In his long career, Jeff Goldblum has proven an eccentric celebrity with a knack for reinvention. As an actor he’s moved seamlessly from one genre to another: sci-fi (“The Fly”) and blockbusters (“Jurassic Park”) to TV procedurals (“Law & Order: Criminal Intent”) and ensemble comedies (“The Grand Budapest Hotel”). His side hustle as a jazz musician has yielded two albums. The second, released this month on Decca Records, is called “I Shouldn’t Be Telling You This” and features duets with everyone from Fiona Apple and Miley Cyrus to Gregory Porter.
As his “Jurassic Park” character Dr. Ian Malcolm might say, “Life finds a way.”
Goldblum’s latest trick is a new series on the Disney+ streaming service. “The World According to Jeff Goldblum” finds the “Big Chill” star traveling around the US, Bourdain-style, investigating a wide range of topics such as ice cream, bicycles, denim and, in the Tuesday debut, tattoos. “I’m a detective, keeping my eyes peeled for the unconventional, the educational, the whimsical,” he tells The Post.
In Baltimore, Goldblum learns from notable tattoo artist Miss Shanghai how to handle a tattoo gun. In Hawaii, he reports on the nautical origins of traditional Hawaiian tattoos. In San Francisco, he meets with Carlos Olguin, a tattoo innovator who takes him to Golden Gate Park to test a temporary tattoo that reveals when you’ve been exposed to too much sun.
With his natural curiosity and loopy charm, Goldblum effortlessly mingles with his subjects. “I am interested in people, particularly,” he says. “It’s part of my training as an actor. Sanford Meisner was my acting teacher and he said a wonderful thing when I was 17 turning 18. He said, ‘All actors want to do interesting things, but you’re interesting to the extent that you’re interested in the other actors.’ ”
If it seems like a stretch that one 67-year-old man would be equally interested in tattoos, ice cream and sneakers, Goldblum confesses that he does not choose the episode topics. “We collaborated on which subjects could yield larger interesting ideas,” he says. “Once they figured who I was going to meet and where I was going to fly to in the United States, they came up with it. I wanted to be surprised. I like to be surprised.”
The surprise on Goldblum’s face seems most genuine when he draws a tattoo on a volunteer’s leg at a tattoo parlor in Pittsburgh — his hometown — on Jeff Goldblum Day.
‘I’m a detective, keeping my eyes peeled for the unconventional, the educational, the whimsical.’
Back up a minute. Jeff Goldblum Day? “It was not created for the show,” Goldblum says, with a laugh. “It’s not on my birthday. I did a movie called ‘Pittsburgh’ where I improvised my way through a whole movie playing Jeff Goldblum. There were some invented aspects of it but we really did a show in Pittsburgh. It was a theater show, it was ‘The Music Man,’ and I really did audition for it. Around the time of the shooting I went to the [Chamber of Commerce] and they made a Jeff Goldblum Day. It was not annual. I think it was for that one day.”
For the record, Jeff Goldblum Day is July 13.
“The World According to Jeff Goldblum,” which is produced by the National Geographic channel, has 12 episodes and the star came away full of vivid impressions of the people he met. High-end jewelry designer Johnny Dang designed a grille for him that he keeps in a drawer at home. During the ice-cream episode, he had a flavor named after him, but says the most memorable part of the production was meeting military personnel at an aircraft carrier. “In the service they have these regular socials, ice-cream socials, whereby the loneliness and the challenges of what they do could be helped by ice cream and its nostalgic good-feeling properties,” he says.
The Nat Geo gig came out of conversations he had with network personnel after hosting episodes of its “Explorer” series in 2017, effectively talking his way into a job.
“Maybe the best use of me is a little more involved than just wraparoundings,” he said. “Maybe I want to go out and about. I’m very interested in people. I’m interested in all these potential subjects. It partly became an odyssey of my own.”
The resurgence in Goldblum’s popularity can be attributed to millennials, who swarm fan gatherings, buy products such as shower curtains bearing Goldblum’s image and go to his concerts. Three thousand devotees attended a May “Fan Fusion gathering” in Phoenix to declare their love.
Goldblum, who is married to former Olympic gymnast Emilie Livingston and has two sons, Charlie Ocean and River Joe, takes the strange adoration in stride. “I know this is all fleeting at best, but for right now it’s delightful,” he says. “I get to meet people who are kind and enthusiastic. And I’m enthusiastic.”