The Dogwood Interview - Leslie Jordan
Editor's Note: Leslie Jordan has won an Emmy Award for his work as Beverly Leslie on Will and Grace, been a presenter at the Eclipse Awards, was an exercise rider for ten years under the tutelage of the great Hall of Fame trainer Horatio Luro, and for one season he broke yearlings at Dogwood Farm. A great talker and comedian, Leslie gave us a wonderful interview recently via the telephone - while having breakfast in Hollywood.
DSI: You grew up in Chattanooga, Tennessee, and your first job with Thoroughbreds was at Dogwood Farm in Greenville, Georgia. Tell us about your love of horses and how you ended up at Dogwood.
LJ: When I was four all I wanted for Christmas was a pony. That Christmas under the tree was a little saddle. My Dad said, "Oh maybe there's something that Santa Claus couldn't fit down the chimney. We better go look outside." I ran to the window and in the backyard was the fattest, furriest, cutest little Shetland pony. His name was Midnight and I had him until I was 14. I did the whole horse show scene growing up and then I went off to college for a year. I didn't know what I wanted to do - I was a bit disillusioned - so I decided to take a break and try working with horses. I had heard about Old Mill Farm, which was an hour below me in Cartersville, GA, which was owned by Mrs. Luro (her husband Horatio was, I think, one of the best trainers ever to saddle a horse.) I went there and they weren't hiring, but they suggested Cot Campbell. This was pretty early in Cot's career. He was starting the whole partnership idea and it was a real exciting time.
DSI: Any stories you could tell us about Cot Campbell and the farm?
LJ: Cot was around there, but not all the time. I remember thinking that he was such a gentleman. He was like a Real Gentleman Horseman. You know, he would greet everybody when he came to the farm. The Dogwood office was in Atlanta, and that's where he and his family lived as well.
On the farm I would be one of the first ones up on a horse's back. First you slowly lay across the horse, then perhaps the next day you slide your right leg over and slowly sit up. I was like a squirrel. I've had horses go straight up in the air. I've crawled walls like Spiderman. I don't know how I did it! The scariest feeling is to be up on a yearling, a baby, and they go up and they begin to loose their balance, it's a slow kind of fall.
DSI: You went from Dogwood to Belmont Park - who did your ride for and what were those years like?
LJ: I went to work for Horatio Luro and I became really good friends with their grandson, Billy Wright. So I became a member of the family. Mr Luro was quite a character. He dated Lana Turner, he dated movie stars; you just wouldn't believe the pictures that were up in their little cottage on Belmont's backstretch where I lived - the whole history of Mr. Horatio Luro.
I was really not the best exercise rider. In fact, I was probably the worst one ever to hit a track, but I was so personable. The horses could get away from me a lot in the morning. I was really little and I just didn't really have the strength. I was in over my head! I remember one time Mrs. Luro came to me and said, "I'm going to ask something of you that is way above and beyond the call of duty, but Horatio is insisting on driving his Jaguar from New York to Florida, and I want you to ride with him." I said, "Oh Mrs. Luro that would just be hair-raising." He had driven race cars and took part in the "24 Hours at Le Mans." He still thought he could drive like that at the age of 83. We made it though.
DSI: You took another long journey from Belmont Park to Hollywood. What made you want to take up acting?
LJ: Well, I really wanted to be a jockey and ride races. I didn't get into it just to be an exercise rider. And I guess I realized that was not going to happen. First of all, at 4-11, I'm short, but a solid 125. I was going to have to diet all the time. To ride your first year, your journeyman year, you have to be about 104 because the incentive to ride bug boys is weight. I just couldn't take the weight off. I ended up with infectious hepatitis from not taking care of myself. It was awful, and I ended up back in Chattanooga. I was still pretty young (27), so I went back to school to study journalism because I always wanted to write. I took an Introduction to Theater class to get an easy elective out of the way. We got up in front of everybody and did these improvisations, like that TV show What's My Line. And I got up and I was good at it and I had everybody laughing - I'm telling you it hit me like a drug. I went that afternoon to the head of the Theater Department, and said "I've found what I want to do." I was on fire and I graduated in two years.
After college I headed to Hollywood on a bus. I had $1,200 sewn in my underpants - I was frightened that someone would rob me. I had never been on a bus in my life, and I thought it was kind of like church camp where you would stop at night and everyone would get out and go to a motel! Thirty-six hours later I was in Texarkana crying on the phone to my mother. I thought it was going to be glamorous going to Hollywood! I stepped off the bus at the corner of Vine and De Longpre, which is a block below the really famous Hollywood and Vine, with a suitcase and my dreams. When I got off the bus, all I could see was sky, and I thought, "That's how big my dreams are."
DSI: What were those early years in Hollywood like for you?
LJ: I arrived in Hollywood in 1982, the year a wonderful character actor out of Chicago named Clara Peller made famous the line, "Where's the beef?" Suddenly there was a whole new era of commercials and everybody wanted people with funny faces and funny accents. I stepped off the bus at exactly the right time and I worked for the first five or six years doing nothing but commercials. I made a wonderful living. I was the Bell Taco, I was the guy who bought the gas that made the car knock, or I would be mowing my lawn with the smoking lawn mower. I was never the hero of the piece. I worked and worked. Sometimes I would have 17 commercials running nationally.
My break came when I did this funny part on the hit show Murphy Brown. My agent called the next day and said, "I've heard of people getting breaks, but I've never seen anything like this. My phone is ringing off the wall. This morning alone, Steven Spielberg saw it. He wants to bring you in for an audition for a movie. Burt Reynolds saw it and wants you maybe do something with his wife Loni Anderson." I was like the Golden Boy and I've worked ever since.
DSI: Do you have a favorite role?
LJ: My favorite role would be the Beverly Leslie part on Will and Grace. It was such a fluke. They had written a part for Joan Collins. They wanted Joan Collins to come on and steal Rosario, the maid, away from Megan Mullally's character (Karen Walker), and then they were going to get into a Dynasty cat fight across the billiard table and pull each other's wigs off. At the last minute Joan Collins' people came in and said "Ms. Collins says that you cannot pull her wig off." They said, "That's the whole joke." And so they fired her. My agent called and said "Leslie, they want Truman Capote. That's what they're looking for now. They want a funny little sort of Truman Capote." He said "Put on that white suit that John Ritter gave you." John Ritter gave me this white linen suit when we worked together years before on Hearts Afire, this series I did with John and Billy Bob Thornton. Anyway, I walked in wearing my white suit, and I was just chattering away like a little magpie. They didn't even audition me. One of them looked over and said "He's it." I did one episode and they called me back and I did another. I ended up doing four a year and then won an Emmy.
DSI: What was is like to win an Emmy Award for your work on Will and Grace?
LJ: The night was wonderful. They actually presented my award the week before, at the Creative Arts Emmy Awards. The Creative Arts Emmys are the "behind the scenes" awards and for some reason they put "Outstanding Guest Actor" in that category. I flew my mother out first-class - she had a gorgeous dress, we arrived in a limo…and there wasn't a star in sight. There were 75 awards for best cameraman, best editor, etc., and I was thinking, "My poor mom, all she wants is to see some movie stars." But we had a wonderful time and to have me winning the Emmy - come on! But then the show's producers called and said, "You were delightful and we want you as a presenter at the big Emmys." So we scrambled around and I called my mother, who had to get another dress, and this time around she saw lots of stars!
DSI: What projects are in the works for you now?
LJ: I have an upcoming series on HBO called Twelve Miles of Bad Road that also stars Lily Tomlin and Mary Kay Place. It's the white trash version of The Soprano's, about a family in Texas that's filthy rich.
But perhaps what I'm most excited about is a book deal I have with Simon & Schuster. After I won the Emmy the publishers flew me to New York, where we discussed a book about my life in Hollywood. It's going to be called My Trip Down the Pink Carpet. I hope it will be out by next April.
DSI: Long range plans - we've heard you'd like to come back to the South or have a farm in Lexington. If you bought a farm, would you eventually get into breeding and racing?
LJ: I can't believe what property costs in Lexington versus California! Right now I'm looking at condos in West Hollywood - $800,000 for something that's not particularly nice in an apartment building that's gone co-op. I started looking and you know what? I would almost rather rent out here (I have for 25 years). For $800,000 can you imagine what I could get in Kentucky? A little acreage, a small barn - I could do alright. I would love to do that and get a couple of broodmares to breed. That's my long range plan. My sisters (identical twin sisters who work in the hotel industry) never married, and one does food and the other does beverage. They have talked forever about operating a bed & breakfast. So I thought, how about a bed and breakfast on a working horse farm, where I would always have a place to go and sort of generate some income.
DSI: If you could star with one actress, who would it be?
LJ: There are actually two actresses: Bette Midler because she just seems so fun; and because I grew up in Tennessee, I've always wanted to meet Dolly Parton. | 
