For Eden Prairie native Adam Bartley, shooting the film “Unholy Communion” largely in and around St. Paul’s West 7th neighborhood was almost like a vacation.

“I mean, I get to finish the day at work and then go have a beer with my brother,” Bartley said during an interview in February, just prior to the end of filming. “You know, I’m usually working in Atlanta or L.A. or Santa Fe or Chicago or Vancouver and I’m by myself. To be able to do my work where my family is, it’s such a blessing.

“My dad’s a snowbird and spends half the year in Florida, so I’ve actually been staying in his house. My mom’s here, my two younger brothers, their six nephews and nieces. Usually, when I visit, I’m just here a couple of days. It’s been nice to have an extended stay.”

Bartley plays Washington County investigator Chris Majek, who is tracking a serial killer preying on priests.

Filming began Monday, Jan. 22, 2024 in St. Paul on “Unholy Communion,” based on the book written by Scandia resident and retired Forest Lake dentist Thomas Rumreich, shown here with his wife Ruth. (Courtesy of Thomas Rumreich)

It’s based on the novel of the same name by Scandia author Thomas Rumreich, who drew on his own experience of being sexually abused by a priest when he was a college student at St. John’s University as well as the 16 years he spent working as a forensic odontologist for the Ramsey County Medical Examiner. Producers of the independently financed film plan to seek distribution later this year.

It didn’t take Bartley long to say yes to the role after local writer/director/actor Patrick Coyle first approached him through a family connection. “I read his script and I called him the next day and I’m, like, ‘Yeah, man. I’m in, I’m in. I gotta work out the details, but I’m in.’ And it’s just been one ridiculous blessing after the next.”

Making his way from the stage to the screen

Bartley first caught the acting bug in the eighth grade.

“I sort of somehow got roped into doing a musical,” he said. “I can still remember very vividly the reaction from my performance, how it felt to have my parents and friends laugh and enjoy what I was doing and find it funny. I knew right then that was what I was going to do.

“My dad was an actor here in St. Paul at a theater called Chimera Theatre. He was a major part of that theater and gave it up after he met my mom and had me. I probably got some of it from him and some of it from my mom. I was always singing at the piano with him or putting on a show.”

But Bartley ended up taking a circuitous path from making his peers laugh in eighth grade to landing his breakthrough role on the Western crime drama “Longmire,” where he spent six seasons playing the oafish young deputy Archie “The Ferg” Ferguson.

Adam Bartley

He continued to act through high school and went on earn an acting scholarship at Southern Methodist University. After graduating, he spent a decade doing everything from teaching kids acting in Colorado to performing in Alaska and New York.

“I was in New York for four years, working,” he said. “And then personal circumstances kind of came to a head. I was engaged and that fell apart and I decided, ‘Who cares about being afraid to try something different?’ That’s when I moved to Los Angeles in 2010.”

But as a stage actor seeking to move to the screen, Bartley didn’t know what to expect.

“I honestly could not tell you how I was going to make the transition,” he said. “I was nervous about it. But I just moved there with my dog, stayed on some couches and had a mindset that was, like, ‘Let’s go.’ I’m going to make this happen. I’m going to use all this skill and talent and craft that I’ve studied and I’m going to find a way.”

Bartley eventually found an agent and began auditioning for roles. He did a commercial and an episode of “Criminal Minds.” (“I had one line,” he said with a laugh.) A friend who knew people working on “Longmire” called Bartley and urged him to audition.

“I went in for an audition and it was just like a beautiful thing happened,” he said. “It was this wonderful moment of knowing that this was my role, it was meant for me. Sometimes in Hollywood you feel like, wow, this is going to be a stretch to get this part. And then sometimes you feel like, wow, this is perfect for me. Every once in a while you’re like, all right, this one’s mine.”

Life after ‘Longmire’

“Longmire” debuted on A&E in 2012 and after three successful seasons, it moved to Netflix for three more.

Like many cable and streaming dramas, “Longmire” seasons ran 10 to 13 episodes each. After that, did Bartley want to land a more traditional, and secure, network job with, say, 22 episodes a year?

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“It’s funny, I remember when I got off ‘Longmire,’ I was, like, ‘I don’t think I’d want to be on one of those shows,’” he said with a laugh. “But after a year of waiting for a big job, it’s like I’ll be happy to do ‘NCIS: Albuquerque’ or whatever. It’s a different kind of TV, but it’s solid work and you make some good money. If there’s a little bit of job security for a while as an actor, you take it. You take it all day because you never know what’s next. You never know what’s around the corner.”

Bartley did find some work in the latter half of the ’10s, including three episodes of “This Is Us” and the role of political pollster Frank Luntz in the Dick Cheney biopic “Vice.” He auditioned, but was not hired for, a series role on Ryan Murphy’s procedural drama “9-1-1: Lone Star.”

“I was up for one of the main characters,” he said. “It was me and this other guy, I had a 50-50 shot. That would have set me up to be in a good spot financially for a long time, with constant work. But then I wouldn’t have been on ‘Night Sky’ and I probably wouldn’t be in this movie.”

Trimming down for himself and his career

Amazon Studios cast the science fiction drama series “Night Sky” in early 2021 and Bartley was hired for the series, which starred Sissy Spacek and J. K. Simmons as an elderly Illinois couple who discover a device that can teleport them to another world.

With a five-month wait before shooting began, Bartley decided it was time to lose some weight, for his own health as well as the health of his career.

Adam Bartley is one of the stars in the movie “Unholy Communion,” which began production Jan. 22, 2024 in St. Paul. (Courtesy of Bjoern Kommerel)

“I had spent a long time watching myself on ‘Longmire’ and seeing myself on camera. I kind of got cornered into a certain type of role. The auditions coming in were all very similar kinds of characters. I was ready to put the time and energy in to show up on camera for ‘Night Sky’ as slim as I could and really change my body type so that I could have the ability to play all types of things. There are other facets of me I can bring to a story beyond just being the deputy, you know?

“It took a big effort. I got a health coach, I got a trainer, I put everything into it. While I was in Chicago shooting ‘Night Sky,’ I actually kind of fell in love with (the process). I changed my diet, I work out six days a week, I eat a lot of protein and vegetables, I do fasting and cold plunges. I was able to make that pivot.”

“Night Sky” premiered on Amazon Prime Video in May 2022, to generally positive reviews. Preproduction for a second season was set to begin that September, but in July, Amazon canceled the series due to the production costs.

“I thought, ‘Why would they ever cancel Sissy Spacek and J. K. Simmons? They’re legends, they’re Oscar winners.’ And boy did they shut that thing down quicker than anybody would have believed. So you just never know what to expect.

“But here I am playing a lead role in a film, which is not something I would have thought I’d be doing a few years ago. I’m not cornered into a type and that’s tough after you do that type, like I did for 12 years. But I did that. It’s time to play other things and have other opportunities.”

‘We have a special thing going on’

Writer/director Patrick Coyle discusses a scene in the film “Unholy Communion” with actor Adam Bartley. (Courtesy of Catrina Engleby)

Taking the lead in “Unholy Communion” meant Bartley had to pass on the chance to finally work with Ryan Murphy. He was offered a role in “Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story,” a fictionalized take on the infamous brothers who murdered their parents in 1996. But the shooting schedule coincided with “Unholy Communion.”

“I’ve been trying to get on a Ryan Murphy show for a while,” he said. “I got this one and we tried to make it work, but I’m in pretty much every scene (of ‘Unholy Communion’). It just wasn’t going to happen. But what are you going to do? Doing this film is a big dream and to be able to do this and play this role and be with these guys …”

Vincent Kartheiser (“Mad Men,” “Another Day in Paradise”) and Adam Bartley (“Longmire,” “NCIS: Los Angeles”) star in “Unholy Communion,” a murder mystery based on the book of the same name by Scandia author Thomas Rumreich. (Chris Pizzello/Invision/AP and Evan Agostini/Invision/AP)

Fellow Minnesota native Vincent Kartheiser (“Mad Men”) plays the best friend of Bartley’s character in the film, but the rest of the cast and crew are all locals.

“I think people are going to love it, I really do,” he said. “The actors coming through are just incredible and the quality of the crew, I’m wowed every day. I do believe we have a special thing going on, and I don’t always feel that way.”

Bartley said he hopes to see more television and film projects shot in Minnesota.

“The landscape is so original, so beautiful — in the winter, in the summer, all of it. There’s so much beauty here, so much to invest in and so many talented people. There’s already this infrastructure of crew that is only going to get more experienced, bigger and have more jobs.

“Minnesota is already on the map, but it’s going to grow into a powerhouse. I see it, I’m watching it in real time. I’d love to buy a house here and work here all the time. You can’t come close to the quality of people here. You can talk crap about us all day, it’s too cold, flyover this, flyover that. But you just can’t beat the people.”

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