Actor John Mese comes home to stage his autobiographical play
Baton Rouge native John Mese beat the Hollywood odds.
Setting off with an acting dream in 1989, Mese turned his passion for the craft into a 37-year career as a television character actor. His journey, told through the lens of his relationship with his late father, is the subject of a one-man show Mese created called The Story of Me and My Dad. It takes the stage this month at Manship Theatre.
Locals will find the show both endearing and familiar. Mese grew up in a happy family that included his father, John Daniel “J.D.” Mese, a beloved dentist whose Government Street clinic treated generations of patients. The household also included his late mother, Kay, and four siblings–brothers Mark, David and Gordon, all of whom remained in Baton Rouge, and sister Rosalind, who lives in New Mexico.
Against this backdrop, Mese tells the story of heading for Hollywood, juggling odd jobs and landing small parts, then getting a big break as an attorney on the 1991 Marlee Matlin-Mark Harmon television show Reasonable Doubts. It opened the door to other auditions, which in turn led to years of consistent work in film and TV. (Only the pandemic forced Mese to finally find employment outside of acting when the industry temporarily ground to a halt.)
The inspiration for The Story of Me and My Dad comes from an unlikely place, Mese says. In 2019, he teamed with friend and People magazine journalist Champ Clark to star in Clark’s one-man play Wild Son: The Testimony of Christian Brando, based on the troubled life of Marlon Brando’s eldest son.
The show was critically acclaimed. Reviewer Chaz Ebert called Mese’s performance “riveting,” posting on RogerEbert.com, “John Mese keeps your rapt attention from beginning to end. Although he doesn’t fully look like Christian, he was cast because he has the same coloring and qualities—danger/sexiness/vulnerability—that Champ had seen in his friend.”
The doomed young Brando had a fraught relationship with his father and made headlines when he murdered his half-sister’s boyfriend and served prison time. Mese portrayed the role with depth and verve, performing it around Los Angeles and the 2022 Edinburgh Festival Fringe. He also staged it in Baton Rouge.
“It was the most fun I’d ever had performing in my life, and it just kind of reinvigorated me as an actor,” Mese says. “I was so in love with acting when I was in college, but over the years, you do a lot of TV jobs and it’s just not artistically inspiring.”
The experience planted a seed. Mese began thinking about writing his own one-man show centered on another father-son relationship.
“I started wondering, ‘Can I do a story about me and my dad, just like I’ve been doing about Marlon and Christian? It doesn’t have to have tabloid stuff, we’re just regular people,’” he recalls.
Working with fellow Louisiana-born actor Eddie Jemison, Mese spent three years writing the play. The show debuted last October in Santa Monica.
Mese says Baton Rouge audiences in particular will understand the play’s geographic and cultural references. They’ll also find meaning in its universal themes of love, family and flying the nest to pursue big dreams. And they’ll come away understanding something about the elder Mese.
“My dad just had this way about him,” Mese says. “He was a friend to everybody and just such a great dad. I loved him so much.”
Mese will perform The Story of Me and My Dad at 3 p.m. Nov. 15 at Manship Theatre. For tickets, see manshiptheatre.org.
This article was originally published in the November 2026 issue of 225 Magazine.
