Burn the Ships 3: From Doctor to Actor: Darwin Shaw #152

Highlights

• His childhood influences (4:52)
• Growing up in a mixed-race family (6:08)
• The influences that led him into a medical career (8:41)
• What attracted him to medicine (11:09)
• His medical training (14:54)
• The seeds of pivoting away from being a physician (17:14)
• Burning his ships to become an actor (23:10)
• Embracing the social consciousness of acting (29:38) 
• His hopes for the Anti-Viral Film Project (38:31)
• Darwin’s word of hope for listeners (50:16)

Transcript

Gary Schneeberger:

We’ve seen so much interest in our special 23% off offer for our e-course, Discover Your Second-Act Significance, that we’re continuing it throughout February. The three module video course will equip you to transform your life from, “Is this all there is?” To, “This is all I’ve ever wanted.” Each session is led by Beyond the Crucible founder, Warwick Fairfax, who shares his own hard won successes in turning trials into triumphs. And he’s got some high-powered help from USA Today’s gratitude guru, to a runner up on TV’s Project Runway. From a recording artist with a billboard number one album, to a couple of bestselling authors.

It’s an ensemble of men and women living significant second acts who would command a six figure price tag if any business wanted to fill an auditorium with them to coach their employees. But we’ve packed their insights and action steps into our course for a sliver of that cost. And if you act before the end of February, you’ll get 23% off your enrollment. Just visit secondactsignificance.com and use the code 23for23. So don’t delay. Enroll today. And remember, life’s too short to live a life you don’t love. Now, here’s today’s podcast episode.

Warwick Fairfax:

Welcome to Beyond the Crucible. I’m Warwick Fairfax, the founder of Crucible Leadership.

Darwin Shaw:

The process of doing it was so fulfilling to me. It was such a mysterious craft. I mean, doctors do incredible jobs and there’s lots of very, very smart people in that field. But it was very clear to me the steps you do to become… It’s a very clear profession. You need to do this, you need to do this exam, you do this many jobs, you make sure you don’t make any mistakes. And if all that goes well, you’ll end up… The path to me was like, “Okay. Well, I’d be 30 in my early 30s, and all being, well, I’d be a consultant in a hospital as a surgeon. And then what?” And then I was suddenly exposed to this world which had rules which I’d never understood. And there’s people who were not massively educated, who were brilliant. There were people who were super educated, who were brilliant. You work really hard and you were terrible. And it’s like, “What is this thing? What is this sort of intangible skill and thing?” And you had this ability to move people and be moved.

Gary Schneeberger:

So what was that intangible thing for this week’s guest, Darwin Shaw? You heard him mention the career path he’d envisioned as a doctor, and how he worried he’d end up at the end of that journey saying, “Now what?” But what was the life he found that allows him to move others and to be moved? I am Gary Schneeberger, co-host of the show. In this third episode of our winter series, Burn the Ships, Shaw describes how he set fire to a medical career, with the near guarantees it offered to pursue acting and the creative joys it offered.

Maybe you know him as Daniel Craig’s first kill en route to 00 status in Casino Royale. Maybe as the apostle Peter in the mega hit mini series, The Bible. Maybe from his role as a key creator of The Antiviral Film Project, an international effort to provide creative work for actors and filmmakers during the pandemic to tell a multi-generational story about families around the globe who strive for connection and catharsis against the turmoil of COVID-19. “If you can hone in on what’s truthful to you and follow that,” he tells Warwick of his pivot from behind a stethoscope to in front of a camera, “I don’t think you’re ever going to regret it.”

Warwick Fairfax:

Well, Darwin, thanks so much for being here. You’ve done a lot of different things from Prince of Persia, Casino Royale, Peter in the Bible, Homeland. You’ve done a lot of different things. I’d love to kind of just start with your upbringing because as I was looking where you grew up in England, I feel like you’re about as far north in England as you can get without hitting Scotland. I mean, it just seems like it’s… I don’t know, you’re probably Manchester, Liverpool, they’re all probably south of where you grew up, which is amazing to me having gone to college in England. So tell us a bit about your life growing up in Northern England. And yeah, you’ve got a fascinating background. So just yeah, tell us a bit about life for you. What was it like?

Darwin Shaw:

Yeah, well I grew up in Leeds, which is not too much further north than the Manchester. But it’s a big northern originate, a big industrial town of around a million people. But my grandfather was a parish priest in a very small village, and literally that was 20 miles from the Scottish border. And I was born in a little hospital in a very, very small town called Brampton, whilst my dad was studying and my mom was staying with my grandparents. So I have this kind of a very different two worlds I was in really. One was this sort of rural Itle in the countryside in a world… I don’t know if it really exists anymore, but a very small community with one shop, and a little church. And you had to drive 15 miles to get to the nearest city. But then my main life was in Leeds, which was much more of a cosmopolitan but quite brash town in the ’70s, which had its own challenges as well.

Warwick Fairfax:

Yeah, and so you have a interesting background, I think from what I understand that your mother was English, but your father had just different heritage from, I guess, grandparents to Kashmir, and Afghanistan Kashmir as listeners, I guess it’s in India. But Pakistan and India have been fighting over who owns Kashmir and all of that. So talk about just some of the various elements, because I’m sure that gives you a diversity of perspective, that not everybody you grew up with maybe had, which I think is fascinating.

Darwin Shaw:

No, I mean didn’t meet another mixed race person until I went to university. So I spent the whole of my childhood in a place where… There were people from other countries, obviously. England has a very broad history and rich history of immigration. But there wasn’t anybody else who was Pakistani-English like myself. Or I think there maybe was one other mixed person I met, but I probably didn’t even realize they were… And it was a pretty racist time in history and we had some pretty rough experiences growing up. But my dad was born in India. And at that point Pakistan didn’t exist, it was all one country.

And it was when he was young, when he was a very small child that the country was split and their family had to leave. From what I’m told there is palace where they lived in Amritsar in the Punjab where they had I think, 23 servants, this is what we’re told. And there’s this fascinating story about having to leave all that behind and start afresh in a new place. And that was closer to the border of Afghanistan in a place called Phashai. So my dad was there until was… I think he was 20-21. And then he then decided he wanted to go to America to become a photojournalist. And he left with $1 in his pocket, because that’s all you were allowed to take. And traveled by boat. And made his way to the Middle East, and then to England. And his plan was to earn some money to get another boat to America, but never happened. I think he fell in love and made his roots in England.

Warwick Fairfax:

So let’s just talk about how all these influences formed together in terms of what you did for a career. You ended up, from what I understand, going to medicine. So how did all that happen? Because it sounds like you weren’t necessarily from a family of doctors. How did that happen? All these influences, and your own passions, and desires, how did that lead to medicine?

Darwin Shaw:

Well, my family are all very involved in England’s country, which has a very strong history of social consciousness. So both my parents, my father had been a teacher with special needs students. And we also ran a newspaper as a family, a bilingual newspaper, which we all were involved in. My mom, me, my brother were all involved in helping create. And then my mom was a social worker. She also trained as a nurse and a teacher. So she always was working in jobs which would impact on the community. As I said, my grandfather was a priest, my uncle was a priest. And my Pakistani side, there was a sort of somebody who was a doctor, my dad’s brother. But it was more about having social responsibility and having to live a life which was of service. And that was very much fed through. And when I was a child, I think I drew a picture when I was seven years old of a doctor flying over a jungle in a helicopter, hanging out on a rope with a stethoscope around his neck.

So I had this idea, I don’t know where I picked it up from, possibly my mother, that I wanted to be this sort of flying doctor who came in and had some impact. Perhaps looking back on it, maybe the flying over a jungle and a helicopter was the bit which my soul was really pointing towards. But no, I always had that sense. I was very involved in politics growing up. And then when I went to university, I studied medicine. I was still very politically active. And I also did another degree in tropical medicine and parasitology. And again, that was all pointing towards working in emergency medicine, in aid medicine. And I never had any doubt that’s what I was going to do.

Warwick Fairfax:

Why medicine versus a dozen other opportunities that you could have pursued? All of them probably pretty good opportunities or paths.

Darwin Shaw:

Yeah, I think part of it was probably ego. I probably felt that was I quite… We had state education, we didn’t have any private… I mean, there were private schools around, but I just went through the state system. I was fortunate enough to have a supportive family who made sure I did my homework and I obviously had some natural aptitude. So I think for me, it was a combination of I wanted to make a difference. This was something which was clear, it was a clear path to doing something. Obviously, my parents supported that desire. But it wasn’t like today where you have the internet and there were lots of options. I mean, growing up in a northern town, it was like either you’re going to be a plumber, or a teacher, or you’re going to work in a shop. Or maybe if you were lucky, you would go to university and you may have some other grander idea. I mean, certainly being a doctor seemed like a pretty impressive thing in the world that I grew up with.

And for me, it was very much about, I was brought up in a family, which was a very strong family unit. And I really wanted to break away from that and be the master of my own fate. Well, there’s several things. There was one, that it was clear you could become a doctor, and then you could support yourself, and you could make a difference directly. And this would lead to all these other opportunities within medicine. Hopefully, I’d be able to come and go around the world and have some impact. But also within that, I was also like, oh, I can go to study for six years. And that’s six years of traveling. Six summer vacations and I can travel around the world for six years.

And I didn’t know where I was going to end up at when I started. But when I first went to London for one of my interviews, and I walked down the strand in Central London, suddenly my eyes were open to a big cosmopolitan and capital city. And I think that really widened my horizons. And in combination with the travel I was starting to do throughout my late teens, suddenly the world seemed a big place. And in a way, I was very, very fortunate because being accepted to study as a doctor, it meant you just knew you had a path which was there for you, as long as you put the work in and were able to apply yourself. In your early 20s, it was a very clear direction. And we were pretty hands-on within around the third year, fourth year we were there working training, but also interacting with patients. And you were aware that what you were doing mattered, I think.

Warwick Fairfax:

Talk about just the whole, that medical side. I think you worked as an orthopedic surgeon, Doctors Without Borders. So just talk a bit about that whole journey that you took.

Darwin Shaw:

Well, I trained at Kings College London, and we basically did two years of very old school science. We were the last year that did the real pure biochemistry, anatomy, everything we know. We did all the dissection of our own cadavers and all this other stuff. Then I did a year as a training in this tropical medicine researching a parasite called leishmania. So I was growing these little microscopic parasites in the lab in Kensington. And Friday night I would be coming out lab at midnight sort of smelling of formaldehyde, and stuff.

Gary Schneeberger:

That must have helped your love life a lot, right?

Darwin Shaw:

Oh, yeah. That’s what every young woman wants, is a man who smelled formaldehyde, I tell you.

Gary Schneeberger:

Yeah.

Darwin Shaw:

But that’s fun of me. I look back on those days, it seems another world. And after I graduated, I was fortunate enough to get my two jobs working in the hospital where I trained. So I did a bit of respiratory medicine and a bit of general surgery with orthopedics. And it was at after that stage where my path started to veer off. But I still continued for a few years of doing a little bit of both working in the ER. Mainly in the ER, I’d say that was my… It’s a little grand of me to say I was a surgeon, but I was certainly a junior member of the team there. And I did get to do a bit of operating a few times. But I was still very much a baby in the profession.

Warwick Fairfax:

From what I understand, you were orthopedic surgeon and you wanted to get an ER surgical job, but that didn’t happen. I mean that seemed like a big change for you that maybe changed the course of your life. So just talk about how that moment and how medicine was where you were spending your whole efforts and life, but yet that changed. How did that all happen?

Darwin Shaw:

Well, for me, I applied… Again, you’re saying these titles, they sound a lot grander than they were. I mean, I was a young resident and I had been working in orthopedics. And I applied for this wonderful job, under the auspices of this really, really brilliant professor called Professor Webster, who was an… I’m not sure if he would still be alive right now, but he was a real character, a pioneer in his field, really. I think he was part of that… More part of the old school of intellectuals. He wrote his own neuroanatomy book for us, and he had five languages in it. So he would annotate stuff in Latin, German, French, probably some of the language, knowing him with quotes from literary legends. And of course, we were part of the new breed of slightly less esoteric doctors, so most people thought he was crazy, but I adored him.

Anyway, he said to me that he would give me this job in the ER department. But not the one I wanted. Not the one with the extra anatomy demonstration, which I’d be teacher part-time. Because that was for people who were basically way smarter than me and who’d come out of Cambridge and Oxford. But he said, “Look, I’ll give you this sort of slightly less but still brilliant job working in the King’s casualty department,” which was one of the biggest in Europe and an incredible institution. So it was a great honor to be offered that job. But he said, “I’ll give it you in six months time because there’s only six posts here, and they’re kind of already all gone. So go and do something else for six months, go and explore a different aspect of medicine,” because in England that’s how they do it. You basically do six months in all different specialties until you’ve done every specialty, and then you decide which one you’re going to focus in on.

And it was at this point I’d been… I had some friends who were musicians and a friend who was a poet who told me I should read this book called The Artist’s Way. And I also had a friend who had been working in New York in Wall Street, who’d just come back. And he basically had said to me, “Look, I think you’d have a great time in New York, I think you’d love it.” And for some reason I’d had this weird sense in my mind that I might be able to write or something. And I decided that I was going to go for six months to New York, and write something, and read this book called The Artist Way, which I still have my copy of here.

Gary Schneeberger:

There you go.

Darwin Shaw:

Yeah. Yeah. So within a week of this decision, I thought, well, I’m just going to go to New York. And I went there and started with no real plan other than this book and a backpack. And started following this course of creativity, really. And this book called The Artist’s Way, written by Julia Cameron, really is a guide to having a more creative life. And through doing that, I found myself within three weeks in an acting class. That really changed my life.

My parents were getting separated that time, so I think… Well, they’d just been a couple years separated and it was quite traumatic for everyone. And there was something about exploring creativity, which is very therapeutic to go into an acting training. I believe, to be a good actor… Well, that’s not the only way to be honest. But there is one school of thought, is that you need to understand yourself in order to play other people. If you don’t resolve some of your own subconscious psychological issues, they’re always going to leach out when you perform another character. Obviously, there are some actors who that wildness or that angst informs all their characters, and people make great careers out of there. But in terms of becoming a blank canvas to explore other people, you kind of need to get rid of the scum from your own brain.

Warwick Fairfax:

Makes a lot of sense. So it’s fascinating. Here your professor, professor Webster said, you go through all these specialties, explore another medical specialty for six months. And you decided to take a different path. You didn’t explore another medical specialty, you explored acting. There must have been… And I know from what I understand, you went on to LAMDA, the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Arts, and went on to acting. But that’s a fascinating pivot point, because you’d focus on the helping professions, and medicine. Was there some inner voice, still small voice, something deep within you that was calling? I mean, it’s a pretty big pivot. I mean, it’s the kind of thing that in some families that say, “What the heck are you doing, Darwin? It’s a good profession, medicine, and you’re going to do this acting thing, which is a lot more uncertain potentially?” I mean there’s all sorts of streams and currents that you could have had to deal with. So just talk about that. That’s a big change, a big pivot. So yeah, please.

Gary Schneeberger:

Let me set it up before you go, Darwin, let me set it up in the context of this series called Burn the Ships. And you didn’t just burn the ships, man, you burned like a fleet. From going from doctor, where you done all of the, people would say, the hard work. You had your education, you said yourself that next in your career would’ve been kind of learning how to do it. So some of the hard work was already done, that road had been covered. To go into acting, which you don’t start at the top there, you start at lower levels. So that was an incredible burn the ships moment where you made that pivot. There had to be some really… I mean that book really must have touched you. The people that you were with in New York must have really motivated you. But what led you to strike the match, and burn the medical ships, and go into acting? That is a remarkably strong pivot. How did you muster the strength to do that?

Darwin Shaw:

Well, I mean, there’s a good story, but too long to share here about actually how I found myself in my first acting class. But the experience was of being on stage for the first time with a very inspirational teacher, his name’s Bruce Ornstein, who still teaches in New York today. There was just something about the moment of stepping on stage in this little classroom with 12 people watching. Something just resonated. I stood on stage, I did this exercise for one minute, which was called six characters in a minute. And every 10 seconds he clapped his hands and I had to change character. And I was awful. I mean, I can’t even imagine what it was like. But the thrill of it was incredible. And also, a lot of it was down probably to Bruce’s teaching because he really talked about your responsibility as an artist, as an actor, to be paying attention to the world. And to pay attention to what was around you because you have a responsibility to be a mirror to society in a way.

It was a very different way of thinking. Looking back it sounds like a big change, but for me it wasn’t really a choice. I was like, I just knew I had to do this. I didn’t even have a concept of making a career in it. I didn’t think that was even a… I mean, as a kid, I actually did a little bit of acting and I always really enjoyed it. And I think after I did change, I spoke to a very old friend from school. And she said, “You always wanted to be an actor,” but I had no memory of that. I remember when I got my first job so many years later, it was an extraordinary realization. And again, you have pre-mobile phones and pre-internet. It’s not like I had this desire to be… It feels like anyone can become Insta-famous now. I was probably like you guys. I grew up and there was Harrison Ford. And there was these John Gielgud, and there’s these greats of…

I’ve got into theater a lot more as an older person, but it was such a world away. I didn’t imagine that it was something that I would be able to do. But I just knew that I had to explore this experience of being an actor. And it wasn’t about money. I mean, just literally the process of doing it was so fulfilling to me. It was such a mysterious craft. I mean, doctors do incredible jobs, and there’s lots of very, very smart people in that field. But it was very clear to me the steps you do to become… It is a very clear profession.

You need to do this, you need to do this exam, you do this many jobs, you make sure you don’t make any mistakes. And if all that goes well, you’ll end up… The path to me was like, “Okay, well I’d be 30 in my early 30s. Now, all being, well, I’d be a consultant in a hospital as a surgeon. And then what?” And then I was suddenly exposed to this world which had rules which I’d never understood. There are those people who were not massively educated, who were brilliant. There were people who were super educated, who were brilliant. You’d work really hard and you were terrible. And it’s like, “What is this thing? What is this intangible skill and thing?”

So you had this ability to move people and be moved. And it was like a coming of age and I was starting to really work out what my identity was. Again, I guess we still struggle with that all our lives, but it was a step of self-exploration, self-examination. And it was thrilling because it was so against everything that I had grown up, the structure of what I’d been around. And everyone thought I was crazy. And I probably was, I probably have.

Warwick Fairfax:

Oh, I can imagine parents, family, they thought, “You’re doing what?” I mean, any family would. But what’s fascinating to me about what you’re saying, Darwin is, and I think there are lessons really for all listeners, is it felt like there was this inner voice. Now some maybe think it’s from a spiritual direction, inner muse. One can have theological metaphysical discussions about where that comes from. But wherever it does, there was this inner voice, I felt like saying, Darwin, “this is what you were made for. You were made for acting.” There’s something about it that resonated to the depths of your soul. Nothing against the medical profession, and yet from what your teacher was saying in New York, it felt like there was still a social consciousness part of acting. It was just a different form of social consciousness. Is that fair? It felt like you’d found kind of calling, but you weren’t abandoning your sense of try to help humanity in some sense.

Darwin Shaw:

No, definitely. And I mean, it’s always hard to unpick what is actually true and what is my justification for my life choices. What I do know is representation on screen is incredibly important. And I had an inkling of this when I was starting out, because I was one of a very small number of people of color entering the acting field. And I mean, there was quite a little bit of racism in medicine at the time. And being mixed race, and being well-spoken, and quite erudite, I was able to kind of negotiate it. But I was very aware of it around me and I knew there was people, there was glass ceilings, and there was definitely people getting different levels of care.

And I realized that if I was going to stay in medicine, I would have to address that. And then when I started being an actor, I was like, “Oh, this is great. We’re all accepted. And fantastic. We all have an equal choice.” And of course, as you suddenly start getting a bit further down that road, and you get your first audition and it’s like, “Oh well, it’s to play a terrorist.” And then you get your second one and it’s like, “Oh, it’s to play a terrorist.” And then five years later you are still being either forced playing people… It started off being forced into arrange marriages or it was terrorism. And that really did feed my mission really, which was… Of course, was the personal desires to actually go out and play important roles, but also representation. I didn’t see any… I mean, there was two actors, there was Ben Kingsley, there was Omar Sharif, a couple of other actors who were visible on the world stage. But I hadn’t seen any heroic guys, or people who look like me.

And Islamic terrorism was developing around the world with ISIS. And there was some homegrown terrorism as well. It was very clear to me that a lot of these people were reacting in part because they didn’t feel part of society. They didn’t feel represented. They were linking onto bad ways of being, because people were offering them some sort of sense of self. And for me, I suddenly was like, I want to make a difference. I want to be out there playing characters where young kids who look like me or similar to me would be like, “Oh, I could be this. I could be whatever it may be.” And one of the great joys of my professional career was when I got to the chance to play St. Peter, because I was somebody who probably looked more similar to St. Peter than many other representations of him.

And I was once in Singapore and I was taken to this Easter service in this church. And they played a whole sort of montage of different biblical stories. And I was sitting there with my friend. And I looked up and I sort of saw myself playing St. Peter on the screen there. And I’m like, here I am in… Sorry, I was in Taiwan. In Taiwan and this whole society is now seeing St. Peter, not sort of like a white Caucasian guy from America or England, but someone who actually looks like someone from the Middle East where he came from. And over the years, many, many messages from people around the world who really responded to that portrayal, that character, that story I was telling. On some level, I think that does make a change because people are associating someone of color with someone who’s a pious, incredible apostle from the history of the church. And I think that is really important for people to change and to accept difference.

And I think that has become, as a filmmaker now, as well as an actor, one of my missions is about diversity and telling stories which… And I think the world has caught up very, very rapidly. I mean the landscape is very different now than it was 10 years ago, or even five years ago. And I haven’t necessarily been a huge part of that change, but I’ve been part of that change. There’s been people like me who’ve pushed those boundaries and started to do that. And I think that’s part of the process, part the journey.

Gary Schneeberger:

I have to jump back to St. Peter because that’s where we met. Yeah, we met in Los Angeles, Darwin when I was doing film publicity. And you were in the Bible mini series to this day, the bestselling mini series ever on DVD. You were Peter in that series. And we worked closely together. And yes, you did indeed change the… You weren’t some method actor from Brooklyn who was jumping in playing Peter. You were someone who looked what that part was like. But you were also someone who really felt that part, who really… I was with you as you sort of dug into what it meant to play that part. And Warwick, it’s funny, we talk on the show a lot. I give you grief about, “Hey, we’ve had 27 guests from Australia.” Darwin is the second guest we’ve had, who’s had dinner at my house. So back when we were in LA, Darwin had dinner at my house.

But there’s a story, I bring that up only to tell this story because it gets to Darwin, not to embarrass you, but what a good actor you are. And that is, you may not even remember this, you came over with Sebastian Knapp who played the Apostle John. I had a copy because Mark Burnett and Roman Downey who produced the Bible series and made a movie of it called Son of God. And you hadn’t seen it yet. I had a copy of that we watched that movie afterwards. And while it was playing, I looked over at you and Sebastian. And both of you were on-screen, but also in my living room, and you guys were moved by what you saw. And I remember saying, “These two guys are in that scene. Nothing is something they haven’t seen that they haven’t experienced before, but their performance moves them,” which speaks to the power of the story, but also the power of your acting.

So not that anyone can judge it was the right move to burn the ships, that’s up to you to decide that. But what you’ve contributed to the art form that you’ve taken both in that work in the Bible series 10 years ago, and what you’re doing now with The Antiviral Film Project, society has indeed benefited by that.

Darwin Shaw:

Oh, well thank you. Yeah, it’s very sweet of you to say. I think you could say it’s also we’re both egocentric actors seeing ourselves, we were moved by it. No. But no, that is true. I mean, I think when you are playing a part of something which is so important in the history of western culture. And so many people around the world obviously care, and lives are shaped by some of these characters, there is a responsibility to try and find a way of truth, to try and represent these characters, these people as best you can. And it was a very deeply spiritual experience.

Warwick Fairfax:

So talk about how you moved into this latest project, The Antiviral Film Project, which happened during COVID, and that’s sort of an amazing mission. You talk about themes of separation, connection, emergence, 24 short films, 24 filmmakers, 24 global communities. So just talk about that vision, because I have a feeling that’s really part of your ethos of just trying to bring people together, and tell just diverse stories from countries all over the world. So it feels a bit like a combination of who Darwin Shaw is and what you believe in to a degree. Would you say that?

Darwin Shaw:

I mean, think so. One of the things which is very frustrating as an actor is you have to wait for other people to give you a job. As a painter, you can go into your room and paint. But you can’t sit around in your own room and just act by yourself. It’s very much a community and it’s about… You do need an audience, whether that be a camera or a live audience. And a certain point I think you either give up as an actor because you get to an age where you’re supporting over a family and you can’t do it just… Very few people are actually able to keep doing that. Or you basically decide that you want to make the parts that you want to perform in or you want to see out there. And I was in the process of doing that when the pandemic happened. And suddenly, everything that I’d spent the last three years writing in order to try and get that made, suddenly the pandemic happened. And I was like, well, that’s not going to happen now.

And it was really sitting down in a bit of a panic really, because a lot of our friends were just calling and what are we going to do? How are we going to… All our means of survival are disappearing. And we don’t know how long this is going to last. But when it does, there’ll be a lot of famous, more experienced actors out there who will be taking up all the work. So we’re probably not going to work for a couple of years. There’s is going to be people who will take jobs that wouldn’t normally do because they haven’t worked for a long time. And producers will be able to get a name to play a part, which prior to the pandemic, they wouldn’t do. And so I just was thinking how does one create out of this situation when you can’t leave your house?

And what I realized was that for the first time in living history, the entire global population was facing in the same direction, and facing the same challenges. So what was happening to a mother in The Gambia, was the same experience as in Belarus, but just in a different context. And we were all having to face this uncertainty. And it didn’t matter what your socioeconomic situation was, it’s a great leveler. So to me, this provided an incredibly interesting backdrop in order to tell stories, because we were all starting to connect with Zoom and that whole adage of six degrees of separation. But we were now six feet separated, but we were less than six degrees connected. You could be speaking to people… Because everyone is at home. We could call up somebody and say, “Look, I want to speak to this person.”

And people who probably wouldn’t have given you the time of the day were like, “Well, I’m just here having a martini at home with my kids. I’ll give them 10 minutes to talk.” So what we decided was we could reach out to all our connections around the world, and go to different countries, and work with writers to develop stories from their communities based on something that was actually happening. Or a story which they’d been inspired to from something they’d experienced. And then we could get little micro, what we call, satellite production teams in each country. And they would shoot this little piece in sort of three to five days. So we’d be able to get round the having. Because to shoot a feature film would never be possible because of COVID. If one person gets sick, the whole production closes down.

Whereas if you came and did it in three days with very small crews, you probably could get away with it. That was our thoughts. And then what we’d be able to do is take all these stories and piece them together to create this cinematic journey around the world. So each story would be… We’d create it, so they linked in with each other visually. And we’d have Easter eggs, which were in different stories. So there would be links of characters, which were quite sort of spurious, but if you really paid attention, you’d be able to spot them. And what we do is we try and get this made. And little did we know that was quite a large undertaking. But we did manage to shoot our first film in Denmark and we created this beautiful story written and directed by an actor turned director called Thomas Levin.

And it’s this incredible story of a neuro-diverse child and his friendship with a school janitor during lockdown. We then did a big fundraiser here in LA and we raised about $80,000. And we flew into South Africa onto a rhino reservation, and we shot this whole conservation piece, this anti-poaching piece about the safety of rhinos, and sort of women’s empowerment story in the Xhosa community. And we’re just in the final stages of post-production on that. And we’re hoping that these two stories will provide a great example of what we can put together. And we have this whole bank of about 40 other stories which we can choose from, which we would love to make next. So we are now in the process, once we finish this, of trying to raise financing so we can actually go out and make this in a more efficient manner.

Warwick Fairfax:

Wow. So as you think about The Antiviral Project, what’s your mission or what’s the vision of this? What’s the why behind – why you’re doing this? What’s the impact you hope that this will have on people?

Darwin Shaw:

The best way of dissolving boundaries is if you stop seeing other people as different. If you see differences as not being other, but as just another reflection of the mirror. And these stories are all really beautiful little tales of family. Yeah, this really universal themes of people wanting a better future for their families. People dealing with the modern world. We have stories about two boys who love soccer in The Gambia. We have a story about gang violence in South Africa from these gangs who’d been fighting for 36 years. And they turned their drug runs into ways of feeding the community during the pandemic. We have stories which are about police violence in Romania against the Romani community. We have a love story set in Egypt in the trans community. And then you just suddenly realize this, the world is rich and we are all going through similar experiences.

And I guess the mission behind it, the why is that we need to really start working together as a species. And we’re not going to stop fighting immediately, but we are stronger as one. I mean, I think that’s a very simple thing. And there is nothing more profound than making a difference to another person. If you can affect one person in your life, whether it be in your family or outside of it, that is the most nurturing thing. And it doesn’t matter how many dollars you have in the bank, it’s not going to ever touch that. Nobody has engraved on their headstone, “Here lies Joe Bloggs. He earned $5 million in his life.” I mean, I’ve never seen that.

Gary Schneeberger:

Yeah, that’s a point that Warwick has made many times here on the show. And that sound that you heard, listener, was the captain turning on the fasten seatbelt sign indicating that we’re about to begin our dissent to end this episode of Beyond The Crucible and our series, Burn the Ships. Before we do that though, I’ve got to throw a couple more things at my friend Darwin here. One, Darwin, you are the answer to a trivia question as you well know. Folks, if anybody ever asks you, what actor was Daniel Craig’s first kill as James Bond in his journey to 00 status? The answer to that question is the actor, Darwin Shaw. If you remember that scene in the bathroom in Casino Royale, that was Darwin who was on the losing end of that. So that’s a good trivia question for you.

And the second thing, my favorite role that you’ve ever done, Darwin, and I say this as a man who has in his office four autographed pictures of actors, Al Pacino, Bruce Willis, Robert Duvall, and Darwin Shaw. Those are only four actors who I have autographed photos of in my office because you are a good… I’m still mad that you didn’t get an Emmy nomination for The Bible. But I’ll say this-

Darwin Shaw:

Well, thank you.

Gary Schneeberger:

… And then I’ll kick it back to Warwick. My favorite acting role of yours was how generous you were with your time and your talents when I asked you to do the narration for the video for my wedding to my wife Kelly now almost seven years ago. And you knocked it out of the park and like a true actor, you ad-libbed, which I loved, which was fabulous. So thank you for that. Thank you for your friendship.

Darwin Shaw:

My pleasure.

Gary Schneeberger:

Thank you for what you’re doing with The Antiviral Film Project. And let people know quickly how they can find out more about it and help out online.

Darwin Shaw:

Yeah, I mean, you can follow us on the social media, The Antiviral Film Project, or just go to my Instagram @darwinius. We have a website, which is sixfeetfilms.com. But if you just Google, Antiviral Film Project, it’ll all pop up there.

Gary Schneeberger:

Awesome. Warwick, as always, as host of the show, the last question is yours.

Warwick Fairfax:

Well, Darwin, thanks so much for being here and just your whole life and journey is so inspiring. There may be listeners today, hopefully, who are socially conscious that want to make the world a better place. Maybe they’re just going down some profession because their mom, dad, parents, teachers, said to go down this profession. And it’s okay. But they feel like maybe they were made for something more. Maybe there does need to be more unity, more maybe diversity of voices. So for those who might be listening that they have a social consciousness, perhaps they want to do good in the world, but they’re just… I don’t know, they’re kind of just rolling along in life, not really taking control. What would a word of hope, encouragement, or perhaps exhortation you would have to listeners such as that?

Darwin Shaw:

I mean, I’m not sure if I’m the right person to say this, but I certainly found that doing The Artist’s Way and the morning pages, the journaling every morning, really helps you tune into your inner voice. And I think there’s a lot of noise out there. I suffer from it as much as anyone else. There’s the day-to-day panic about financial security and surviving. I wouldn’t give it up for a steady job again. So I think it’s about tuning into your inner voice. And I find that the process of journaling a really good way because you start to… Essentially, it is a process of free writing, of just writing everything in your brain down in the morning. And you realize that a lot of the nonsense there is kind of stuff which just gets repeated and you suddenly go, “Well, if I just deal with that nonsense, I’m going to open up a bigger space for some of the things which was really important to me.”

And whether that be an artistic pursuit or just something personal or family, it’s about really connecting and… I mean, I think meditation people have a great success of that too. If you can hone in on what is truthful to you and follow that, I don’t think you’re ever going to regret it. You might be like, “Well, I wish I had this, or I had that.” But you can always come back to the fact that you are making that decision and that was what your heart was telling you. Maybe it’s naive, I don’t know. But at least the buck stops with me. I can’t complain to anyone else about the state of my life.

Gary Schneeberger:

Listeners, I’ve been in the communication business long enough to know when the last word has been spoken on an issue, and we just heard the director yell, cut. That’s the end of our episode. And on this episode of Burn the Ships for Beyond The Crucible. And remember this, that if it feels like your ships have drifted off course a little bit. If, as you’re sailing along, and you look on the horizon, and you see things like Darwin’s talking about that maybe appeal to you, bring your heart alive in a different way. Light a match. We’ll see you next week.

If you enjoyed this episode, learned something from it, we invite you to engage more deeply with those of us at Beyond The Crucible. Visit our website, beyondthecrucible.com to explore a plethora of offerings to help you transform what’s been broken into breakthrough. A great place to start, our free online assessment, which will help you pinpoint where you are on your journey beyond your crucible, and to chart a course forward. See you next week.