Antonio Sabato Jr. is living his best post-Blacklist life.
Earlier this year the veteran TV and film star shared how Hollywood unofficially “canceled” him after he openly supported President Donald Trump.
Now, the “Melrose Place” alum is prepping his comeback, complete with a deeply personal memoir and a western featuring some like-minded stars.
“Sabato: The Untold Story” recalls how the 48-year-old star’s recent battles, from losing his agent to realizing traditional studios may never call upon him again, didn’t erode his faith in America.
The memoir shares his unique Hollywood success story while revealing the horrors his great-grandparents faced in Hitler’s extermination camps
“You may say, ‘This could never happen here’ but this is happening right here and right now. The control of the media is a key component for regime change to take hold. Just look around you and see if this is not true right now,” he writes in the book.
His relatives saw the very worst of freedom-snuffing socialism, including his grandmother, who he says was killed in Prague by party members. It’s no wonder he has little patience for his new home’s socialist flirtations.
Through it all Sabato finds a mostly positive tone, refusing to dish dirt on former flames while sharing how he overcame a dalliance with drugs.
Sabato came to America from Italy when he was just 12 years old, and he quickly designed a crash course in English with a famous, if accidental, instructor. The teen watched Tom Cruise movies over and again, letting the “Top Gun” star guide his need for speedy lessons.
“I just wanted to be part of the team … I loved the challenge of learning a new language,” Sabato says.
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He did want to follow in his father’s footsteps, though, a path demanding he master his new tongue. And quickly.
Antonio Sabato Sr. toiled in the Italian film industry for decades, but his parents didn’t chase their son from the profession. They told him about the competition, and the rejection, he’d face along the way but left the choice up to him.
“If there’s something you love and you’ll dedicate your life to it, we’ll be there with you,” they told him. “You gotta love it unconditionally.”
So young Antonio threw himself into the work, aligning with an acting teacher who saw the raw material he brought to the profession.
“I screen tested for her barely knowing any English … and she accepted me. I just loved the fact she was very serious, very kind … she told me how it is,” he recalls. “I kept my mouth shut when I had to and learned.”
He secured modeling work at first, including a high-profile appearance in the Janet Jackson music video, “Love Will Never Do (Without You).” More modeling jobs followed, but he also began landing acting gigs in shows like “General Hospital” and “Earth 2,” an ambitious sci-fi yarn produced by Steven Spielberg.
The latter fizzled with audiences, but he found himself in-demand at last. He eventually scored recurring work on “The Bold and the Beautiful,” “Melrose Place” and, later, reality shows like “Antonio: Down Under.”
He flirted with Madonna, dated actress Virginia Madsen (the mother of their son, Jack) and strived to keep fame in perspective. The vast majority of actors struggle to pay their bills, he notes.
His successful, 30-year Hollywood run seemed over for a while. Sabato confessed to Variety earlier this year that he’d been effectively blacklisted by Hollywood for his conservative views.
“When you’re in my business, you can’t talk about [conservative] politics,” he told Variety. “You just can’t. You’re attacked viciously in a way that I’ve never been attacked before.”
His appearance at the 2016 RNC to support then-candidate Trump hurt his future prospects, he told the magazine, as Trump Derangement Syndrome intensified. He lost his agent along with an existing gig. His acting future looked bleak.
“I was talking to a distribution company about producing a film that was set to go, and they told me to my face, ‘We will never distribute a movie with you in it because of your affiliation with the president,’” he said.
It wasn’t always this way in Hollywood, he tells The Daily Wire. Yes, the industry’s liberal bona fides are hardly new, but he says the tone behind the scenes changed over time.
“It’s confrontational. It’s ugly,” says Sabato, noting he makes it a policy to avoid politics on film and TV sets. That isn’t enough in modern Hollywood, though.
“I could never wear a MAGA hat or express my spiritual love for God … you get looked at the wrong way or get fired,” he says. Or, the equivalent in La La Land – your phone grows quiet.
So Sabato picked up his own phone. The actor penned a western movie project pitting good against evil and rallied some like-minded peers to join his side.
He calls “Trail Blazers” a “spiritual western” with guns, martial arts and more, and he’s already enlisted Scott Baio and Stacey Dash to the cast.
“Before they even read the script they all signed up. That moved me,” says Sabato, who sees the film as the first film in a trilogy that speaks to modern times despite the genre trappings.
It’s part of a larger plan to develop a “conservative studio” for like-minded projects outside the Hollywood ecosystem that support the country, the flag, police officers and the U.S. military.
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“We need to have an alternative,” he says, “a place where we can be patriotic and make movies Hollywood is never gonna make again … we need to have diversity in filmmaking, a different perspective on things.”
The challenge now is finding the “right partnerships with the right people,” he says, including investors. “I care about it, and I don’t want this to fall apart.”
He might have more grass roots support than many realize. The actor turned screenwriter teased his upcoming plans on social media, and the response was quick and potent.
“I’ve gotten messages from thousands of people in the industry who are fed up with the way things are going, the lack of freedom,” he says. “And they want an alternative.”
Some of the messages involved behind-the-scenes crew members sharing how simply showcasing their faith or patriotism cost them work, the actor says.
Sabato, who unsuccessfully ran for Congress in 2018 against Democratic incumbent Julia Brownley, knows the odds against him creating a home for right-of-center artists. He isn’t backing down, though.
“This business that I love so much is amazing … I’ve seen places most people dream of,” he says, even if the industry offers little help for him coming back on his own terms.
“When everything is taken away from you, how do you move on and get your career back?” he asks. “If you have the will to survive you keep fighting.”
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