Former Miami Vice Star's Concerning Views Left Him In A Strange Place With Hollywood Producers

It was actually due to a huge stroke of luck that Thomas ended up on Miami Vice. The show cost around $1 million per episode, very unusual for the time, and many actors were in competition for the lead roles. None other than Denzel Washington went for the part of Tubbs but it was Thomas who had the best chemistry with co-lead Don Johnson.

As it turned out, Miami Vice was arguably the show of the 1980s. It was slick, sophisticated and cool, gaining a massive army of fans as a result. Everyone thought at that point that Philip Michael Thomas would become a huge star — including the man himself. Interviews from the period show what he believed his future would hold. And he wasn’t afraid to dream very big.

In a March 1985 interview with Rolling Stone magazine, Thomas enthused about what his future in the entertainment industry would hold. He wanted to get an EGOT — an Emmy, a Grammy, an Oscar, and a Tony — and he considered his starring role on Miami Vice to be a means to that end. “This is just a stepping stone for me to something far greater,” he explained. “And it’s a great, great stepping stone.”

Rolling Stone added that perhaps Miami Vice was Thomas’ “ticket to an Emmy.” But unfortunately, no Emmy nomination would ever come, just one for a Golden Globe. He was pursuing other avenues at the same time, though. That year he released an album, Living the Book of My Life, a track from which actually featured in Miami Vice. But the record still didn’t sell well.

Still, Thomas appeared to be getting other stepping stones in place back then, too. He told Rolling Stone that he’d co-written a musical called The Legend of Stagger Lee and personally penned more than half of its songs. He also had plans for a movie adaptation the famous play No Place to Be Somebody, which he’d already starred in on Broadway.

The interview also went into Thomas’ spiritual side. Before becoming an actor, he’d actually been a student of theology, and it remained a field that he was interested in. According to the Rolling Stone interviewer, the young man would “[drive] his philosophy instructors nuts with his free-form beliefs” while studying at the University of California. So his big ideas went far past the entertainment industry.

But said ideas were quite confusing to a lot of people. “For someone who is able to express himself with such richness, and whose understanding of human nature is acute, his departure into astro-talk is baffling,” the article Rolling Stone commented. “Perhaps it is the line of defense not present in his eyes.” That sounded like a bad omen.

Interestingly, according to an unnamed cast member of the show, the Miami Vice set was much more spiritual than many fans realized. They told the interviewer that Thomas, Johnson, and other actors would often get together and pray in a circle. “Sometimes we talk about our problems,” they said. “But mostly we give thanks for what we have here.”

A couple of months later, in July 1985, Thomas did a solo interview with the Los Angeles Times. He began with the statement “My life is so interesting” and then went into detail about just how interesting it was. “I am on such a strong power,” he elaborated. “I just turned 36, which is a nine — three plus six is nine — and after this year it’s like ones and eights, power, power, power, power, all the way.”

Thomas continued, “I constantly construct and reconstruct my consciousness and I’m constantly learning. I believe if a man hasn’t found something worth standing for then a man will fall for anything, and I do have some pretty solid things that I live by. It’s just a matter of passing on things.” But was he one of those men who’d fall for anything?

Thomas was equally grandiose when discussing the industry he worked in, saying that he considered television to be a sort of “neurolinguistic programming or hypnosis.” He added that “not too many of us know any history past television. It is the thing that is the guiding light. We have to have people that are sensitive to humanity because it could be very destructive.”

The Los Angeles Times mentioned some of the plans Thomas had, including putting out some more music and creating a women’s fashion brand. Yet neither of these projects made him into the global superstar he seemed to so badly want to be. His clothing line ended up being called “PMT,” which were his initials, of course, but unfortunately the initials of something else, too.

Thomas’ statements became even more dramatic as time went on — and, some might say, more egotistical. During a 1985 People magazine interview he declared, “There are only a few who will be the Fords, the Edisons, the Carnegies, and I think I’m in that number.” Plus, as Miami Vice continued to film, he started wearing a necklace with “EGOT” on it.

But what did he mean by “EGOT?” Well, in a rambling interview with the Miami Herald newspaper at the end of 1985, he said, “It means Energy, Growth, Opportunity, and Talent. It’s also a character I’ve created. A mythical space character that I’m going to put in one of my videos. He’s an angel of light that comes from outer space. On the way… he passes E.T. going home.”

This was all strange stuff, perhaps to some people worrying stuff, even. But Thomas appeared to do okay even as his acting career took a downward turn. After Miami Vice ended in 1989 due to falling ratings, Thomas made the TV movie False Witness with Phylicia Rashad, a pal of his. That one didn’t lead to an Emmy, either, though.

Thomas spoke to the Chicago Tribune that year about how his life was going, saying that he was focusing on health-related matters. He claimed, “I went on a 40-day fast this summer with a friend visiting from New York, Bishop Abuna Nathaniel Williams. I maintained no solid foods, just juices and water. The spiritual revelations from the process of cleansing and prayer —it’s the greatest natural high in the world.”

The actor also had plenty to say about religion. Thomas told the interviewer that he’d read and continued to read multiple religious texts: the Bible, the Koran and the Bhagavad-Gita. “You learn from those who have come before when you read and study the wisdom of the ages,” he stated. “In my sojourn, I’m searching for knowledge, wisdom and understanding or overstanding.”

Thomas then brought up a major achievement in his life, which was creating the Philip Michael Thomas Miamiway Theater. He explained, “I think the power of TV to communicate can be one of the most powerful, positive means on the planet. We have to resurrect consciousness. If we’re going to have heaven on Earth, we’ve got to have spiritual upliftment.”

But though he’d created a theater to nurture future talent, Thomas’ own career was stalling drastically by the middle of the next decade. So he turned to a different form of entertainment away from acting: a psychic hotline. During 1994 he signed a contract with the company Traffix Inc and started the Philip Michael Thomas Psychic Connection. His catchphrase was: “From Miami Vice to world advice!”

Unfortunately, that wasn’t to last, either. Before long the Philip Michael Thomas Psychic Connection was no more and the actor was ditched in favor of Miss Cleo. Thomas wasn’t going down without a fight, though. He successfully filed a suit against the company for breaching their deal. In fact, he walked out of court with a big enough sum of money that he may not have ever needed to work again.

The summer of 2002 Thomas was handed $2.3 million as a result of the suit. It’d taken eight years in all for the case to be concluded and Traffix Inc was in trouble for other reasons as well by that point. Thomas’ lawyer Madison McClellan told CNN after the ruling, “He feels very used. This decision validates his claims. He feels vindicated. It’s kind of a double win for us.”

After that victory, though, Thomas’ star dimmed even further. But he did net himself one other high-profile job. During the 2000s he voiced the character Lance Vance — who was definitely a riff on Tubbs from Miami Vice — in a couple of the very popular Grand Theft Auto: Vice City videogames. Unfortunately, by 2006 that job was over as well.

Yet in contrast to Thomas, Don Johnson’s kept working regularly. And the other Miami Vice lead remains an actor who’s much in demand. Throughout the 1990s he starred in six seasons of the detective show Nash Bridges — Thomas actually joined him for a couple of episodes before he stopped acting — and more recently Johnson’s been in Knives Out and Book Club.

But even if Thomas seemingly doesn’t have work to concentrate on anymore, he does have a family. And it’s a big family at that. He has 11 kids by several different women, five of them with model Kassandra Green, to whom he was married for a decade. And one of those children, Sacred Light Amadeus Thomas, is making a name for himself as a social media star.

Sacred, a model just like his mother, has over 100,000 followers between TikTok and Instagram. And people clearly like what he has to offer. Whenever he posts a picture of himself his followers fall over each other to compliment him and point out the similarities to his father, who of course was also famously good-looking back in the day.

Another member of the family’s also trying to branch out into the entertainment business. That’s Imaj Thomas, who’s a country music singer and songwriter. She makes her connection clear on her official website, which reads: “I was born in Miami Beach, Florida as an only girl of five children to my father, 1980s TV icon Philip Michael Thomas, and my angel mother.”

Imaj seems to have followed in her father’s footsteps when it comes to spiritualty, too. “At a very young age, I fell in love with the mystery of life; what was beyond the vault of heaven, the people on Earth, what it all meant and now what it all means to be alive,” her website states. “The creative environment I was raised in encouraged that curiosity, and so that inquisitive nature has never left me.”

And it’s thanks to Sacred and Imaj that we have some idea of what Thomas is like as a family man. They both frequently post pictures of their parents on Instagram and talk about how close they are to them. In 2019 Imaj posted a throwback pic and wrote, “Loving memories with Daddy. You know, it’s funny, everyone compliments his beautiful skin and says he ages like a vampyre.”

So Thomas has a legacy in his children, clearly, and he has another legacy, too. It’s thought that he’s the person who actually coined the term “EGOT,” a word so common nowadays that most people don’t even know how it came to be. But thanks to Thomas, Tracy Morgan, and the TV show 30 Rock, it’s entered into mainstream culture.

In a 2009 episode of 30 Rock, Morgan’s character goes to a store called “Yakov’s Nubian Bling Explosion.” And among the jewelry there he finds a massive gold necklace spelling out “EGOT.” Not many people would’ve known it at the time but this was clearly a reference to the necklace Thomas reportedly wore while making Miami Vice.

Once he takes an interest in the unusual item, Morgan’s character is told by a salesman, “That belonged to Philip Michael Thomas, the actor who played Tubbs on Miami Vice… It stands for Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, and Tony. Four awards that Thomas planned on winning in his career.” Morgan responds, “That’s a good goal for a talented crazy person.”

What Thomas thought about Morgan labeling him “a crazy person,” even in jest, we still don’t know. But the episode — which also involves Tracy Morgan seeking out Whoopi Goldberg to learn how she won her own Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, and Tony — ended up going down in television history. Suddenly the term “EGOT” was everywhere and it definitely didn’t seem that silly for a performer to set it as a career goal.

In 2016, many years after celebrities started describing themselves as “EGOT,” Thomas gave an interview to the website Thrillist about the phenomenon he’d accidentally created. And just to add to the offbeat aura that surrounds Thomas’ whole career, the interview took place at a party for the 135th anniversary of Thomas’ English Muffins, where anyone called Thomas got a free one.

Thrillst asked Thomas, “Here’s our burning question: does a Daytime Emmy count toward an EGOT?” Thomas said no, it had to be a Primetime Emmy. That was awkward, since a Daytime Emmy’s the one Whoopi Goldberg has. But he did add, “You can win all four of those awards — however you get it. But it’s not really about the awards. If you study to be a doctor, you want a degree, right?”

The Thrillist interviewer then asked him, “So should there be a new phrase for people who’ve completed an EGOT via a Daytime Emmy? The DEGOT?” Thomas answered, “You got to remember, this is 30 years ago. And when I coined the phrase, it had nothing to do with being limited. So if somebody else wanted to have a DEGOT, they could.”

After that, though, the interview got weird — even weirder than some of Thomas’ other chats with journalists. He appeared to awkwardly flirt with the interviewer, even going so far as to pinch her face, before asking “Do you know Miami Vice?” then getting her to name some sports, and then saying, “There’s things so much more fascinating than this, what you’re talking about.”

The interviewer did still manage to ask, “Are you surprised that the EGOT is part of your legacy?” to which he answered, “My legacy is being right here with Thomas’ English Muffins, celebrating the 135-year anniversary of this fabulous name that I was born with. And I’ve been in the entertainment business professionally since 1968 and I’m not going to retire.”

“So I don’t know what tomorrow brings,” he added. “But it’s a continuum.” The truth, though, is that he hasn’t had a starring role in a very long time and people are more likely to Google “What happened to Philip Michael Thomas?” than his actual name. And he never got near an EGOT himself, in spite of all those years spent trying to make it happen.

Yet despite all that, he seems happy. And those who’ve worked with Thomas say good things about him. Don Johnson told the show Good Day New York in 2021, “I talk to Philip all the time. We stay in touch with each other. I love Philip. It’s very rare that you can say that you go to work with someone for 14 hours a day and for five years and never have a single argument. That speaks a lot about Philip, not about me.”