Jacob Whiteduck-Lavoie may have relatively little onscreen experience, but he seized the chance to share several scenes with Jeffrey Dean Morgan, who in Sterling Point portrays his father Joe. For the actor who plays Ellis, handling all that performance pressure on set wasn’t easy, and he did everything possible to live up to the professional expectations of the job.
Sterling Point: Jacob Whiteduck-Lavoie on what it was like working as a fan with Jeffrey Dean Morgan and what his regret is
It isn’t every day that you get to work up close with someone you admire, and for Jacob Whiteduck-Lavoie that opportunity unfolded on the set of Sterling Point, a TV series streaming on Prime Video that became one of the summer 2026’s most talked-about titles and is headed back with a second season. While Jacob portrayed Ellis, Jeffrey Dean Morgan took on the role of his father Joe, who had a romantic past with Annie’s mother years earlier. That closeness at a certain point had been deceptive: many assumed Joe was Ramona’s biological father, but after a paternity test, Ramona learned her real father is Steven, who had adopted Annie and Connor because natural pregnancy no longer seemed feasible.
Reflecting on the Sterling Point experience, Jacob Whiteduck-Lavoie told People that, “When they told me Jeffrey Dean Morgan would be playing my dad, I was stunned. I was a big Walking Dead fan in high school. Everyone knows Negan. He’s a legend.” Beyond being a fan, the actor wanted to give his best as a performer, so he revisited every script: “Those scenes were very clearly highlighted. Obviously I’d never had the chance to work with an actor of that caliber before, so those were the most important moments and I absolutely wanted them to be perfect. Every time I looked at the interiors of Joe’s house, I thought, ‘Oh, wow. Okay, take a sip of water, let’s do this.’ Honestly, in every scene with Joe I felt it had to be flawless.”
In particular, Jacob Whiteduck-Lavoie was eagerly anticipating the father‑son showdown, which unfolded in the penultimate episode of the first season: “During that fight scene I was panicking. Of course I was very nervous before filming it. But Jeffrey is excellent. And it’s so funny to see him not in the villain’s shoes. In person he’s a fantastic person. He’s simply the nicest guy in the world. In the early days when I first met him, I thought, ‘Okay.’ He’s not a diva or a prima donna. He’s just incredibly laid-back.” In fact, while they were shooting Sterling Point in Canada, Jeffrey Dean Morgan was also busy with principal photography for The Walking Dead: Dead City, as his on‑camera son noted: “He’d always be coming and going from Toronto. He was super busy with shoots, appearing on talk shows and the like. So he’d say, ‘Oh, I’ve got a flight in three hours. I need to finish filming.’ He was always on the move. And yet his energy is reassuring. He doesn’t offer a lot of concrete advice, but his energy is very calming, and since he’s been on set forever, he knows how things work and doesn’t get rattled easily. We didn’t really have time to sit down and have dinner together, and I miss that a bit, but I learned a lot working with him. He’s truly a fantastic person,’ he concluded.
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