NEW MILFORD ACTOR TO STAR IN NEW AMAZON PRIME CRIME TV SERIES 'MOB MENTALITY': 'SEE WHAT HAPPENS'

NEW MILFORD - Jeffrey Alan Solomon has enjoyed expanding his acting range through a medley of dramatic roles, from the New Milford-based horror movies "Founders Day" and "Candlewood" to the biographical TV series "Wu-Tang: An American Saga."

But one role he's always coveted is a mob story.

"I've played bad guys, but I've never done something like this," the New Milford resident said, "so it's something I've always wanted to do."

Come this spring, Solomon will be filming the first season of a new Amazon Prime crime thriller series, "Mob Mentality." The series focuses on a young man who returns home from prison to assume his father's role as the don of a New York mob family, according to Solomon.

Solomon said he first auditioned for the show in April 2024 in New York City and was cast as Irish gangster Tommy Malloy.

"I actually got this one without my agent, and this one looked very interesting," Solomon said, "so I thought, ‘Let me see what happens.'"

While filming for the show's first season was originally planned for this past summer, the date had to get pushed back. A few weeks ago, while

wrapping up the filming of "Lady America," a new drama film by New Milford director Myke Furhman in which Solomon stars as wealthy leader Caesar Justice, Solomon finally got the update on the show's new filming schedule.

"Mob Mentality" will start filming in Babylon, N.Y., in April, with a world premiere scheduled for January 2027, according to Solomon. He said the show's first season will be available for viewing in its entirety on Amazon immediately following the premiere.

"It's a very fresh take on the mob and the mob story," Solomon said. "It's not ‘The Godfather,' not ‘The Sopranos' - it's something entirely different. I've seen the stuff they've done already - the integrity of this stuff is amazing."

A native of Fairfield, Solomon fell in love with acting at an early age, having been raised on Broadway show tunes with two actors as parents.

By the age of 9, Solomon said he had an opportunity to act when he attended summer camp at the former JCC in Monroe and was cast as the Artful Dodger in "Oliver!" He was cast as Tevye in "Fiddler on the Roof" the following summer and met composer Leonard Bernstein, whose children also attended the camp, as well as composer Adolph Green and singer Betty Compton.

"They came up to me after the show and said, ‘We're going to remember you,'" Solomon said. "Of course, they didn't, but it was nice to be recognized. My parents were flipping out, and that was the beginning."

Yet Solomon said he decided to pursue music instead of continuing to act. As a musician, producer, singer and songwriter, he said he collaborated with fellow artists, had record deals with RCA Records and "made every mistake I could possibly make."

Even with his music career, Solomon said acting was "something I kept in the back of my mind," and he knew he could always return to it. He started making his return to the stage around 2010 when he acted in local productions alongside his wife Kelly Solomon, an actress and a social studies teacher at New Milford Public Schools.

By 2013, Solomon said his wife encouraged him to "give New York City a shot and see what he can do." Within a few months' time, he received his first TV gig as an actor on the Discovery ID show "Celebrity Ghost Stories."

From that moment onward, Solomon said his acting experiences "have all been terrific and it's just an ascension."

"It takes a while," he admitted. "You have to have a lot of patience, a lot of tenacity. You hit a lot of dead ends, but you keep going, and I've had terrific opportunities … just being in the right place at the right time and always just putting it out there, never giving up on myself and understanding what it is I'm doing and how it works, because you can defeat yourself if you try to do this. You really have to understand yourself."

Among his most recent projects, Solomon has acted in the 2025 horror movie "Candlewood" and the upcoming drama film "Lady America" - both of which were directed by Furhman.

"I compare Myke to an up-and-coming Steven Spielberg," Solomon said. "It's an honor to get to work with Myke, who happens to be one of my wife's students. She used to come home and talk about him because he's a prankster and how funny he was and then I ended up working with him. He's got a terrific imagination and that's what you need as a director."

Solomon said he's also working with Furhman to produce a TV screenplay that Solomon wrote with his friend Armen Garo. The screenplay, titled "Teri and Breeze," focuses on the partnership between "one detective who should have retired and a fresh-out-of-the-academy female detective," according to Solomon.

Solomon said Furhman is working with a production company to get the screenplay off the ground and will be charged with casting and directing. Solomon himself will star as the older detective's former partner.

"It all boils down to the craft and being able to do good work," he said, "and I'm thrilled to be able to do it and I'm so grateful for the opportunities I've had."

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2025-12-08T11:01:26Z