Bob Sedgwick, brother of Kyra, dishonored family as ‘drug kingpin’

In Might 1990, Robert Sedgwick ought to’ve been on prime of the world. The 29-year-old actor had simply booked a recurring gig on the ABC cleaning soap opera “One Life To Reside.” He was making a grand a day, and although he thought of cleaning soap operas “the bottom job within the appearing meals chain,” he was nonetheless grateful for the work. 

The one downside? He was additionally in the midst of a courtroom trial for drug possession and conspiracy to distribute. Accused of being the chief of an underground New York dope trafficking empire, his legal professionals warned that he is perhaps despatched away for 5 years or extra. 

And but, Sedgwick’s agent thought it was a gold mine that he was taking part in a drug vendor whereas concurrently dealing with costs for being a drug vendor, the actor writes in his new memoir, “Bob Goes to Jail” (Uncommon Fowl Books), out now. 

“It’s best to publicize the shit out of this,” the agent advised Sedgwick. “You’d by no means cease working!” 

However he turned down requests for interviews from magazines like Particulars, largely as a result of he didn’t “wish to deliver consideration to my sister and brother-in-law,” writes Sedgwick. 

His sister is actress Kyra Sedgwick and her husband is Kevin Bacon. She was recent off of her breakout position reverse Tom Cruise in “Born on the Fourth of July” and Bacon was already a star because of “Footloose.” 

“Rob, they’ve consideration — you don’t,” his agent advised him. “You want all the eye you may get.” 

At first of 1990, Sedgwick had come off a lackluster few years as an actor, starring in forgettable motion pictures like “Nasty Hero” and “Staying Collectively.” After which, on Jan. 31, 1990, DEA brokers raided his 12-bedroom Higher West Facet house — which belonged to his grandparents, who’d let him keep there whereas they traveled within the West Indies — and busted him with 250 kilos of marijuana. 

Brokers mistakenly assumed Sedgwick was a drug lord and the brains behind the operation. However he was only a “schmuck” (his phrase) who’d made mates with the flawed individuals and had a pedigree that made his arrest all of the extra embarrassing. 

The Sedgwick household has an extended and prestigious lineage, from Decide Theodore Sedgwick, the fourth speaker of the US Home of Representatives, to Edie Sedgwick, the ill-fated muse for each Andy Warhol and Bob Dylan. 

“I can’t imagine you’ll do one thing like this,” his father, enterprise capitalist Henry Dwight Sedgwick, scolded him. “I ought to have made you go to church and costume higher. You’re a Sedgwick, for God’s sake!” 

His youthful sister, Kyra, was extra sympathetic to her brother’s drug transgressions, particularly given their household historical past. 

After their dad and mom’ divorce after they had been younger, their mother, Patricia, a speech therapist, remarried in 1971 to renown artwork vendor Ben Heller, a collector of summary expressionists like Jackson Pollock and Mark Rothko. The household moved into an elaborate townhouse at 127 East seventy fifth St., with butlers, a lounge the scale of a basketball courtroom and, because the Sedgwick children quickly found, an abundance of medicine and alcohol. 

Whereas nonetheless youngsters, Kyra simply 13, they’d frequently get pleasure from booze and cocaine they procured from their in-house prepare dinner/nanny Linus, who instructed them to name coke “recipes” when on the cellphone (in case it was being tapped) and taught them “all about medication, wonderful music, superior debauchery, [and] Bohemia gone berserk,” Sedgwick writes. 

“I’m so pleased,” Kyra would squeal, eagerly snorting cocaine as they ignored their mom’s nervous knocking on the bed room door. “I really feel smarter. Does that sound silly?” 

Later, in 1988, Sedgwick had an opportunity encounter with a drug vendor named Jordan, a longtime good friend of Sedgwick’s youthful brother, Nikko, a painter. 

At 27, Sedgwick allowed Jordan to retailer and distribute massive portions of dope out of his grandparents’ lavish house on eighty fifth and Broadway. In change, Sedgwick netted 1000’s of {dollars} only for having the keys to the most effective protected home in New York. 

Sedgwick’s facet hustle gave him a cocky confidence in auditions. 

“My newfound gangster gait … truly nurtured a blossoming uptown aura of cool,” he writes. “After I auditioned, I didn’t care. And after they smelled freedom on you, that’s while you had been wished.” 

He landed a task within the Barbara Hershey/Keanu Reeves studio film “Tune in Tomorrow.” 

After which got here the drug bust. As Sedgwick would quickly study, his informal confidence additionally made the DEA assume he was the primary man of their drug-dealing operation. 

“They thought I used to be surprisingly composed through the precise bust,” Sedgwick writes. However really, “concern reverberated in each fiber of my being.” 

His appearing chops possible saved him ultimately. At his sentencing in January of 1991 — simply months after his character on “One Life to Reside” was written off the present — Sedgwick pleaded responsible in courtroom and gave a mea culpa that someway swayed the decide to provide him a four-year suspended sentence. 

He bought sober 4 years later and shortly after was forged as baddie Rolf in 1995’s “Die Onerous with a Vengeance,” adopted by different roles on reveals like “Legislation & Order,” “30 Rock” and “Orange Is the New Black.” 

In the meantime, Jordan, the drug vendor who led to his brush with the legislation, stays one among his finest mates to this present day. 

“Once we speak in regards to the bust, it’s one thing that we share simply between ourselves,” Sedgwick advised The Put up. “As a sacred, deadly, surreal reminiscence.”