Legacy in Lights adds all-Texan cast before production starts June 15

An all-Texan cast and crew has been announced for the Texas Legacy in Lights project that will begin production this Sunday, June 15 at locations throughout the Gonzales area.

Among those who are joining the cast for this pioneering immersive film experience are Samantha Plumb, who will play Gonzales heroine Evaline (or Eveline) DeWitt; Johnny “Chops” Richardson, who will play Old 18 member and Alamo defender Thomas Jackson; and Chris Marks, who will portray Sam Houston, the general of the Texian Army. All three spoke to the Gonzales Inquirer about their excitement at being a part of this historic project.

They are joined on the cast by William Grant Bain, who will play John E. Gaston; Kelby C. McCan, who will portray John Henry Moore; Zachary Colmenero, who will play the part of youngest Alamo defender William Philip King; Ajay Ramos, who will portray Capt. Juan Seguin and Danny Debs, who will play Mexican Army Lt. Francisco de Castañeda. Peggy Schott was previously announced for the role of Sarah DeWitt.

Samantha Plumb

This is Plumb’s first major film project, though she has worked in several regional independent films and has been a veteran of stage productions in the Austin area. Plumb said she was in a play with a roommate of one of the Legacy in Lights screenwriters and “she saw the show and he recommended me to her as well.”

“Honestly, I got really, really lucky,” Plumb said. “I was invited to an audition, which feels very rare. I feel like I've been trying really hard to get my foot in the door, and it was cool that I was able to receive this opportunity through something like that. I just had a little Zoom call with John (Franklin Rinehart, the project creator and director), and was cast pretty much the same day.”

Plumb said she initially was not familiar with Evaline’s backstory, but she was familiar with the story of the Battle of Gonzales, the cannon and “Come and Take It.”

“I was actually super unfamiliar with the Runaway Scrape. I think we probably breezed right past it when I took my Texas history classes,” Plumb said. “I've learned a whole lot just being on this project with John, and we haven't even really gotten our teeth into it just yet, so it's been interesting to get my feet in the water with it.”

Plumb said she loves that there have been few cinematic portrayals of Evaline or Sarah DeWitt so “not a lot of people seem to know about” the role those women played in Texas history.

“On top of that, it's interesting when you do any research on Evaline and Sarah DeWitt, the most that comes up is maybe one or two articles mostly about the Come and Take It flag,” she said. “Really what's exciting to me about this part is getting to bring these characters to life and to maybe educate people on even their existence, and in so doing them some justice and getting them into the spotlight where they belong.

“It's sad that I didn't even know about her, because that flag is flown everywhere for multiple reasons, for multiple different parties, but at the end of the day, for a flag so rooted in Texas history, we don't even know about the two women who made it,” Plumb added. “So I'm excited that they're going to get their time in the sun and get their flowers.”

Plumb said she is very impressed by the work the crew has been doing to make sure the production is as historically accurate as possible. She also spoke about her castmates — many of whom she just recently met for the first time.

“I'm pretty familiar with William Bain, who is playing John Gaston. He and I were in the same play together and he's excellent. He's super sweet, very fun,” Plumb said. “I've been sort of getting to know Peggy (Schott) just through Instagram. She saw a play I was in a couple months ago as well.

I haven't got the chance to really get to know anyone else just yet, but we have another read-through (Monday, June 9) and we'll be spending a lot of time together next week. They all seem super great, and they're all really talented. It's a little daunting coming in as a kind of a rookie to the scene and seeing how great the talent is. I’ve got some big shoes to fill and I’m pretty excited to match their energy.”

Plumb said she thinks she may have visited Gonzales as a child during one of the historical road trips her parents would take her on, but doesn’t remember for sure. However, she said she is excited to get to know the town.

“I'll be spending basically seven or eight days there, so I’m hoping to get around and about and see some cool stuff and get to know the town,” she added.

Johnny “Chops” Richardson

People may know Johnny Chops best as a bassist and songwriter for the Randy Rogers Band since 2002 or as the frontman of Johnny Chops & The Razors, but he actually studied to be a theater direction major at Texas State University.

“I've grew up in a musical family. My dad's a choir teacher — he's retired now — so we had music in the house always, but I was originally in college a theater major,” Johnny Chops said. “I was in all the plays in high school, and I was actually going to become an actor or a director in college, but music had always just kind of been a side thing, a hobby. It just kind of worked out where I got a gig playing bass in a band, and here I am, more than 20 years later, still doing it.”

Downtime due to the 2020 pandemic led him back to acting and directing and he recently appeared as Dan McCall in the Amazon Prime movie “Killin’ Jim Kelly.”

“We were kind of shut down for a while (during COVID-19). I had some time to sort of soul search, right?” he said. “I booked a couple of small commercials for some online things and some remote stuff. I remembered how much I enjoyed that kind of different creative path and dove back into it.

“We're at a point now with my main band where I have a little bit of time to explore some other creative avenues, and that's been my main focus. I feel like I've come full circle with it.”

Johnny Chops said he has always been “a little bit of a history buff” and he found the story behind the story of the Battle of Gonzales very appealing.

“I'm no expert by any means, but I've always been attracted to the stories that got us where we are, and knowing those things and immersing myself in a character from a historical era has really been kind of a lifelong dream as an actor,” he added.

He said while he took the obligatory year of junior high school Texas history, he was not personally familiar with Thomas Jackson’s life or his eventual death at the Alamo as one of its defenders.

“His story, I feel like, is particularly unique in that he was an Irish immigrant, which there weren't a lot of at the time associated with the Texas Revolution,” he added. “It's been really, really enlightening and fun and interesting to learn about a lot of this stuff I didn't even know. It's a compelling character and it's really been exciting to get to know him.”

Johnny Chops said he believes the Texas film industry has been special because “we have such a historical precedent of doing things the way we want to do them here in the state of Texas and I think that absolutely applies to the film industry.”

“We like to make our own stuff and do our own things and I think that part of the uniqueness of this project is that it's not going to go into the void of content that's being made,” he added. “That's not to be disparaging to any other types of stuff that's being made, but this will actually exist in a concrete form for a pretty long time, so that really makes it a unique project.

“That's one of the things that drew me to it was the fact that this wasn't just going to be released, you know, on the internet or on Amazon or on another streaming service, and some people watch it, and then they move on to the next thing. I think this will be a living, breathing testament to history that people can go see all the time for many years.”

Chris Marks

Playing Sam Houston is the role of a lifetime for Marks, who has already carved out a career for himself which includes credits on shows like “Burn Notice,” Amazon Prime’s “Tycoon” and Netflix’s “Pain Hustlers.”

Marks ended up being cast as the most venerated hero of the Texas Revolution because a personal friend, fellow actor Peggy Schott, recommended that he look into the project.

“They were looking for someone to play Sam Houston, and she recommended that I look into it and submit myself to the directors and producers,” Marks said. “I saw the physical parameters, and I saw that it was Sam Houston, a pretty significant historical figure, to say the least. My wife is actually in the Air Force, and she's stationed at Fort Sam Houston (in San Antonio) so I'm like, ‘Well, how cool would that be if I got cast as the guy that my wife's base is literally named after?’

“That's when they offered me the role. I told the directors, ‘I guess it's kind of fate that, you know, I'm cast to portray the guy that my wife's base is named after.’ It’s interesting how that fell into place that way.”

A self-described “closet historian” with a strong interest in World War II, Marks said he knew a little about Sam Houston and the Alamo, but “I didn't really begin to dive in head first until I got the audition for the role of Sam Houston.”

“Once I got the audition, it was all hands on deck. Three days straight, I just did nothing but research on him,” Marks said. “I read a lot of articles, I watched a lot of videos. I watched every movie I could get my hands on that portrayed Sam Houston, like ‘The Alamo,’ for example, where Dennis Quaid actually portrayed the character. I just did everything I could to really get into who this guy was, so I could do a decent job with the audition. It was very much a cold read. I did not see the dialog until I actually met with the director. That's why I was like, ‘Okay, I really need to get to know this guy if I'm going to do a half decent job here.’”

Marks said he was impressed with Quaid’s portrayal of Houston not as a politician or war hero, but as a human being.

“He made a choice not to show the historical grandeur of all that stuff,” Marks said. “He was trying to portray him as a flawed human being, which Sam Houston was. Sam Houston had his issues. He had some drinking problems, and he had his divorces, and he had a whole lot of personal issues going on. That's the beauty of us portraying humanity. We have to look for the flaws in order for the audience, to connect.

“One of the things that I have to do in this portrayal of Sam Houston is I have to really, really feel the weight of leadership in a way of having to make the really, really tough choices that affects the people that I'm trying to protect, people that I really care about as the character. I'm putting them through a very, very difficult time for the greater good, because I hope I'm trying to to accomplish the bigger picture here.  You're putting people through hell, trying to get them to heaven.”

Marks said one scene will include him surveying the burning of Gonzales Houston had to order within hours of arriving at the town and learning of the fall of the Alamo.

“He's looking at the people trying to scratch and claw to get whatever personal belongings they can, and he's sending them onto that road of cold and mud and rain and just the hell that those people went through just trying to get through that journey,” Marks sid.

“He's seeing all these people, and he knows the hell that he's putting him through right now, and he knows the hell that they're going to go through, moving on to where they're going next. And you know, he has a moment where he feels the gravity and he feels the sorrow and the empathy and the pain of what he's doing. Unfortunately, that's just sometimes what leaders have to go through. This is for the greater good, but for right now, it sucks. For me as an actor, that's like, ‘Ooh, that's gonna be fun!’

Marks said Houston’s being a student of history helped him ultimately defeat Santa Anna.

“He was facing an impossible task (at San Jacinto)” he said. “They were incredibly outnumbered. Him being a student of history is what brought him to the victory. He knew Santa Anna viewed himself as  the Napoleon of the West. Sam Houston was well aware of the mistake that Napoleon made and he literally kept that in mind, and he used that as the exact same strategy and his methods to defeat Santa Ana. Sam Houston found great victory and triumph through knowing history.”

Marks said he hopes that the lessons that the film can impart to future generations might be beneficial.

“Who knows who's that going to save, or what inspiration, how that's going to help future generations, just by knowing this little piece of history and what these people went through — the determination to face some adversity, face some challenges and face some hardship, believing that something better will come from this.”