Weekend Plans With Kevin Sorbo: From Hercules To Hollywood Outlaw

Weekend Plans is our exclusive lifestyle feature where we highlight the real off-duty routines of the most exciting people in culture. 

This weekend, actor and producer Kevin Sorbo — who electrified audiences around the world by slaying monsters while wearing leather pants and a muscle shirt for the hit TV series “Hercules: The Legendary Journeys” — lends his time to The Daily Wire to discuss why he thinks every movie is faith-based, his winning philosophy on choosing your path, and why even the varsity football star should never write off high school drama class.  

* * *

Kevin Sorbo enters our chat with an energized flurry. He’s been doing press for one of his latest projects, the faith-based feature “Elijah Peel,” in which he plays the semi-cynical, seasoned talent manager to a drug-addled rock star on the road to redemption. At 68, having spent most of his life in the biz, Kevin lends a certain industry greasiness to the role. It’s not his first rodeo.

“I tell people all the time I’m a 13-year overnight success,” Kevin laughs. “I know what it’s like in Hollywood. Rejection is part of the norm.” 

He’s certainly no stranger to controversy, either. Kevin is often portrayed as a Hollywood outcast who ruffles feathers by speaking out on his faith and values. He was “canceled” before it was cool and dropped by his agent and manager at the height of his career. Even though the tide may finally be shifting, as far as Kevin’s concerned, he’s always been himself. A Christian since childhood, he unwittingly disrupted a system that demanded upending. Getting dragged for it on X doesn’t change the fact that some tables need to be flipped.

But Kevin managed to forge an exciting path running parallel to the mainstream, and that path has brought him riches beyond a box office take. With the founding of his own production company Sorbo Studios, he could finally tell the kind of positive stories the whole family could watch. And collaborations with other boutique production houses, like the upcoming “Eating with the Enemy” — a biblical depiction of the Last Supper, which Kevin narrates — only beefs up his ever-expanding portfolio.

As we speak, he’s still babying the knee he recently had replaced. Somehow that hasn’t kept him from his golf game, his gym sessions, or his jet-setting itinerary. He’s about to head out with his wife on another tour of Israel — an immersive experience they open up to the public. “We’ve had atheists and agnostics come on the trip because they don’t deny there was a person named Jesus,” he says. “If you love history, come to Israel. It’s amazing and you’ll have a blast.” 

If you see a guy zipping around Florida in a golf cart, blasting Led Zeppelin, it’s probably Kevin — one of those Hollywood outlaws on the hunt for the good kind of trouble.

New roots 

He’s a Minnesota native, but Kevin spent the majority of his career in Los Angeles working as a model and leading hit TV series such as “Hercules” and “Andromeda,” along with a deep roster of movies. But after spending over three decades in Tinseltown, he wanted something more.

“We escaped in January of 2019,” Kevin phrases it. “We live in the free state of Florida and we love it here. I don’t miss the taxes and the traffic. I don’t miss the majority of the people.” But some relics of his SoCal chapter still pull on his heartstrings. “I miss some of my dear friends that are still there suffering. I miss the house I lived in.” He’s talking about his Mediterranean villa with the pool, spa, and gym, along with miles of fruit trees and a million-dollar view.

“I miss the weather,” he adds. Once he finds out I left LA too, he asks if I also relocated to Florida. I’m in Nashville — “the other one,” I say, noting the popular destination for California expats including buddies of Kevin’s, like actors Kirk Cameron and Gary Sinise. 

Now happily settled in West Palm Beach with his wife, actress Sam Sorbo, Kevin’s busier than ever, with his hands on every step of filmmaking. “The people I’ve met and the work that I’ve been getting to do with other independent producers and production companies has just been great. I’ve been shooting four or five movies a year,” he says. 

Morning person

Kevin’s not the guy pressing snooze on the regular. “I’m an early riser. I’ve always been, my whole life,” he assures me. “I think it started because I had a paper route as a kid, getting up at 4:30 a.m. six days a week for seven years in Minnesota winter.” 

He’s not chucking the Sunday news onto people’s porches anymore, but his morning routine is non-negotiable. “That first hour is usually ESPN to catch up on sports,” he says. “I don’t have the patience to watch baseball or basketball games anymore, but I love the highlights.”

Most mornings, he’s out the door before he remembers to eat. “Breakfast, you know — it’s weird. Half the time I have breakfast, other times I skip it,” he says. If he’s eating anything, it’s gonna be nourishing. “I try to go for the protein, mixed with a little carb, and then I hit the golf course.” (He always gets his greens.) “I don’t go to any golf course unless they let me tee up first,” he admits. If you follow his Instagram, you know he’s not wasting any time lingering on the fairway trying to make friends. It takes him “about an hour and a half, hour and 45 minutes for 18 holes. I’m a 6-handicap. For people who golf, they know that’s not great, but it’s good.” 

Once he’s back home, Kevin’s all business. “I’m always trying to raise money,” he says. “I’m always looking for funders to help our little independent movies. Most of my movies are in the two to three million range. People think that’s a lot of money.” Kevin notes that’s more of a “catering budget” on the typical blockbuster feature. 

Kevin and Sam’s three kids are in their twenties now, but after successfully homeschooling their brood, the hard-working couple hasn’t pumped the brakes. Sam frequently travels around the country, teaching the techniques she used to educate her own children. “It’s always about work,” Kevin confesses. But he tells me, “I love work.” 

Kicking up some dust

Some guys in their late sixties might be content to cruise along at the leisurely pace of a stereotypical Florida retiree. But not Kevin. “I work out every day,” he explains. I’ve seen the receipts on Instagram. Same goes if he’s on the road. “I mean, I can’t lift like I did in my ‘Hercules’ years,” he says with a laugh. “I do my 30 to 40 minutes of cardio every day. I don’t like sitting around.”

He maintains his sanity by putting his own spin on an active lifestyle. “Golf to me is relaxing even though I play fast.” Of course, he’s gotta queue up the perfect podcast or soundtrack for the moment. “Whether it’s going to be a Led Zeppelin day, a Billy Joel day, or a Frank Sinatra day, it all depends. But to me, it’s my two-hour break of the day. I love mornings. That’s sort of my Zen moment.” Kevin’s confident that he’s one of the OGs behind up and down-dogs. “I love to stretch,” he says. “I mean, I was doing yoga moves before it was called yoga, you know?”

Couples who laugh together stay together

Kevin and his wife Sam have been married since 1998, which equates to about 17 decades in Hollywood years. How do they do it? With good communication and great comedy.

“When we go to bed, we talk about the day, what’s going on tomorrow, if we’re going to be on a podcast together, whatever it may be,” he says. “But we’ll always put on a sitcom because we want to laugh before we go to bed.” They have high praise for the writing behind Michelle Pfeiffer and Kurt Russell’s new show “The Madison.” Kevin says, “We’ve gone through all of ‘30 Rock,’ and Tim Allen’s ‘Last Man Standing.’ Right now we’re in season two of ‘The New Adventures of Old Christine,’ and it’s a very funny show.”

As far as a nightcap, you might find Sam sipping a glass of wine if the day calls for it. But Kevin describes himself as more of a once-a-week cocktail guy. “I like a good margarita or a good Crown Royal,” he says. I teasingly tell him a marg is very “Florida” of him. But he’s been doing the tequila thing since way back. “I was ‘margarita’ before that,” he laughs. “Maybe key lime pie more, now. I’m still a water guy more than anything else.”

A new frontier for entertainment

He may not be living it up in the film capital of the world (if Los Angeles can still claim the title), but Kevin’s got showbiz in his blood. “I still love making movies,” he explains. For over a decade, he’s been heavy into the faith-based genre. But he thinks every film has its own ideological bent. “I call every movie faith-based. If you’re an atheist, ‘I believe in nothing’ is a pretty strong faith. Every movie has a message in it.”

Kevin’s one of a handful of true Hollywood veterans who broke the mold and are now dedicated to making high quality content for the conservative crowd. But he leads the movement for never missing the point of entertainment. “I like doing movies that Hollywood used to do, so I’m always looking for the next one,” he says. “I’ve got plenty of good scripts. It’s just a matter of finding the people that realize we have a spiritual war as much as we have a cultural war in America and we’ve got to fight back.” 

“There’s a lot of craziness in the world right now. A lot of hate and a lot of anger,” he acknowledges. Hoping to shift the culture, he’s like a real-life superhero raging against the machine. Maybe he’s more of a David taking Goliath to task. Or maybe he’s Kevin freakin’ Sorbo — three time stroke survivor, indestructible target of angsty leftists, proving that the best revenge isn’t revenge at all. It’s resilience.

“Don’t let anyone set your limitations,” he says, when I dig for a little life advice. “Don’t let anyone tell you what you can or cannot do. Follow your dreams as corny as that is. I knew since I was 11 years old that I was going to be an actor. I told my parents that. I got a ‘That’s nice.’” He laughs. “I’m sure they thought it was a phase, but I knew what I wanted to do.” 

He only suffered from being a theater kid stuck in the body of a star athlete. He remembers his football and basketball teammates making fun of his love of the stage. But from his point of view in drama class, he recalls with a wink, “I was just like, ‘All the best looking girls are in that class, guys.’ Being a flaming heterosexual, for me it worked out great.” He was still on his game when he met his future wife Sam years later on the set of “Hercules.”

“Love what you do, and be good at what you do,” Kevin says. “It makes life a lot easier.”

More from this network:
Domains for Sale · GOTPeople.org · TheDSAPlatform · The Truth About Socialism

Donate to GOTPeople.org