In Memoriam
"I'm sure Nancy told you about the time I cured four of her migraines in one night?"
Jonathan Joss didn’t get to have the last word in the Coen Brother’s 2010 True Grit. He only manages to get out “Before I am hanged, I would like to say—” before the hangman slaps a hood over his face, a nod to the silencing of Native voices in so many of those classic Westerns.
Fortunately, Joss was able to be part of a movement that let Native voices be heard.
He was born and grew up in the San Antonio area, graduating from Our Lady of the Lake University, where he did street and experimental theater; he doesn’t appear to have said too much about his early life, though he did say he wanted to become an actor after watching a production in elementary school and realizing that the actors got to get paid for what he got in trouble for in school. (He said his father would say “You look good there on horseback, son. It’s a damn shame they don’t ever put you in clothes.”) He married Tristan Kern de Gonzales earlier this year, and discussed the harassment he was dealing with as a gay man during a recent King of the Hill event1, but aside from that, I can’t see him saying much about his private life, either. Most sources say he had Comanche and White Mountain Apache ancestry.
Aside from a turn as a medic in Luke Perry’s drama 8 Seconds, most of his early roles were exactly what you’d expect from the 1990s: a Comanche in the Western Texas, characters named Black Deer and Kicking Wolf. But in 1998, he began his nine-year stint on King of the Hill, a role he had recently returned to as part of that series’ revival2. While working on KOTH, he pushed to have his character be less of a punchline. His own natural talent for music informed the character, and eventually Redcorn would find success as a children’s entertainer and advocate for indigenous rights, while still remaining as flawed, human and faintly ridiculous as the rest of the cast. Anyone who watched John Redcorn’s early episodes in Seasons 1 and 2 wouldn’t be able to anticipate John Redcorn’s struggle to connect with his son Joseph or the complicated relationship he’d have with Joseph’s other father, Dale.
His recurring role in Parks and Recreation took things a step further, with the producers of the show taking his feedback into account and even taking pre-emptive steps like not including traditional materials in Season 3’s bonus “blessing ceremony” before the harvest festival. He said Parks and Rec was a great chance to be “a part of the joke, instead of the joke.” The positive response to Ken Hotate from both fans and critics was almost certainly a factor in Mike Schur’s development of Rutherford Falls, a sitcom that put Indian voices first.
(The look he exchanges with Aubrey Plaza at :45 is incredible.)
Joss had other small parts–True Grit, a nemesis in the 2016 Magnificent Seven, an episode of Friday Night Lights–and voice work including master detective Ohiyesa “Pow Wow” Smith in Justice League Unlimited. He had his own line of spice rubs for a while, and toured with the band Hellgrimm as “The Red Corn Experience,” the kind of low-key career a lot of actors maintain when they’ve been part of a big, popular franchise.
Onscreen, he was handsome and broad-shouldered, with both gravitas and crackerjack comic timing to meet whatever the role demanded. He had a brand new series and countless other roles ahead of him. It is always hard to say goodbye to an actor whose work you didn’t just enjoy but admire, but it is particularly difficult when a life is cut so violently short. So I’ll just leave you with this brief but excellent interview (and the source for several of my quotes).
About the writer
Bridgett Taylor
Bridgett Taylor has a day job, but would rather talk about comic books. She lives in small-town Vermont (she has met Bernie; she has not met Noah Kahan), where she ushers at local theatrical productions and talks too much at Town Meeting.
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It’s horrific and unfair that his life was cut short in such an appalling manner, and I think the two write-ups were absolutely the way to go. This is a wonderful appreciation of his work: that combination of “gravitas and crackerjack comedic timing” was especially great on Parks and Rec (I watched the linked Ken Hotate video to remember some of his best moments, and one of my favorites is him discussing his new bolo tie: “My son sells them on Etsy. He is a huge disappointment,” which is just a masterpiece of line delivery). I’m so glad he pushed for more nuanced, less stereotypical character development for John Redcorn and saw results on that, definitely shaping the show for the better.
That bolo ties line absolutely kills me.
Me too! King of the Hill matured so much and John Redcorn’s character could have been a real mess; I’m glad he got to help shape it.
Something that’s so damn funny and shows off Joss’ singing is Redcorn’s egregious metal rock band that is all too recognizable to anyone who’s either spent time around bar bands or played on a bill with some random acts.
Hahah yes.
The Ken Hotate reel is great. It’s nice seeing how much of his timing and deadpan delivery as John Redcorn is all him and how he plays it physically.
He has some of the funniest jokes
of all time on king of the hill. https://youtu.be/_KTsywB6GNQ?si=9MqnTEm_nasWWKGU
“we did, once.” All-time great.
https://youtu.be/tZ0xt_EAd5U?si=77RIE7QSw0FKrjkV
I almost used “We did, once” as my tagline but I was afraid it wouldn’t stand alone.
You can hear the angry period in the line too. (“We did. Once.”)
Did that end up being good? I tried it for like two episodes and couldn’t get into it because I felt like it didn’t do that– most of what I watched centered around Ed Helms’ character whining. Which was a shame, because just from those two episodes, I thought Michael Greyeyes’ character was easily the most compelling one on screen, and if he’d been the focus, I would’ve easily been on board for the whole season.
It got very good reviews! I never watched it (I never got Peacock and resisted the call of the high seas). It had a large number of indigenous writers, I know, which was what I was thinking of.
I heard it got better as it went on, but those first couple of episodes were centered around this whiny scion of privilege I didn’t give a shit about. And, you know, as a white man myself, I’m not automatically adverse to stories about white men– I’ll watch anything about anyone if it’s good and human. But I felt like the most interesting characters in the show were the secondary and tertiary characters, and the least interesting one got far outsized screen time compared to them. And not in the way that felt like “Oh maybe he’ll come around” or “It would be an interesting process to see him grow and learn.” Just give me a story about Greyeyes’ casino CEO, there was far more depth and complexity in both the writing and performance there.
Great write-up, thinking of how funny he is as Ken winding up/fucking with Jeremy Jamm. “Does it, white man?” I watched a King of the Hill in tribute to him and his deadpan “Look, I’m thirty six years old and I don’t need this crap” is increasingly relatable in my own thirties. Some great little touches in that show like John being shown reading This Land Is Your Land and, as you say, his increasing appreciation of Dale’s good faith efforts to help him with FOIA papers.