Jake Weber, from Middlebury to 'Medium'

By Susan Green, Free Press correspondent • September 24, 2009

“There’s a vibe you get,” said the British-born California resident, who enrolled at the school that fall. “I met people it seemed I would feel comfortable with.”

Now 45 and the lead actor on “Medium” — after a move from NBC to CBS, the show’s sixth season premieres at 9 p.m. Friday, Sept. 25 — Weber recalled that he discovered Middlebury in the midst of a schism 23 years ago. “The campus was divided between Reagan-era Young Republicans and a much more sort of hippie sensibility. Needless to say, the latter is where I felt more at home.”

Needless to say, that is, because he had grown up in a decidedly counter-cultural milieu. His late parents, Tommy and Susan Weber, were pals with the Rolling Stones in a rarefied London lifestyle fueled by illegal substances.

The current issue of People magazine profiles Weber, who was 8 when he and his younger bother smuggled cocaine under their clothes at an Irish airport. This allowed their father to outwit suspicious customs officials. That’s also the year, 1971, their mother killed herself after suffering from LSD-induced schizophrenia. Tommy Weber, also mired in drug abuse, died in 2006.

The article comes on the heels of a book, “A Day in the Life” by Robert Greenfield, that chronicles the Weber family demimonde. ”It’s like shaking hands with the past,” Jake Weber said, when asked if this sudden publicity is unsettling and brings too much sensationalism for a man who has always been rather private. “Besides, is anybody really interested in a middle-aged actor who had a gypsy childhood?”

Well, maybe there’s interest among the many fans of “Medium” or the writers at Entertainment Weekly who added Weber to their list of “Ultimate Hotties” at the end of August. On the series, he portrays the husband of a clairvoyant woman who solves murders for the police in Arizona; the fictitious couple has three daughters, some of whom are also prescient. This dynamic household also confronts quite ordinary issues and problems.

“My character is a man of science and his wife sees dead people,” Weber said. “But the crime and spooky stuff are a way to explore an American marriage. The conceit is to make their lives as real and complex as possible.”

An English literature and political science major at Middlebury, he sang in the Dissipated Eight, an all-male a cappella chorus that belts out pop songs. “We traveled all over the country,” Weber said. “We even sang at the White House a few times.”

The Reagan White House? “Yeah, I have a picture of myself with him,” he says, “but I blacked out his face when I was in a stupor at one point.”

Perhaps this languor can be attributed to romance. “I had a great four years at Middlebury,” Weber explained. “I fell in love — a couple of times.”

Although active in the theater program, he never imagined acting as a career. “It wasn’t something I rook too seriously,” Weber said.

One of his professors begs to differ: “Jake was probably the most motivated actor I ever knew here,” poet and author Jay Parini said. “He had so much focus, a ferocious vision of going after what he wanted from life.”

When Parini went to Italy on sabbatical, he sublet his house to Weber, then a senior who previously had lived on campus. The two men met for dinner a few years ago, when Weber retuned to the Green Mountain State to teach a one-week workshop for aspiring thespians on how to audition for a role.

After graduating cum laude from Middlebury, he attended Juilliard — a prestigious New York City school that specializes in drama, dance and music — and worked at the legendary Moscow Art Theatre in Russia. Since 1989 Weber has been in two dozen feature films, done guest spots on a variety of television series and appeared in Broadway and Off-Broadway plays.

Despite an impressive resume, Weber still dreams of using his Middlebury degree to become immersed in a multi-disciplinary approach to education. “I like academia,” he said. “I really enjoy teaching. I’d like to teach books.”

His mentor, Jay Parini, sees Weber as “incredibly intelligent, very gifted and just a down-to-earth, personable, wonderful, calm guy. It’s so easy to communicate with Jake.”

On “Medium,” Weber’s role is that of a calm guy named Joe DuBois whose wife, played by Patricia Arquette, communicates somewhat uneasily with the dearly departed. The switch of networks, he said, is positive.

“CBS is doing a lot more promotion and put us on the fall schedule, which is much better than starting in mid-season as we did on NBC. Over there, we felt like poor stepchildren. But nothing has changed radically about the story,” Weber pointed out. “She still sees dead people.”

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