American actor, screenwriter and director Sam Jaeger sat down with us and talked about his current projects, being a husband and a dad, his process as an actor, his roles in Why Women Kill, The Handmaid’s Tale, and his most recent directing gig for Bootstraps’ music video for Whenever You’re Around. Jaeger is a natural story-teller and believes in the power of storytelling- whether he’s directing a music video, acting out a role, writing, and creating in general. He is innately a gentleman inside and out and candidly shared his acting process, working alongside Marc Cherry, creator of Desperate Housewives on Why Women Kill, playing Rob Stanton, and discover why he loves the book Winesburg Ohio.

Let’s chat about the recent Bootstraps music video “Whenever you’re Around” that you directed. What’s your inspiration behind it?

My friend, Jordan Beckett, is Bootstraps, and he contacted me to direct the music video for “Whenever you’re Around.” I was familiar with the song already and the one thing I remember about it was that it reminded me of how I felt about my wife before we were even dating. I don’t know how. I don’t know, but with all the other girls with an end, I just didn’t see an end with her. I didn’t know what that meant. I just knew that when she’s in the room, life was better. So relating that to this video, the theme of it is whenever you’re around, you make it brighter. I just felt like one of the gifts that Jordan have is making these universal themes so relatable and so approachable. It’s like the reason folk music lasts because you’re trying to tell the biggest stories in as few words as possible and he does that so beautifully.

The cool thing about doing a music video is that you’re trying to take your vision and apply it to someone else’s medium and luckily Bootstraps’ music is so visual. It all just sounds like the greatest soundtrack. It’s great driving music. It makes you feel euphoria. It’s like an unapologetically, honest and romantic music. I don’t think it’s because I’m getting older, but I think I like music that takes you somewhere and not trying to be anything other than what it is.

You have your Parenthood co-star in there as well. How was it working with them?

Yes! So I asked Erica (Christensen) to do this one role in it early on. And originally I didn’t have the idea to play opposite her.

The more I thought about it, I realized that Jordan’s first time with his music video, his kind of getting out there, was on Parenthood. He did the soundtrack to my film and one of the songs from that was used in Parenthood.

And Erica is just one of the greatest people that I ever collaborated with. Just as a person and as a talent. So when I asked her to do it, she was like, Oh yeah, sure. And we shot this music video in my backyard. She came out for that kids scene and we had her for one day. Thrown a bunch of costumes on her. I told her to bring her own clothes and she’s just game. It’s one of the reasons it was easy to be on Parenthood with her cause because when you just love somebody like that, it makes any part of the job easier. It’s funny that we joke that it takes a job for us to get us together because we’re on opposite sides of the city but it was really a rewarding experience.

Now let’s talk about Why Women Kill. How was it to play Rob Stanton in the 60’s? How was it to play his character in that era?

You know Rob Stanton is like one of those emblems of his time; stuck in that era when everything changed. And he got this old, nostalgic standpoint on the role of a man and a woman. What’s fun is that you can’t play a terrible person terribly. You always have to find the good in them. Also, for a character like Rob, he may know he did some horrible things but a lot of dangerous people in the world don’t think they’re horrible. They just think they’re right. So playing him and working with Ginnifer Goodwin and Marc Cherry, it was a dream come true.

Did you guys shoot in Pasadena? Cause the show was set in Pasadena.

We did shoot a little in Pasadena and over in Burbank. But it was nice to be close to home.

If his character will exist in the present day, how do you think will he adapt to the situation? What would be his reaction to his environment?

Well, I think he’s still going to be a coward. Though it’s almost like the situation would be different since he would have to navigate technology. The guy, you learn early on in How Women Kill, is having an affair with a young woman, and she works at the diner where his office is. Nowadays you just can’t be seen in public. You just have to find ways to cover it up. It’s interesting. I wonder how technology would affect our responsibility to society? Will we become better as a whole or we will just find more and more ways of getting around the technology?

Despite Rob Stanton’s character’s cheating and all that, what do you think is the best part of playing his character?

I’m conscious of everyone and everything I do; being a father, and trying to be a good husband, so it’s nice to step into a job and know that my responsibility is to be irresponsible. To expect that dinner is served for me every night. To lay a couple of compliments on my wife at work and that’s the end of the job. That’s why that character is slowly being removed from all of society.

It’s kind of a silly, sick fun to get on set and be like, oh, I don’t have to be responsible. In fact, the less responsible I am in this role, the more believable the role is. The more effective you get to do your job.

Would you say that it’s a challenge for you to do that?

Yes. Because sometimes as an actor you try and think through all the reasons, and ambitions, the motivations, but sometimes, some people are just off on their own.

We always try to make our characters smarter than they actually are, but sometimes, it’s important to dial it down and make them duller. His character is a very bright man when he focuses on his work but he doesn’t find anything wrong with philandering which leads ultimately to his downfall.

Now let’s go to The Handmaid’s Tale. Let’s talk about your character and his relationship with Serena. Are we going to see his character next season?

He will be. To what extent, I don’t know. It’s nice to be one of the few good guys on The Handmaid’s Tale and I mean guys, specifically, since there’s very few of them.

It is such a dark show as well and it was nice to provide that balance in it. I think people were really hoping for it and wanted it out of that show. You can only carry them (the audience) along in a journey that dark only for so long. You need to provide them with some levity. And I’m glad the writers found a way to create that at the end of the third season. I’m interested to see him continue.

Also, that was an interesting role to do to as well. I purposely only watched Handmaid episodes that involved Serena’s backstory. I felt like he fell for this woman in a very sincere way because he hasn’t seen what we’ve seen as an audience in The Handmaid’s Tale. I’m even surprised when people are like, “I’m so glad to see you really stick it to the water for this woman,” and I was like yeah, yeah, it’s mostly him. So again, going back to sometimes turning down the dial on how much you know as an actor going in.

So that definitely helped.

Yes. But also I chose not to watch she did in Gilead. I chose not to do it because I knew the character didn’t really know the inside scoop until the episodes come out. I ‘m really interested to see where Serena goes from here.

Same. I mean, we’re all humans with very unpredictable life choices.

Final question. If you were a book, what book would you be and why?

I think I would be Winesburg Ohio by Sherwood Anderson which was written in 1919. When I was a young writer in Hollywood I found this wall of classics that they needed for school requirements. All the recommended books were out there. I’ll just go alphabetically through them, and I started with A- Anderson, Sherwood Anderson. And I found out that this guy grew up 40 minutes from where I grew up.

It’s just that each chapter follows a person in this very tiny town in the beginning of 1900’s which was very strange. It’s about all these people; their sadness, sorrows, triumphs, quiet victories. That’s the work that I hope to do as an actor, as a storyteller. We think that social media is making us closer in a lot of ways but it is making us compartmentalize our world so that we can agree with people. It feels good to know that people agree with you. I think storytelling now is more important than ever because it helps us connect to people that we otherwise wouldn’t. I think Winesburg Ohio did that for me and I hope to do that with my career.

See Sam as Robert Stanton on Why Women Kill only on CBS.