'Sin City Saints' Star Tom Arnold Thought Someone Spiked His Smoothie (and More Tales from the Vegas Set)

Sin City Saints — a show about an NBA expansion team setting up shop in Las Vegas — opens with Tom Arnold chasing his team’s mascot through the desert. That shot of the mafia-style enforcer and the terrified life-sized cartoon is one of several culture clashes that fuel the show. Old Vegas and New Vegas butt heads, Silicon Valley meets the NBA, and button-down corporate culture meets the city that never stops sinning.

The cast spent six weeks living in Caesar’s Palace and did much of the shooting at The Orleans. “It was immersive,” says Arnold, putting it kindly. Less kindly, the entire cast brought up how grueling it was to spend six weeks under the non-stop glare of the Strip. “Vegas always wins. I’ve known that for the 35 years I’ve been going there,” adds Arnold wearily.

When we sit down with Arnold, he exudes a barely-contained manic energy. His years of sobriety have forced him to channel that energy into healthier pursuits, but there’s still that sense of danger that makes him compelling to watch, especially when playing low-key roles like Sin City Saints’s Vegan insider Kevin Freeman. We talked with Arnold about trust, how shooting a series today differs from the Roseanne years, and that time he thought he was on the Native American hallucinogen ayahuasca.

On Acting With Athletes

I’m a sports junkie. You’re watching and you’re going, “That dude’s not a basketball player. You really cast the acting first, the sports second. But Baron Davis is a basketball player. Baron Davis is really good in this. He made a choice [in the table read] that was so brilliant, I thought, “Well, I’d better step it up a bit!”

On Working on Saints vs. Working on Roseanne

There is a huge amount of trust. With Roseanne, I would sit with the head writer and we would do the stories before the season started. So I’d know at least the first thirteen stories; I’d do an outline of the show, give it to a writer to do a first draft. I was really, intricately involved. [On Saints] I didn’t know: It was such blind faith… The initial [shot in Saints] of me running through the desert [chasing the mascot], I think we shot it in episode five — they rearranged stuff. On The Roseanne Show, we beat out our stories for the whole year — we couldn’t go, “I’m going to take this chunk here and put it in here, and it’s going to work.” So it’s pretty amazing.

Watch the first episode of Sin City Saints:

On the Time an “All-Natural Smoothie” Almost Killed Him

"Make me a smoothie. Wait a minute, is there any alcohol in it? Because I can’t have it. No? Any sugar? No? Make me smoothie." I go upstairs, got this smoothie, who knows what’s in it? I drink it — immediately my heart starts racing. So immediately I assume the worst, the worst kind of drug whatever.

I do six hours on the elliptical. I have that movie Whiplash, the screener. I watched it six times. I am so freaked out because I think my wife’s going to find out. I think I’m hallucinating now, but I think it’s because I worked out so much and drank so much water. Finally, at 5:30 — and I’m not working until the afternoon — finally, at 5:30, I’m calmed down to where I can sleep, but I take an Ambien because I just gotta make sure I sleep. I take it. At 7 a.m., they call me in to work. So I get up, I’m in my huge bathroom getting ready. My wife FaceTimes me every morning.

"Hi, Honey!"

"What are you doing?"

"Oh, I’ve just been getting ready for work."

"They’ve been calling."

"I know, I’m sitting here with your brother and your sister. We’re having breakfast and we’re going in."

"My brother and sister are not there."

"Yes they are! They’re right here!"

And they’re not there, [it was just a] dream I was having… And then my wife freaks, because she’s constantly afraid that I’m going to go off the wagon or something horrible’s going to happen. So I go into work, I fly home. My wife takes me to doctor immediately. Blood tests: Nothing. Apparently, there was agave in there. A bunch. It tasted so f—king good. But I psyched myself into [believing I had accidentally taken] something. But that’s Vegas, that’s part of being there. “Oh the worst thing in the world is happening, it must be happening!” Plus, we just filmed a scene where we took ayahuasca in the scene, so that was in the back of my head too. “I am on ayahuasca!”

Well, we’ll say this for Tom Arnold: The guy knows how to sell a show.

All eight episodes of Sin City Saints are available now at Yahoo Screen.