One of my favorite reasons for loving interviews is that it leads you to get to know so many different people and learn about their interesting backgrounds and passions and Will Estes is one person who is definitely on that list! I recently had the pleasure of interviewing the very charming Estes on what lies ahead for his character on the new season of the CBS crime drama Blue Bloods, and what I found remarkable was not only his dedication for his work as an actor; but also his passion for protecting our planet. When you hear Estes speak about the importance he felt he needed to bring to the role he is best known for, JJ Pryor on NBC's American Dreams and the importance he believes we as a society as a whole need to bring to preserving our environment, you see he is a true actor and a true environmentalist at heart! Without a doubt a great person to learn about and I will let what he had to say speak for him!
What do you enjoy most about your role of Jamie on Blue Bloods.
Will- It's been great. I've always wanted to live in New York and I've kind of always wanted to play a cop on TV. So it's like a culmination of the two! (Laughs) It's been a lot of fun. It's a great ensemble cast. It definitely has particular elements but at the end of the day it's the heart and the characters and drama. And I'm getting to do a drama with people like Tom Selleck and Donnie Wahlberg and Bridget Moynahan and Nick Turturro. It's fantastic.
What can we expect from Jamie this season? I read he has a major storyline from the start.
Will- I get a sort of small 'undercover' job early on in the season. It's sort of trying to bust a place that serves alcohol to minors. I bump into somebody who is involved in selling drugs and I stumble upon helping a guy who overdosed and he ends up having connections to a crime family. My character actually might get a chance to do a lot more undercover work this year in that regard. I've got a new partner that will be coming in. So that will be a lot of fun. As great as the uniform is I'm looking forward to doing some of the undercover stuff.
Is there a a scene you enjoyed the most as an actor? The most challenging or the most fun?
Will- Some of the biggest scenes I think I had were the scenes with the family. During my first season, the death of our older brother in the family, scenes like that as actors we all try to keep alive as a part of our characters. A lot of the show last year played a huge part involving that loss and my older brother. Some of the scenes that stand out to me are the scenes that played out with just Tom and I or myself and Tom and the whole family in the finale. So those scenes and I also had a blast working with Nick. We had a lot of fun. We got to do some goofy stuff but we really enjoyed it. Nick and I enjoyed working together every time we got the chance.
You've had so many various television and film roles, which role do you think taught you the most as an actor? The one you grew from the most?
Will- I loved working on U-571, that was fun. Another one was American Dreams. That was a huge growth experience. My character went to Vietnam in that show and I ended becoming close friends with the technical advisors on that show. He's one of the best. He brought on a lot of the younger guys in the scenes that were just back from Afghanistan or Iraq, and I have family and what not that has been in the military-Navy, Marines and the Army-and there was a huge connection there for me. It became a huge responsibility for me too because there's a lot of things that happened. My character went to Vietnam, but it was sort of like panning the parallels between what happened in Vietnam and what is happening today with our guys, that are still in a fight today ten years after September 11th, 2001. This was five, six years ago when we were doing American Dreams, but even now there are parallels that you could draw. What you heard about a lot in the media was Vietnam vets that came back were really messed up guys, but the truth is that really wasn't the story of the majority of the guys who came back. A lot of guys went to Vietnam and did their job and came back and led productive lives. That was the story that we were telling on American Dreams. I really felt a huge compulsion to get it right. The work for me at that point really felt about the importance of telling the story of these guys that served the country and then came home. The guys that I was working with they went back to Iraq and Afghanistan in this last campaign. That was a huge growth experience for me in many ways.
I read you're a big environmentalist and very active in protecting our oceans and environment. Where does that come from for you?
Will-A certain part of it I guess comes from your parents. For me I grew up by the water so I've always loved water. I'd go down to the beach and I'd play in the ocean and then I started surfing. Where I live here in Los Angeles, when it rains you're not supposed to go into the water because essentially the rain washes the city, the water becomes so dirty you really shouldn't be in it, let alone drink it. That just sort of struck me as a tragedy early on as a kid. I thought gosh why is it that we have a city that is so dirty that you can't even get in the water after it rains? Rain is a totally natural thing and I love the ocean so I think that was sort of one experience that stands out for me. But really what it comes down to I think for me, and I think what the popular environmental movement has not gotten across very well, is it's not just about saving the trees, it's about our quality of life. It's about the fact that if we don't have just clean water to drink and clean air to breathe, our quality of life is diminished.
A lot of times big business isn't held accountable to, in my opinion, standards they should be held to. Because the thing is what they do affects everybody. I think it's about everyone's quality of life and I think it's about sustainability. That's the word that I keep coming back to because it's sustainability. That means that something can be sustained. If something is not sustainable it means it cannot be sustained. That's one of the reasons I'm actually really hopeful about some of the stuff from the environment. Because some things have to change. We're going to run out of oil and we're going to run out of affordable oil right before that. We're going to run out of natural gas. Those things are going to go away and they're going to be way too expensive to buy. Sustainable means a good quality of life for less money. And sometimes I think that's the message they haven't really gotten across.
You're right we have to raise further awareness because we have one planet and a limited amount of natural resources, we will run out if we don't take action.
Will- Yes. I mean look at the price of food in the last ten years how it's gone up. The price of fuel in the last ten years has doubled and tripled. Cost of living has gone up. It's just going to be more of that unless we move to something that's more sustainable. Let's do it here. Let's do it in the United States. Let's be the innovators that we've always been. Let's get on the sustainable path, the path that we can. It seems like it makes sense to me.
We can if we can continue to spread the word on the importance of sustainable living and further educate on this issue.
Will- I think we need a cultural shift. I don't think there's somebody who's wrong and somebody's who's right. I think that's the wrong way to look at it. But I think we as a culture sort of move towards profit as a bottom line value. And I think things don't really happen in certain ways unless they're profitable. But if we have profit as sort of the most important value at the top of the pyramid I think we're going to have issues. I think some things have to come before profit.
I definitely agree with that! I know you have a solar panel system installed in your home now. Very cool!
Will- Yeah absolutely. That's one thing that makes sense financially too is I put a solar panel system. My system sort of pays for itself depending on how much the power goes up in the years, and the panels they'll warrant you themselves for 25. I was able to put panels up in my house which I was really excited about and that was two meters in my house. And I was just able to recently combine the two meters into one meter. I might actually get some more panels. About a year ago I put in 11 panels.
That's great!
Will-It was exciting. I took a class at a local college because I really wanted to know about it before. And I told the guy, “Hey will you help me put these in, but I really want to have my hands on it. I want to help you do it and see how it works and everything.” If I took two more classes I could have done it myself but I didn't really want to wait! (Laughs) So this really smart guy I really liked, Josh Sanchez, he said 'yeah absolutely'. So I worked with him and we put in my system almost a year ago now. I got my first bill, which was an average probably about $80 a month, and my first bill was $3.95. So that was pretty cool!
Wow! That's amazing! Talk about a difference!
Will-Yes it was really cool! And also the biggest energy draw in Southern California is air-conditioning. And when you put panels on a roof you shade the roof which cools it off so it really makes sense. I don't know if it makes sense on every roof but it makes sense on mine. The way to start is just energy efficiency. People can shave a lot off their power bills that way. You should always do energy efficiency before you build a panel system because if you make the house more efficient, A)You save power immediately. And then B) If you build a smaller system to meet your smaller energy needs you're saving money there too. So energy efficiency makes sense first and you can do that with trading out LD light bulbs, closing windows and doors and just turning things off when they're not in use and putting things on power strips that pull loads. Inflation is huge and that's the first thing that everybody should do.
If you could go back in time and spend a day in the life of anyone from history, who would it be and why?
I'm a huge Muhammad Ali fan. I know I don't need to go back in time to talk to him but it would have been neat to talk to him back in the rumble for jungle days back in the 60's.
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