Keith ‘The Dean of Mean’ Jardine is known by MMA fans for the violent images he painted inside the UFC octagon.
Yet his new career sees the former fighter creating blood splatters on the page and the big screen, as his new slasher film ‘Kill Me Again’ is set for release this Friday, August 8th.
It stars Brendan Fehr, who turns in a great showing as a serial killer stuck in a time loop in a café at midnight which is full of unaware potential victims.
Also featured are former UFC fighters including Tait Fletcher, Donald ‘Cowboy’ Cerrone, and Michelle Waterson-Gomez, who deliver solid performances in their roles.
A true Renaissance man, Jardine also wrote and acted in his directorial debut. In fact, Keith’s acting credits go back sixteen years and include such hits as Breaking Bad, Bird Box, and Once Upon A Time in Hollywood.
I sat down with Keith ahead of the film’s nationwide release on Friday to ask about his creative endeavors and the path from fighter to filmmaker.
He worked on films directed by legends like Tarantino and Paul Thomas Anderson, but Jardine had to find his own way to directing and is working to built his own creative identity.
“I would love to say that that I got this inspiration from working with Paul Thomas Anderson, but that just seems like a bold thing. Of course I paid attention and I look to their style and all that, but when you jump into the fire and you’re doing it yourself you just have to figure out your own authentic way and if you’re trying to be somebody else then I think you’re doomed from the beginning… If there’s any kind of false pretentiousness like they’ll pick it up and the whole thing’s ruined right away.”
Keith certainly has found success figuring out his own ‘authentic way,’ doing more interesting projects all the time, including a lead role alongside major actors he just filmed in Finland.
“I just did [my favorite acting role] in Finland with Jorma Taccone. He’s an SNL writer. He did MacGruber and he brought me on to be a lead in a show with Juliette Lewis, Timothy Olyphant, Jason Seagal, and Samara Weaving…I was in Finland for two months with them and it was the most fun I’ve ever had dude, because it’s a kind of comedy, like you know you did your take well when you hear people laughing at the monitors. It’s such a fun experience man, and so that’s coming out towards the end of the year.”
Compare starring alongside Jason Seagal and Samara Weaving that to his humble acting beginnings as a thug on Breaking Bad in 2009, and its clear how far Jardine has come.
Although his home city of Albequerque is known for Breaking Bad, Jardine regrets appearing on the hit AMC show when he did, as an uncredited bar fighter on season 3.
“Stunt roles for me is you just say a few words and get in a fight. Those are stunt roles more than acting roles. And the stunt coordinator knew me from fighting, he asked me if I’d do this thing. And so I did it and I had fun and it was great. I got to be on Breaking Bad.
“But I did a lot of subsequent auditions for really big roles… But Vince Gilligan would always turn it down because he said that he wanted continuity and he said it wouldn’t fit. So man, I learned a big lesson there.”
Despite missing out on that opportunity Keith has had his fair share of interesting roles, and not so interesting ones. In fact, that is what inspired him to start writing his own scripts.
“Just by chance, after I was done fighting, I fell in love with acting. I actually always wanted to be an actor and I took that to heart and put all my time in doing that. I started doing really good, getting a lot of cool [projects], but all the roles kind of seemed the same. So I figured if I wanted to have better, more interesting, complex roles that have to create them.
“So I learned how to write from nothing. I’m not a great writer. [I was] horrible in school at writing and all that, but from studying acting, I knew dialogue…and I love, love movies. So I just like kind of just create the blank slate to create the movie you want to see from the ground up, that really appealed to me from the beginning.”
Keith is far from the only mixed martial artist to turn to a career in the film industry after fighting is done with them.
His friend and podcast co-host Tait Fletcher has extensive film credits as well, and so does ‘Cowboy’ Cerrone, who plays a cop in ‘Kill Me Again.’
Jardine also singled out former UFC middleweight champion and commentator Michael Bisping to praise the Brit’s acting.
“I’ve been paying attention to Bisping a lot because I don’t see any weaknesses in his acting game. I just saw him in Naked Gun…he was better than a lot of the seasoned actors. I believed everything he did.
“I pay attention to people that clearly take the art and the craft seriously. Because being a UFC star wears off in like 10 years, nobody’s going to care about Michael Bisping, the UFC star, being this character. They’re going to care about this charismatic actor that’s interesting [playing] a character that had nothing to do with his history.”
As for what fans can expect in the future from the Dean of Mean?
“I got an MMA script that’s probably coming up… Well, the reason why I did [‘Kill Me Again’] is because a studio wants to do an MMA script that I have. It’s kind of MMA script, in that world. It’s more of a Taxi Driver-type script, but somebody wants to do it, but I wasn’t going to direct it, of course. So that’s why I took the advantage of the writer’s strike.
“‘Well, what can I put together that can show what I can do that I can direct a feature and get these things done?’ And that’s how ‘Kill Me Again’ came along.”
For now, the slasher flick is in theatres on Friday, as well as available for rent on streaming websites.
Its a brilliant take on the slasher genre, and hopefully the fans who supported Keith in his fight career will do the same with his big screen directorial debut.
My flick, Kill Me Again in theaters August 8th. And wherever you rent. He would go! #writer #director pic.twitter.com/29rVltCsBj
— Keith Jardine (@KeithJardine205) July 16, 2025
Read the full article here