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How Jerry O’Connell’s Career Mirrors the World-Jumping Adventures of His Sliders Character
Like his Sliders character Quinn Mallory, Jerry O'Connell says he has "no control" over his professional life.
In 1995, a fictional physics student named Quinn Mallory (Jerry O’Connell) attempted to build an antigravity device in the basement of his family home. He failed, but he failed spectacularly. Instead of floating freely off the ground, Mallory ripped a hole through spacetime, opening a portal to another universe.
With the strange brew of hubris and curiosity characteristic of young minds, Mallory jumped through the portal and into an alternate reality. A little while later, he did it again with some friends, and that’s when things went sideways. In the opening episode of the classic SYFY series Sliders (streaming now on Peacock), Mallory and company find themselves adrift in the multiverse, jumping blindly from one reality to the next without any direction or control. They never know what world they’ll be living in next or for how long. What began so scientifically, quickly gave way to the crashing waves of cosmic whimsy.
What O’Connell perhaps couldn’t know at the time was that life has a funny way of imitating art. On a recent episode of the podcast Still Here Hollywood with Steve Kmetko, O’Connell remarked that he has “no control” over his professional life. Instead, his career has come to mirror, in some respects, the arbitrary sliding adventures of one of his most iconic characters.
How Sliders Mirrors the Mystery of Jerry O'Connell's Professional Life
"I don't want to bum everybody out, listening or watching this, but I'm a little bit of a failed actor. I acted for many years. I was acting, I was acting, I still continue to act. But it's funny, my acting career has gone through a couple of downturns, you know,” O’Connell said.
He began acting as a child, doing commercials before getting the role of Vern Tessio in Rob Reiner's 1986 hit film, Stand by Me. Later, he starred as Andrew Clements, a 14-year-old superhero on the Canadian show My Secret Identity. During his college years, O’Connell auditioned for and was cast in the lead role of Quinn Mallory in Sliders, transforming him into a household name and face for a generation of genre fans.
Since then, the unpredictable and constantly moving gateways of Hollywood have opened onto worlds where he is Mars colonist Phil Ohlmyer (Mission to Mars); down-on-his-luck Charlie Carbone (Kangaroo Jack); a man beset by talking cockroaches (Joe's Apartment); the voice of Superman, not to mention a few other DC characters; Herman Munster (Mockingbird Lane); Commander Jack Ransom (Star Trek: Lower Decks); Detective Woody Hoyt (Crossing Jordan); and co-host of talk show The Talk, among others.
“My representation are the ones who said, 'A seat just opened up on this show The Talk, you should go for that seat.' And it's funny when you hear that your first reaction is, 'I'm not doing a talk show, I'm an actor,’” O’Connell said. “Luckily, I was open enough to the universe to say, 'Oh yeah, I can sit there for a month or two, if they need someone.'”
That gig evolved, after a couple months, into a years-long contract. While O’Connell seems grateful for the steady paycheck, it’s not the career he imagined for himself. "I thought coming in here as a young man, 'I control everything, I'm in charge of where I go, I'm in charge of me. I'm going to decide whether I'm acting or not and I'll stop acting when I say I'm stopping acting.’ Steve, I have no control of anything,” O’Connell said.
Like Quinn Mallory, O’Connell seems to be searching for the way “back home,” but he’s also open to unexpected paths and opportunities. “I was in a TV show that got canceled right away,” O’Connell recalled. “This was right before streaming, when shows were getting canceled left and right, and I was in three or four of them in a row.” O’Connell asked his manager what he was doing wrong, and he got some advice he still tries to live by. “My manager said to me, ‘Hey, man. You’re going to end up where you end up.”
Maybe, if you can’t be with the universe, or the life, or the career you love, then the trick is to love the life you have, at least until the timer flips and it’s time to jump again. Perhaps that’s the lesson of Sliders and the lesson of life, to make plans but not count on them, and to be flexible enough and brave enough to jump through a portal when one opens, with hope and excitement for whatever’s on the other side.
Catch Jerry O’Connell in Sliders, streaming now on Peacock.
