Growing Belushi: How Jim Belushi went from Hollywood star to cannabis farmer

From Hollywood to cannabis farming in Oregon, Jim Belushi's life has taken an unexpected turn in recent years. As his new show, Growing Belushi, premiers in New Zealand, he speaks to Rebecca Blithe about witnessing the medicinal benefits of cannabis and how a different stance on the drug could have saved his brother's life.

Jim Belushi's still got it. As he cuts a dainty step-ball-change across the floor and serenades his audience - a lush crop of "ladies" - with a harmonica's tinny warble, it's clear the actor-singer-dancer has brought his well-honed star quality to his new casting as a cannabis farmer.

Famous for his roles on comedy sketch show, Saturday Night Live, hit series According to Jim and numerous silver screen roles from Curly Sue to Woody Allen's Wonder Wheel starring alongside Kate Winslet, Growing Belushi is his new reality TV series that tracks the Hollywood stalwart's highs and lows as he grows and sells cannabis.

Belushi spoke to the Herald from his farm in Oregon in the US, situated in what's known as the banana belt of America. It's the most fertile land in the country for growing grapes, pears and cannabis.

"This area grows great pinot gris, great pinot noir, and it grows great cannabis."

It may seem an unusual move for a Hollywood star to up sticks and start a business farming marijuana, which became legal to sell in dispensaries in Oregon in 2015. But as Belushi explains, his raison d'être is still achieved with his new venture.

"My profession as an actor and a comic actor is entertainment. Entertainment is about making people feel good. Releasing endorphins through laughs. Entertainment is medicine. So, for me, moving from an actor to a musician to a cannabis farmer, it's all in the same realm of influencing people to feel better. I've blended it all together in Growing Belushi."

As his new series reveals, Belushi and his ragtag team of workers, described as being "like a family", have been on a huge learning curve to create the now successful farm that produces "the best cannabis in Southern Oregon".

"I didn't know sh**," Belushi says. "When I started it was becoming a very hip movement. I learned from the growers. I learned from other people in this area that grow. I hired a grower, learned a lot, he made a lot of mistakes. Got a new grower, learned what we did wrong. He made a lot of mistakes. I finally got the best grower. Now we're making the best cannabis in Southern Oregon."

Belushi and his ragtag team of workers have been on a huge learning curve to create the now successful farm that produces "the best cannabis in Southern Oregon." Photo / Supplied

And while he confesses when he started out he was very much of the "hey man, let's grow some pot" mindset, he's come to learn that cannabis can "really change people's lives."

The moment Belushi's mission became clear was at one of his visits to a dispensary where "it's like a personal appearance and there's like 200 people in the parking lot. They want my autograph, to take a picture, I always walk along the line, touch everyone and say, I'll see you inside."

But on a particular dispensary "meet and greet", a man with piercing blue eyes would share his story with Belushi and give the actor's venture a new sense of purpose.

"There was a gentleman with long stringy hair, very thin, blue eyes, shaggy beard. And he just stared at me."

Belushi struck up a conversation with the man and learned he had been a medic in the Iraq war.

"He said, 'I saw things that happened to the human body that nobody should ever witness in their whole life. I can't talk to my wife. It's hard for me to relate to my children and I can't sleep, Jim. I have what they call triple PTSD, they gave me a bottle of 600 OxyContin and I couldn't' do it. I turned to cannabis. 'Your Black Diamond OG strain - it's the only one that helps me talk to my wife and my children and helps me sleep.'

"He teared up and he hugged me."

Belushi says "that day when I drove away I went, 'whoa'. That started the beginning of my journey to being like, hey man, this really changes people's lives."

And he believes it could have not just changed but saved the life of his brother, John Belushi, who died of a drug overdose in 1982, aged 33.

Belushi shares "if we knew back then what's now known about the healing properties of cannabis", John, best known for his iconic role in The Blues Brothers alongside Dan Akroyd, might still be alive today.

Jim's brother, John Belushi, died from a drug overdose when he was 33. Photo / Getty Images

"If John was using cannabis strictly, like Danny did, he'd be alive. Once you cross that line into opiates, the risk of death jumps. I really believe John had CTE [chronic traumatic encephalopathy] from playing football really hard. And I feel there were traumas in his life. I think he was self-medicating. He was struggling like people struggle. Marijuana was considered a drug then. It wasn't considered a medicine. Now it is."

While it becomes apparent that Belushi's journey includes harrowing encounters and resurfacing of personal traumas, the actor's larger-than-life character ensures light-hearted comic appeal to the series too.

Filmed waving a wind chime around his plants, Belushi plays them Marvin Gaye in the morning, funk into the afternoon, and can be seen spritzing his ladies and chatting away to "Heather", a particularly long-stemmed plant named after a particularly long-legged woman.

"You have to buy into the spiritual world sooner or later in your life. These plants are spiritual plants, they're living organisms and they respond to music the way you and I do. They love the rhythms and the sounds and the resonance. When they're happy, they produce more."

Learning New Zealand's referendum to legalise recreational use of cannabis did not pass, Belushi frowns before saying, "The fear around it comes from a lack of knowledge.

"That's one of the reasons I did Growing Belushi. I'm trying to build some confidence in cannabis, showing how it's grown, showing what it is. People are suffering, whether it's PTSD, traumatic problems, the loss of a job, divorce, severe illness, a death in the family, like my brother John, was a traumatic event for our family. Trauma collapses family. All I'm saying is cannabis is a gentle pathway to healing."

Growing Belushi premieres on Bravo in New Zealand on Thursday, November 11, at 9.30pm. New episodes continue weekly on Thursdays at the same time.