Velvet Brick

Velvet Brick is a Podcast hosted by Speaker, Author and Film Producer Chong Kim. Join Chong as she delves into empowering, transforming and inspiring stories to ignite change within the community.

"'Nick, I think because of your walk with Christ, you'll be able to do it easier. To be able to separate character from reality,’ and I said, ‘I like that. Okay.'"

Nicholas Rice

Closer Look into Episode 3 with Nicholas Rice

Kim began her conversation with Rice with a series of questions about his acting career:

How did you first start acting?

“Well, we can do a long version of that or short version. So I’m going to try to go medium version, but I was a worship leader for about 16 years, and God said to go into acting, and I said okay. He gave me some opportunities to do so, and it was a hard transition because I’ve never done acting before. I looked down on acting a lot because of the role that I was in as a worship leader, but as soon as he gave me a taste I was hooked. So I was like, ‘okay you want me to do this? Let’s do it. Let’s do it right.’”

How did you get over the bad standards and challenging moments from our role with God?

“I have a friend of mine who traveled with me on the road. He didn’t say much but when he did speak, you listened because he had a lot of wisdom. He was full of a lot of wisdom. And so I asked him like if I had to play the worst villain out there and to be the worst villain that I’ve seen so far is the Joker, the way they wrote that character to be the worst of the worst. Would I be able to play this type of character before I started going into this type of industry? The way Aaron said what he said next was just so sweet, short, and profound and I agree with it. He said, ‘Nick I think because of your walk with Christ, you’ll be able to do it easier. To be able to separate character from reality,’ and I said, ‘I like that. Okay.’ And so now that every time I’ve played the bad guy, I’ve played the good guy, played the neutral guy. It’s so much easier to do so when I’m in character and then whenever I’m not in character, you know, I’m me and that’s easy to separate from me.”

But is there a limit to how far you’ll go with the “bad character”?

“I won’t do any sex scenes regardless if it’s implied or not. When I say implied, I was offered a lead role in a movie last year. I’m not going to say the name of the movie, but she was very very gracious to offer me the role. She told me and gave me the script, and there’s a sex scene in it. She talked me through why she had the sex scene in there, and it was very vital to the story. And I told her I was like, ‘if you’re not willing to change this, I can’t do it’. She’s like ‘Nick, I understand and I’m rooting for you if you can’t do this. It’s just I believe that this is a part of this story. We have to get the reaction of the woman to be able to tell the story.’ And I was like, ‘Okay, I don’t necessarily believe that’ because I believe if you take out the sex scenes, your movie or your show is going to do better. If you look at all the top box office hits the top 10, you know, or the ones that have reached a billion dollars, even the ones that reached close to that, none of them have sex scenes. The first Deadpool might be the exception to that, but if you had to argue that Deadpool was the top-grossing R-rated movie, but it was not the top-grossing movie. So if you would have taken that, made it PG-13, I believe that would have reached an entire more wide audience and people would have let their kids see it.”

So let’s say that you’re in a role, but you’re not the one that has the dialogue of obscene words, but another character would that bother you?

“It doesn’t bother me. I went to a table read for a feature film one time.

I didn’t know the director that well at that time, so I went I went ahead and went through with the table read and saying those cuss words were like nails on a chalkboard and oh my gosh, it was just so unnecessary, but I’m still being considered for that role and hopefully I get it. And if he does consider me for that and he cast sme for that role, then that’s when I’ll approach him and say ‘hey if you really want him to be this kind of goody-goody, then he wouldn’t say these things, you know.'”

Damon Wayans is also a person of faith. One of the things he also had was a standard because you knew that he played a cop [and] he was going to shoot people. He said the one thing he will not budge is he refused to do a shoot out in a church, and some of the crew members got upset with him. He said, ‘I’ll rescue or tackle someone in the church, but I will not carry a gun in church. I will not, I don’t care if it’s pretend. I have respect for churches, and I will not cuss are nor will I do a shoot out of there,’ and I thought that was very admirable.

Naomi Campbell also had standards and told her manager ‘do not give me any scenes that have sex scenes’ now, she did one with her and Denise Richards, but that was a make-out scene. She said she’ll go as far as making out, but she will not do full-blown nudity. Selena Gomez won’t do a sex scene either. There are also tons if you Google celebrities that have moral standards. You’ll see a list of them. They will say ‘okay, if you need to have the sex scene, I’d rather have a dummy and standing in.’

Next, we’re going to show Darnell’s every 40 seconds video challenge. I’m encouraging all my friends to do the video challenge, so we can build the momentum of this campaign. We’ll show the video, and then I’ll explain about the campaign.

So what we’re trying to do is we’re trying to encourage everyone to donate a minimum of 40 dollars or do something 40, like you can do 40 jumping jacks push-ups sit-ups anything like that.

I’m going to share a little short story. A couple of years ago, I went up to the bar and I saw this young girl and she was playing on the slot machines at the bar, and she was underage. I tapped her on the shoulder, and I said is anyone sitting here she said nope, so I sat next to her and that was all I did.

So I’m just sitting there playing the slot machines myself then I asked her I said can I smoke a cigarette. I only use the cigarette as a prop because I’ve done undercover operations with the FBI to help with human trafficking cases, so you had to blend into the environment.

So I looked at her and held up my box of cigarettes. And I said, do you mind she goes? “Oh, no my parents smoke.” So I was just smoking and next thing I knew I can see her looking at me, and she said “so what do you do” and I said films. She immediately got a napkin and wrote her cell number down, handed it to me, and says, ‘I’ve always wanted to be on Nickelodeon, Disney XD.’

I said, ‘where are your parents and how old are you?’ and she said, ‘I’m 15, and I’m from Nebraska.’ So I looked around and I said ‘where are your parents,’ and she said, ‘I don’t know.’ Now, if I was a trafficker, I would have been able to take advantage of that situation.

I told her ‘when I was 19, and I wasn’t a minor, I fell in love with a guy who said he was going to make me famous. And guess what, I ended up in the trunk of his car,’ and her jaw dropped.

The human trafficking hotline in case anyone is in danger is 1-888-373-788.

It is #every40secondscampaign. We need to add the campaign because there are other #every40seconds, but that is related to Suicide. We don’t want to get mixed up with that one. Yes. So #every40secondscampaign.

Acting Safe at Auditions

Nicholas Rice

Featured Episodes

Darnell Evans

Actor & Entrepreneur

On today’s episode of ‘Velvet Brick’, Chong Kim is joined by Darnell Evans, a fellow actor, and entrepreneur who will be providing important information on the topic of ‘Grooming’.
What are the strategies that predators use to convince parents to let them closer to their children?
How can a single adult male/female groom their peers through online scams?
How are teenagers and children being groomed by older people?

Peter Needham

The Most Inspiring Man

On this Velvet Brick Podcast’s episode, Chong Kim interviews ‘The Most Inspiring Man’, Peter Needham from New England. We’ll talk about his video, aspirations and what he’s passionate about.

Nicholas Rice

Actor

Nicholas Rice is today’s in-studio guest. Nicholas is a DFW actor passionate about acting and we’re thrilled to hear about his upcoming project.

On today’s episode, we’re also going to be talking about how to have a safe audition and photography sessions, especially when it comes to young kids, teens and single female adults.

Ms. Chong Kim

Chong Kim was born in South Korea and was naturalized in the United States in 1984. She's originally from Oklahoma and currently resides in Texas.

Ms. Kim is a disabled activist and a renowned speaker on issues of Human Trafficking, author of Broken Silence, which was released in June 2017, now a film consultant and TV producer. Ms. Kim have been speaking out against Human Trafficking, Domestic Violence and Child Sex Exploitation, since she has experienced first hand in these atrocities.

Her story was made into a film in 2013 called "Eden" starring Beau Bridges and Jamie Chung. She has utilized media to educate the public about Human Trafficking, Disabled victims of Crime and any other social justice issues. Chong has appeared in several reputable media stations like: CNBC, CNN, BBC and Montel Williams. Ms. Kim is also a spoken word artist and a poet.

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