Jason George
Jason George is an actor with more than 50 guest-starring and 10 series-regular television roles to his credit in primetime television. Originally, George and his mentor – a Virginia Supreme Court Justice – had mapped out a career path in law. However, a college friend coaxed George into taking an acting class, where he discovered his true calling. The career change paid off when he beat out 14,000 hopefuls in a nationwide search and landed his first major acting job on Aaron Spelling’s “Sunset Beach.” After several years on “Grey’s Anatomy” as Dr. Ben Warren, George turned in his scrubs for firefighter gear when his character helped start the spinoff hit action-drama series, “Station 19,” about heroic firefighters. Now, George moves seamlessly between both series.
George is also known for his work as a regular on “Mistresses,” “Eve,” “Off Centre” and “Eli Stone,” as well as films including “Breaking In” with Gabrielle Union and “Playing the Field” with Gerard Butler. Other projects include “With This Ring” with Jill Scott, Eve and Regina Hall; “Indivisible”; “Witches of East End”; “The Climb”; and “Barbershop” with Anthony Anderson and Ice Cube.
A classically trained theater actor, George’s most recent stage work had him starring in the well-received but controversial production of “12 Angry Men” at the Pasadena Playhouse. The play, with its half-white, half-Black cast, won the NAACP Theater Award for Best Production; and George had the honor of playing Juror No. 8, the role made famous by Henry Fonda and Jack Lemon in film versions. In a prior stage outing, George played the lead in U.S. poet laureate and Pulitzer Prize winner Rita Dove’s epic drama “The Darker Face of the Earth,” which relocates Sophocles’ “Oedipus Rex” to the plantation South in 1820.
When not onstage or in front of the camera, George’s passion turns to advocacy, education and engagement with his community, other artists and young people. He has partnered with or given speeches for organizations and schools such as Public Counsel, Reform L.A. Jails, Feminist Majority, Death Penalty Focus, Philadelphia Youth Study Center, the University of Virginia, Duke Ellington School of the Arts, the National Association of Latino Independent Producers and The Paley Center for Media (formally known as The Museum of Television and Radio).
After receiving a Bachelor of Arts from University of Virginia, George went on to get his Master of Fine Arts in acting from Temple University. As a result, he currently serves on the board for the Virginia Film Festival and has previously served on the board for Temple’s School of Communications and Theater.
George continues to work toward better representation of people of color in media, as well as diversity, equality, inclusion and protection for his fellow actors by serving on the national boards of the actors’ union, SAG-AFTRA and the SAG-AFTRA Foundation, its philanthropic arm. He is currently the chair of the national union’s Diversity Advisory committee, has been chair or co-chair of the legacy unions’ National or Hollywood EEO Committees, and has spent over 15 years as part of the unions’ negotiating teams for the last several primetime television and film contracts—where he has been instrumental in helping protect performers and championing diversity. George is also passionate about ending gun violence and sits on the creative council for Everytown, the grassroots anti-gun violence organization. George is extremely pleased to put all of this experience to work in Collaborations Workshop, a weekly workspace he hosts for actors to further their craft and their career.
