TV Talk: Disney+ debuts new episodes of ‘The World According to’ West Homestead native Jeff Goldblum

When Disney+ launched in November 2019, “The World According to Jeff Goldblum” was among the first original series to be available.

The quirky “Jurrasic Park” star, who grew up in West Homestead, explored everyday items and occurrences in season one, from ice cream to sneakers, including an episode on tattoos that was filmed partially at Artisan Café Tattoo in Garfield.

The first half of season two, streaming Nov. 12 on Disney+, doesn’t include any Pittsburgh visits — because of covid-19 protocols, production stuck close to Goldblum’s Southern California home except for a brief detour to Atlanta — but the actor shared plenty of growing-up-in-Pittsburgh recollections related to this new batch of episode’s topics: fireworks, dogs, dance and magic.

‘Fireworks’

“In West Homestead, I used to walk to and from the bus to school in grammar school. There was a little candy store named Joe Jerry’s — I’ll bet some of my classmates remember it, but I’m sure it isn’t there anymore — and they had some sparklers for sale. My two older brothers would come home with — and I don’t know how they got them — cherry bombs and M-80s, and we were all very excited about them,” Goldblum said in a recent phone interview. “And I remember those snakes [fireworks that when lit spew out ash that makes them look like an elongating snake], though I don’t think we see them in this episode.”

Goldblum said he doesn’t recall seeing fireworks at Point State Park in Downtown Pittsburgh, but he remembers watching displays at Kennywood and at a nearby drive-in.

“We were in our car before the movie started, and, as the sun went down, they started some fireworks. And I think that’s as close as I ever got to some professional fireworks,” Goldblum said. “I went, ‘Wow, they’re gonna light those things near the screen?’ And I remember that that was great.”

‘Dogs’

In the “Dogs” episode of “The World According to Jeff Goldblum,” viewers meet Goldblum’s current canine companion, Woody, a standard poodle.

“Our first dog growing up as a kid was a medium-sized, chocolate-colored poodle we called Ginger,” Goldblum said. “I’ve had other breeds of dogs, but with this last one I said to (my wife) Emilie, ‘Gee, I’d sure like to remind myself of Pittsburgh and the dog that we had by getting one kind of like the one that we had,’ and so that’s why we got this red-haired, standard poodle.”

‘Dance’

“When I was a kid in Pittsburgh, I took (dance) lessons with Mario Melodia, and then my sister and I went to this dance school where Mr. Heinrich would teach ballet to my sister,” Goldblum said. “Then I took tap lessons. I loved it. I put on little recitals or I went to a shopping mall and I remember we did this ‘Wall Street Rag’ that Mario Melodia had taught us. … And then I went to New York and my first job was a Broadway show, ‘Two Gentlemen of Verona,’ and I was dancing in it. So I’ve been dancing all along.”

‘Magic’

Goldblum said an early encounter with magic was during a family vacation to Atlantic City where he went to a magic shop and came back with a deck of cards he’d do tricks with. Some working knowledge of magic tricks proved useful on one of his first movie jobs, Robert Altman’s “Nashville.”

Though it wasn’t scripted, Altman asked Goldblum if he knew any sleight-of-hand. Goldblum didn’t, but he was in New York and found a magician to train him and some of those tricks worked their way into the film.

‘Monsters’

“I’ve played some monsters and acted with monsters and when I was a kid I was into all those monster movies,” Goldblum said.

His latest monster-adjacent movie, “Jurassic World: Dominion,” due in theaters June 10, 2022, wrapped production about a year ago.

“I can’t give anything away, but I loved doing it. I was there for three months,” Goldblum said of the sequel that reunites Goldblum with the stars of the original “Jurassic Park.” “I have a nice part in it. All of us do: Me, Sam [Neill] and Laura [Dern] along with Chris Pratt, Bryce Dallas Howard. We all get involved somehow in what you can imagine are challenges with dinosaurs and awesome experiences with dinosaurs. And many things happen, hilarity ensues and much, much loveliness and danger.”