The trailer for Jimmy was revealed May 20 at the Jimmy Stewart Museum in Indiana, Pennsylvania, and the film’s star, Neal McDonough, 60, used the moment to recount being fired, blackballed and the personal losses that followed.
McDonough told the audience — and anyone watching the new trailer — that his career once nearly collapsed after he refused to kiss a co‑star. "It was, you know, fired from a show because I wouldn't kiss a woman. No one would hire me because they thought I was this religious nut bag, which is that I love my wife so much. And no one can understand it, no one could understand it," he said, recalling how the decision cost him work and then everything he had accumulated: "I lost the house, lost the cars, lost everything." He described the moment he felt he had failed his family: "Justified was just coming out, but I still didn't think I was worth anything because I failed to my family. I failed, [my wife] Ruve, my five kids, that I lost our house. I lost all the beautiful things that were the shiny widgets that I had accumulated, were all taken away from me. And that crucifixion caused me so much inner pain because I made it all about me. How could I let the team down?"
In the darkest stretch, McDonough said his drinking became a serious problem. He credited his wife with forcing a choice that changed everything: "She grabbed me and says, it's us or the bottle, you choose," he said, and he quit. He has been married to Ruve for 25 years and said of her, "It's just a cold, hard fact that God gave me an amazing, incredible, most amazing woman that I've ever met. I can talk forever about it, but she's my good luck charm, and she got through me hell, and now here I am, in a fantastic place in life that we're producing movies together. And I can't tell you how amazing that feels." He also recalled a period when, after losing their home, another actor helped them: McDonough said Luke Perry let him and his family live in Perry's home.
Those personal details landed alongside the promotional moment for Jimmy. The film — which McDonough said he is currently starring in — tells the story of Jimmy Stewart and is being made in celebration of what would have been Stewart’s 118th birthday. The trailer was revealed at the museum on May 20, the same event that opened a new exhibit called "The Making of 'Jimmy.'" KJ Apa, who portrays Stewart, called the role an "enormous responsibility," saying, "Jimmy Stewart was a hero" and that the production aims to honor his "legacy, service, and family." Aaron Burns, the director, framed the film as one of inspiration: "Hope and inspiration were at the heart of who Jimmy Stewart was, both on screen and in life," he said, and added that debuting the trailer in Stewart's hometown was meant to honor that legacy. Kelly Stewart‑Harcourt, Stewart’s daughter, is the film’s executive producer. The film is set to hit theaters nationwide on Nov. 6.
The tension in McDonough’s story is obvious: a principled refusal on a set that he says cost him his career and nearly his family, followed by a slow rebuilding that put him and his wife on the same professional team. McDonough and Ruve now work together as producing partners and have made Boon, The Warrant: Breaker's Law, Homestead and The Last Rodeo. The trajectory from blackballing and near‑ruin to co‑producing films and starring in a high‑profile biopic is the friction point that makes the trailer reveal more than a marketing stop: it is a marker of where his life stands now.
McDonough's punch line in conversation still landed like a man who knows the road he walked: "What time is the bar open?" he joked — a line that lands differently now that he says he chose his family over the bottle. The clear result is that he rebuilt a career on different terms: sober, partnered with his wife and back in the frame as a lead in a film debuting to theaters on Nov. 6. That is the answer to the question his story raises — he did not abandon principle or family; he lost almost everything and then made a deliberate choice to rebuild around them.
