Exclusive Interview: Aaron Jackson Talks ‘California Dreams’ Event in L.A., the Show’s Impact, His Multifaceted Career, and More

Aaron Jackson is a versatile talent renowned for his achievements as an actor, producer, director, and motivational speaker. He has starred in critically acclaimed projects such as Cross to the Other Side, Fighting a War of My Own, and the award-winning What’s Your Poison. However, he is perhaps best known for his breakout role in the beloved series California Dreams.

Created by writers Brett Dewey and Ronald B. Solomon, and executive produced by Peter Engel, the coming-of-age series follows a group of friends and bandmates as they venture into adulthood, told through the backdrop of an incredible soundtrack that aired in households for five seasons. Aaron shined as Mark Winkle, the boy next door who overcame stage fright and won the hearts of audiences.

Pop Culturalist was lucky enough to speak with Aaron about California Dreams and their upcoming event in Los Angeles, the show’s legacy, and more.

PC: Last year, you all did a sold-out reunion event in New York City. How soon after that did you realize you wanted to get the band back together for another go?
Aaron: We were on stage for about 30 seconds before we all agreed that we had to do this again. Over the years, we’ve always talked about getting the band back together. After we did the Saved by the Max event in L.A., which sold out so quickly pre-COVID, we knew.

Then COVID happened, and we were all brainstorming ideas for what we could do next. Jennie [Kwan] came up with the idea for New York. She was the driving force behind it, with amazing plans, dreams, and a vision. She got Brent [Gore], Kelly [Packard], Jay [Anthony Franke], Michael [Cade], William [James Jones], and Diana [Uribe] on board. Having the whole band back together, minus Heidi [Lenhart], was amazing.

The fans were incredible that evening. Whenever we posted about it on Instagram, Facebook, or TikTok, people kept saying, “Come to L.A., come here, come there.” It kind of took on a life of its own. Jennie, with her brilliant business mind and the amazing team including Scott [Appel], Ashley, and the rest of the Dreams, made this happen. It’s going to be a great event.

PC: I appreciate that the events are such a celebration of the fans. When you initially auditioned for this show, you were also in the running for a role on Party of Five, which you also got. What made California Dreams stand out to you?
Aaron: [laughs] Do you want the honest, honest answer? Hindsight is 20/20. But Party of Five was on a network called Fox, and Fox was not really a network at the time. They were renting space from another primetime outlet. It was a pilot plus five, which means you get six episodes total on primetime television, but there’s no guarantee that it’s going to go anywhere. Dreams had legs. It had arms. It had a brain. It had a heart. It had a massive following. They offered me 39 episodes. You do the math. [laughs]

But like I was saying earlier, hindsight is 20/20. If I had known the trajectory of both Dreams and Party of Five, I would have still taken Dreams. There was something nostalgic about California Dreams. It was a show that was ahead of its time and it’s timeless now. Where is Party of Five now? Scott Wolf, Jennifer Love Hewitt, Neve [Campbell], and all of them have gone on to do amazing things in their careers. But we did okay for ourselves.

Dreams still has this amazing fanbase. We do wish we could get on a platform. I wish Peacock would pick us up and put it out there. But it wasn’t a hard decision for my team, manager, or the most important person in my world, my daddy, who just turned 80 yesterday. Dad, if you’re watching this, I love you, Zeke. It made more sense. It was 39 episodes. The funny caveat is that when you sign a contract with a network, they guarantee you thirteen episodes with the chance of 39. Back then, thirteen was a season; that was a full order. Now, 26 is a full order. I was like, “If I get it and it goes well, they’ll give me two more seasons.” Plus, we did another season thereafter.

PC: When I spoke with Jay a while back for New York, I told him the same thing—a streamer needs to pick this show up because they don’t make television shows like California Dreams anymore. As somebody who has played this character for over 40 episodes, what did you learn from Mark that’s stuck with you to this day?
Aaron: I did 48 or 49 episodes. A lot of Mark and I are very similar. Our writers, Ron [Solomon], Brett [Dewey], and our amazing writing staff, knew us very well. They knew our vernacular, cadence, rhythm, and timing. They wrote a lot of the dialogue based on how we spoke.

Mark and I were polar opposites in many ways. As you can see, I have a full sleeve of tattoos and both my ears are pierced. Back in the ’90s, I smoked. I’m not going to lie; I also drank. I wasn’t this clean-cut, all-American kid that Mark was. I was still a very clean-cut, all-American guy, don’t get me wrong. I wasn’t out there hooting and hollering, but I wasn’t as innocent and pure as Mark Winkle was.

I remember a couple of episodes where I had to take my shirt off, and they had to cover my tattoos because Mark didn’t have tattoos. Jay Anthony’s Jake Summers should have had a tattoo. That would have been cool. The funny thing is, I rode Harley-Davidsons. I rode my sport bikes. I liked fast cars.

But the biggest takeaway from Mark, which I already had instilled in me but still resonates to this day, is that it’s okay to say no—not just to drugs or alcohol, but to anything. The word “no” is an acceptable answer in the right circumstances. In that way, I think California Dreams was ahead of its time. We had the first Asian female lead on a television show, breaking barriers. We had a Hispanic lead, an African-American lead, and Caucasian leads. We dealt with race issues, drug issues, alcohol issues, and death. We tackled these topics on a Saturday morning show. These are things that kids look back on and tell us that we changed their lives. I get choked up talking about it, but we had a fan come up to me and say, “You changed my life for the better.” What do you say to that? That’s something a doctor does, or our Lord does, someone a lot more powerful than I am. But that’s the power of television. It’s so magnetic and powerful that it can have that kind of impact.

For me, “no” is an acceptable answer. Now, in business, there are times when “no” is not an acceptable answer, right? When I go into an audition, “no” is an unacceptable answer. You’re going to hire me. I’m going to figure out what I have to do to get you to hire me.

Mark had some cool storylines and really awesome moments. I was often the butt of the joke. Sly, my cousin, was always the bad Winkle, good Winkle, kind of thing. He thought he was the good Winkle and that I was the bad Winkle, but he was the troublemaker Winkle. It was very weird. Michael and I had a polar opposite relationship on and off camera. On camera, we were always on each other, but behind the scenes, we were best buds.

PC: That’s a credit to the entire team. There was nothing more special than waking up on a Saturday morning and watching this show that’s had such an impact. You actually answered my next question, but one of the powerful things about television as a medium, especially one that’s gone on as long as Dreams is that as the creative team gets to know the cast, they’re able to shape storylines based on their performances and their interpretations of these characters. Was there a storyline of Mark’s that was influenced by you? Because you were polar opposites, how did you find your way into this character?
Aaron: It’s a twofold question. I think the drinking and driving episode was spun off by me. When I was fifteen in my hometown, I had lost a dear friend to a drinking and driving accident. They had passed away. They weren’t driving, but they had left a party intoxicated and ran into a road and ended up getting killed. I started a company years later due to the credit of a student of mine. She said, “You need to have a company. You need to talk about that. You need to.” I never really put two and two together but I remember having that conversation with our writers about that.

I started a company twenty years ago called Dangerous Curves—the dangerous curves on the road of life. It’s my anti-bullying, anti-drinking, anti-drugs campaign. I travel around the country talking to middle schools, elementary schools, high schools, colleges, and executives about the effects of bullying, drinking, drugs, and all of that stuff. I also started a spinoff of that company called Dangerous Words for my bullying campaign. I think that storyline spawned from an interview or something I had done in a magazine at one time or another.

This is a funny story. When I was on the show, I was dating this gal. It was a true hometown romance. We fell in love in high school. I went off to college and was living in Los Angeles. She was flying back and forth to hang out with me. I got on the show, and she didn’t like the idea of me being on a television show—not because I was on TV, but because she didn’t like the lifestyle it was going to bring. She was a small-town girl who liked our small-town world. So we broke up. It crippled me like any relationship would. Outside of my family in Pittsburgh and my family in L.A., which was the Dreams cast, I had nobody else. I would go home at night, and it would be just me and my four walls.

Yes, I was on a television show and okay financially, but I was still alone. I remember coming into work a couple of weeks later, still in that lull. I think the whole We’ll Always Have Aspen episode stemmed from that because I was able to channel some really good emotions due to that. Ironically enough, the girl was also named Jenny. I don’t know if that’s true or not, but it seems fitting.

PC: How did you find your way into this character?
Aaron: I moved to Los Angeles, and I was literally there for eleven days. I’m not even kidding. I was so lucky. I wasn’t a great actor, and I wasn’t very good looking. I don’t know what it was, but I got a manager named Beverly Dean. She was friends with Peter Engel, who was doing auditions for the character of Mark.

I had heard originally that there were 500 kids who auditioned for it. Later, I heard there were 5,000 kids. They did a nationwide search. I don’t know what the true number was, but I went in on my eleventh day of being in L.A. and had an audition for it. That was for Robin Lippin, who was our casting director. I went in, saw Robin, and then got a callback. So I went back and did that callback. Then I got another callback and went to Franco Bario, who was one of our producers at the time, and a handful of others. On the fourth audition, I went to Peter Engel, the executive producer of the show. After that, I went to network and had to do a network test. It was a five-part process, all while I was still auditioning for Party of Five. I tested with both Fox and NBC on the same day.

The Dreams offer came in after Party of Five. Maybe Dreams didn’t really want me, maybe they offered it to someone else who turned it down. Who knows? But that’s how it came about. It was the right place at the right time. I had to kind of look like Sly and be different from Sly, but we had to have similarities. It was a bunch of puzzle pieces that had to fit together to make it work and be believable.

PC: I feel like California Dreams was your big break very early on. Since then, you’ve branched into directing, producing, and writing. How have those experiences behind the camera impacted the way that you approach your work on screen as an actor and vice versa?
Aaron: My big break was probably on Lorenzo’s Oil. That was my real introduction to the industry and made me realize this is what I wanted to do. I had done a lot of work prior to that, but this was the thing. That was film. I was like, “I’m going to do film. I’m going to do film.” Then I got Dreams and I was like, “This is a whole different experience.” You’re working on a four-camera setup and working with the late Don Barnhart, who worked with James Burrows, Patrick Maloney, and Miguel, all these amazing directors.

I learned so much from being on camera about how to be behind the camera from them and in the way they communicated. Doing a four-camera setup is wicked cool. You’re doing a scene, and you have four cameras picking up everything. You’re not doing 65 takes like they do in films.

After the show got canceled, I got cast very quickly in a Stephen King film called Children of the Corn with Miramax. It was Eva Mendes’ feature film debut. I did that with Greg Vaughan, Stacy Galina, and the late Alexis Arquette. It was a fantastic role. I was up for the lead, but then I ended up being put as the lead killer because I looked too much like somebody else. There was this weird dichotomy.

They ended up bleaching my hair blond. That changed me. I had to change my looks to do something that I love. I didn’t like that. Hire me not because of how I look, but because of what I have inside. But I looked too much like somebody else to be cast in this role, so they gave me a lesser role. It was still a lead, but I was trying to dovetail on this Mark Winkle, good boy thing, and they put me as the lead killer, which in hindsight was awesome because it opened up a whole new fan base for me within the horror genre.

But when it happened, I told my dad, manager, and team that I wasn’t sure if I wanted to do that kind of work anymore where somebody wants me to be something that I’m not, but that’s acting. It turned into this whole psychological thing, so I was like, “I’m going to start directing.”

I’m going to throw my hat in the ring and direct. I didn’t know my butt from a hole in the ground. I was like, “I’m putting a camera here. We’ll put some lights up and we’ll film a scene.” I felt like I was the lion from Wizard of Oz. I had no idea what I was doing.

My first project was a television show called Ghost Story Chronicles that I got to direct. We did nine episodes. It aired on USA. It did really well in the ratings. Then all my kids aged out, and I was like, “I’m going to move on.” I directed my first film called Fighting a War on My Own. I couldn’t find an actor to play the role, so I ended up playing it. Now I’m directing a film that I’m in. It won all these awards. I was like, “Maybe this could work.” Then I directed another film that I subsequently got put into as well because I couldn’t find an actor. It sounds like I was trying to do this, but I wasn’t. [laughs] That film flopped. I was like, “So this recipe doesn’t always work.” Then I found a great producing partner, Lisa [Wassel], and we started producing films together. In my office, I have this wall of fame and wall of shame sometimes. Just on one wall, I have ten pictures that I’ve produced with my company and that I’ve directed as well. Then another fifteen to twenty that didn’t make the wall because they weren’t as good as the ones that are on the wall. But being on the show and the regularity of doing that, hearing how the industry works, hearing from producers, writers, directors, makeup artists, all of them, and how they collaborate to make California Dreams, I became a team player. You have to have someone at the head of the ship. You’ve got to have a captain. You have no choice. I was never afraid to delegate. I knew what to do. I knew I could run a camera. I could run lights. I knew how to do sound and makeup. But I didn’t need to know it because if I put the right people in the right places, magic happens. I learned that from California Dreams because we never had a hiccup on that show. If we did, we never knew about it as a cast.

They would give us scripts. If a joke wouldn’t land, less than nine hours later, we’d have a new joke. If the costume didn’t fit, less than an hour later, we’d have a costume that did. They were always problem-solving, so we never knew. I learned so much about the industry that way. I also learned a lot of what not to do. There are things that you just don’t know. Don’t overthink the simplest things.

I overthought Mark in one episode, and I remember one of the writers coming up to me. He literally grabbed me by my shoulders, and I won’t say the exact phrase that he said, but he was like, “What the blank are you doing right now?” He goes, “All week you’ve been doing amazing on this. Now today on tape day, where are you?” I was like, “I want it to be the best.” He goes, “It is. Stop trying.” It was Ron Solomon, and he’s like, “It’s like Nike’s advertisement: Just do it. Don’t think about it, just do it.” I was like, “Okay, dude.” I was able to strip that armor of fear of wanting to be the best that I can be and just do what I was hired to do. I learned an awful lot on that show.

To keep up with Aaron, follow him on Instagram. Pick up tickets for the California Dreams event in Los Angeles here.