John Schneider Feels Like He’s In The Prime Of His Life

Some people get the surprise of their lives when they hear of impending fatherhood. Sometimes it’s so much of a surprise, the new daddy eventually finds himself on Maury Povich’s show. But imagine finding out decades later that you have a daughter. This is the predicament John Schneider’s character faces in a new Hallmark Channel original film, Come Dance at My Wedding, premiering June 6.

Schneider plays Tanner Gray, a carpenter who receives a letter from a daughter he didn’t know he had — a small-town dance instructor with an imminent wedding, who’s looking to sell the dance studio bequeathed to her by her now-deceased mother. Tanner’s name is on the deed, and she needs his signature to make the sale, but when he decides to meet his daughter first, the lives of everyone involved are about to change.

Oddly enough, the story mirrors a part of Schneider’s own life. “I found out about four years ago that there’s another child in my life, but it wasn’t mine,” he says, noting how strange it sounds, even years later. “My wife had had a child a long time ago [that was given up for adoption],” he continues. “They wound up getting in touch with each other. … It’s not a child that I fathered, but this is my wife’s biological daughter, so in many regards, she’s mine, so I feel very close to her. When I met her, she was about the age of the daughter in the movie, so I know that I pulled [Tanner’s responses] from some of that.”

Some might choose to receive news of an unknown child in a negative manner, but Schneider is characteristically thrilled. Children play a big part in his life, and have at least since he helped to found the Children’s Miracle Network more than 25 years ago. These days, the charity is so big that Schneider, while still involved, is able to take a less “hands-on” role than he used to and it continues to grow. “Was it Michael Eisner who coined the synergy model, where once you reach a certain point, it just gets exponentially bigger? It grows and grows and grows? One and one equals 10? That’s what has happened,” he explains. “This actually looks like this is going to be our best year yet. We’ve never gone backwards in our fundraising — we’ve always raised more money than the previous year. … It looks as if we’re going to raise, again, $350-$370 million — in this economy, which is really quite amazing.”

In the meantime, when he’s not working with the Children’s Miracle Network or taking up one of the incredibly varied roles he’s been offered in recent years — everything from Satan to God, literally, as he puts it — Schneider has been trying to spend more time behind the camera, developing shows for television. “[I] just sold a show to Spike TV,” he says, describing his creation Crash Test Dummies. “It’s a reality show based on accident re-creation, so it has to do with stunts — car stunts, boat stunts, skiing, airplanes; the whole thing.”

Now Schneider wants to take the concept into the realm of the scripted series. As of our talk, the pilot had yet to be picked up, but it sounds like a recipe for success: one part crime investigation, two parts car crashes and other accidents. “In that show, I will be playing my buddy, who actually does this for a living,” Schneider offers. “He’s called out to re-create accidents where the cause of the accident is in dispute. And whatever he finds will determine who’s guilty and who the insurance company pays or not. It’s a really interesting thing that he does — keeps people out of jail sometimes; sends people to jail sometimes. But it’s real, it’s what he does, and I’m going to play him.” He’s obviously excited about the part, and about the show’s potential as a whole, but a lot of that excitement is fueled by his finally being in the driver’s seat. “I’ll be the guy in it, but more important to me — because I’ve made millions of dollars for people that don’t even like me — I will be the guy behind it, as well. I’ll be the creator and one of the owners of this show. … And that’s really the business to be in.”

So things are looking up for Schneider at 49, and even as his long career continues, the surprises haven’t stopped, as a recent look behind a desk yielded a bit of forgotten treasure. “Talk about finding gold,” he says. “The last album I did, I was living with Johnny Cash. Johnny was a very dear friend of mine. He wanted to come in and sing a duet with me. So he did, and all during the session, the engineer kept the tape running. Then he burned me a CD that I was really unaware that I had, and I found this thing about two months ago, behind the desk on the floor, and it said, ‘Johnny and John in the Studio.’ And I listened to this thing, and it’s a half an hour of John Schneider and Johnny Cash just cutting up, laughing and singing, and having the greatest time singing a song called ‘Hell This Ain’t Heaven.'”

Schneider says the session disc is available through an outlet called soundsoflegends.com. (“They’re not a record label, but they kind of are,” he says.) And he couldn’t be more enthusiastic about the possibility of getting back into the music world, a world he’s known well for decades. “I do miss that,” he says, ruefully. “I’ve got a guitar in the corner of every room in my house, and it pains my heart when somebody says, ‘Oh! I heard you used to sing!’ or ‘I didn’t know you sang!'”