'No' 98 percent of the time."
'9-1-1' ACTRESS RECALLS HER EMERGENCY
The new season of NBC's "9-1-1" premieres on Sunday then falls into its regular slot next Monday. While the brave souls on the show are answering all kids of calls one of the actors experienced a real trauma when she had to call 9-1-1. Aisha Hinds who plays Henrietta "Hen" Wilson, says, "Someone called 911 on my behalf. When I was 16 years old, I was walking home from school. I was inches from my doorstep, and I heard, like, pop, pop, pop. And I thought that it was someone setting off early fireworks for July 4th, but something just instinctually told me to turn around.
"So I turn around, and I see this really short guy, like, looking down the street behind me, and his head was ducked. And then behind him I see a group of guys, and I see this big .45 gun pulled out. So I turn around, and I try to run those few feet to my door. And I didn't make it. The next thing I knew, I hit the ground. And at the time, it didn't even register that I had been shot."
