Star: Where are you orginally from, Jon-Erik?
Jon-Erik: I’m from Englewood, New Jersey. I’ve been in California since September of 1981.
Star: did you move to California just to do The Voyagers!?
Jon-Erik: No, I didn’t get cast in The Voyagers! until the next March.
Star: How do you like working with Meeno Peluce, who plays your sidekick, “Jeffrey Jones”?
Jon-Erik: He’s a great kid! We spend a lot of time together. Our relationship works out so well because it’s affectionate, like in The Voyagers!, with a little antagonism, too. One day, Meeno and I were out at the beach playing football, and there were a lot of people at the beach that day. He said something to me that was exactly what “Jeffrey” would have said. I yelled to him that I had to go to the bathroom and for him to watch my pants becuase I had about $50 in my pocket. He dropped his football and yelled back to me, “Why dn’t you say it a little louder, you jerk, so everybody can hear?!”
Star: Did you have in interest in history before you got the part of “Phinneas Bogg” on The Voyagers!?
Jon-Erik: Yeah, but not in a while. I was a philosophy major in school.
Star: What made you decide to study philosophy?
Jon-Erik: When I first went to Michigan State, I was a bio-medical engineering major. I was going to make artificial hearts and kidneys and stuff. I thought that was really neat. But then it wasn’t fun anymore because I had to learn chemistry and physics and math. I realized I just wasn’t all that interested in it. It seems less ambitious, but I want to have fun, so I’m doing this (acting). I would look at all the graduate students down in the basement laboratory operating on all these mice and cats, and it just wasn’t fun.
Star: Did you always have an interest in acting, or did it just develop when you left school?
Jon-Erik: I always had fun in grammar school and in junior highg. and then in high school, I did all the musicals. My teacher in high school inspired me a lot, and I always had fund doing the shows at school. It just seems to me that whatever you have the most fun doing in life you should try first. If it doesn’t work out, then you go for your second choise. So I’m trying my first.
Star: Do you have any brothers or sisters?
Jon-Erik: I have an older brother, Gunnar, who lives in Boston. I have two older cousins who are real, real close to us, too. They lived near us when I was growing up.
Star: What field of acting would you really like to persue?
Jon-Erik: Musical comedy. I’m a legitimate bass singer.
Star: Do you miss not working on stage shows like that?
Jon-Erik: Yeah, very much. It’s sort of a Catch 22. Before, I had to be a busboy and a doorman to pay the rent so I could go out on auditions. Now I’ve go the job and the money, but I don’t have the time to go on audtions for what I really want to do. But The Voyagers! is what I want to do now anyway. Later on, I can do films and musical comedies and go to New York.
Tiger Beat Star