Maybe We'll Have You Back: The Life of a Perennial TV Guest Star (16 page)

There have been women I could have been with, but it had to feel right. I couldn’t stay too long with the actress who thought it was passionate to fight. She called me a “pussy” because I signaled when I changed lanes on the six-lane 101 freeway. There was a woman who’d have to drink every night to try to make up for the eight months she couldn’t drink because she was on antidepressants. Another was doing a one-woman show where she talked about herself in the third person like a Bogart film-noir guy. We’d be out and she’d rehearse talking out of the side of her mouth. When I took her to a party at a big director’s house who was producing many big studio comedies, she took the liberty to leave her photos and résumés scattered around his home in various places she hoped he’d find.

And those were the “catches.”

But marital bliss was not in store for Ed, the character I played on the show. He asked Drew to fire him so he could collect unemployment money to have time to be with his new baby. It turned out that the baby was Asian. His wife had cheated on him and he needed his job back. Drew said he’d see what he could do and in the last scene, he tells Mimi that he found another job for Ed in the department store. Wow, I thought, I was back in! And one of the other producers said that maybe I’d be back.

When my episode aired, people who saw it complimented me. They reassured me it looked like I had to be back because I was there in the office. I was excited. The show was taking off and seemed to be a hit. And I was in on it early! The show hadn’t even aired before I did my part. As a guest star actor, that’s when you have the most hope. You hope you can get in on it on the ground floor and go with it for a run. You can’t but hope that since it’s early in the inception of the series, they’re still playing around with possible characters that are clicking in the show’s setting. It happened to Kathy Kinney who played Drew’s nemesis, Mimi, the week before I worked on the show. She was doing just a guest spot and they decided to keep her on.

I could tell that it would be a fun set to be on. Drew, true to the character he played, was a regular, working good guy. Sometimes a show will do what they call pickups after the studio audience has been sent home. They may not want to keep the crowd that long for certain scenes where they want to go for different camera angles or try alternate dialogue. I remember that we were there fairly late one night and how Drew apologized to the extras that they had to stay so much longer. And I appreciated that he seemed so annoyed when he heard I had to audition when he recommended me so highly for the role.

But I never did come back. On paper, there were dozens of reasons why myself and many other well-meaning people thought I definitely was returning to that show. But looking back, I did have an uneasy, unsettling feeling when I had to give the prop guy my ring back at the end of the week.

18

CAN’T HURRY CLONES

A
few weeks after my appearance on
The Drew Carey Show
I bumped into Drew at the Beverly Connection mall on one of my routine strolls. “Thanks again for having me on your show. I had so much fun,” I said, still hopeful I’d be brought back. He was perusing the magazines at Bookstar Books and said he was annoyed by something he just read.

“Know what
Entertainment Weekly
called my show? They called it
Sein-Friends
. That pisses me off.”

“That’s ridiculous. Your show is nothing like either of them,” I assured him.

In 1995, a season after
Friends
’ phenomenal first-year success, there was a slew of shows accused of cloning its format, but Drew would prove to have a voice of his own. I had just done a guest star spot on another new show that was also called a copy of
Friends
.
Can’t Hurry Love
starred Nancy McKeon, formally from
The Facts of Life
, as a young, tough, working woman looking for Mr. Right. To me, that show was not so much a show about a group of young pals hanging out as in
Friends
. It was more an example of many shows to come: hard-working single women surrounded by about five coworkers where it’s never clear what any of them actually do at that office. Tom Palmer, who I had worked with previously on
Murphy Brown
and
Good Advice,
brought me in to read for the part of Sid, the building’s muffin/coffee delivery guy. As usual, I wasn’t playing the most self-possessed man in the world. All I had to say was, “Here’s your order, a decaf and a muffin.” And then I had to reassure her that I was certain it was in fact decaf, not caffeinated coffee.

Cast list before my name was changed from Pete Blacklow to Fred Yerkes.

I auditioned and then had to audition again a few days later because one of the producers was resistant while Palmer was pushing heavily for me. I did nothing differently the second time. I don’t know how I could have done anything differently with my four lines, but somehow the holdout relented.

“You got a chance of coming back. You’re not in the office, but you’re in the building,” Palmer told me after the taping. I had the office hope with Drew Carey and the building hope in
Can’t Hurry Love
. The more neighborhoods, buildings, and hallways I could sprinkle my seeds with, the better.

19

MAXIMUM GUEST
STAR EXPOSURE

I
was about to drive my friend Joel to the airport after his four-day visit when the phone rang. The casting director from
Seinfeld
wanted to know if I could make it to the set right away for a table read. There was a part for me. I was a bit more than pleasantly surprised.

“Wow, um, sure. How long do I have to get there?”

“We’re starting in about twenty minutes.”

“I guess I can just about make it.” I lived about twenty to thirty minutes away depending on traffic.

“I haven’t shaved or anything you know. They know it’s last minute?”

“Yes. Just get here as soon as you can.”

I hung up and handed Joel thirty bucks for a cab to the airport. I then ran quickly to the bathroom to wet and comb back my hair the best I could on such short notice. I’d later find out that when they were casting my part, no one seemed to fit, and then Larry said, “Fred. Fred could play this.”

So many thoughts raced through my head as I maneuvered my ’88 Toyota Corolla through the winding hills of the Laurel Canyon Pass as fast as I could. Needless to say, I was thrilled. To be associated with
Seinfeld
as an actor was just as exciting as when they produced my episode. Everyone already knew that this series would be around for ages. There were hits, but
Seinfeld
was a phenomenon.

And I was glad to be thought of again by those guys. I honestly thought that when my contract was up, they’d forget I was ever there. I had no idea that they thought of me as a performer at all. Sometimes at table reads, Larry would ask various writers to read the roles for parts that hadn’t been cast, or for guest actors who couldn’t make it that day. I was never considered for one of those when I worked there. Usually, those parts went to the writers higher up on the totem pole. There was no money for reading one of those roles. It was just an honor to get to perform at a
Seinfeld
table read. I don’t know about them, but I at least wished I were assigned a table read part with the hope that Larry might give me a real part on the show.

I had no clue about what part I’d be reading at that table. A good comedic part on
Seinfeld
was as big a showcase as any even if it were just one or two lines, I honestly didn’t care. I was still eager to do it.

I made it to my spot at the table with a few minutes to spare. Jerry teased me about my facial hair.

“You didn’t shave. Make sure you shave for the taping.”

The director introduced the guest star cast. “And please welcome back to play the part of ‘Pete’—Fred Stoller!” I got a hearty round of welcoming applause from the cast and crew, who remembered me from the season before. I felt I was getting a little dose of unexpected redemption.

The episode was called “The Secret Code” because George couldn’t trust his fiancée enough to tell her his bank PIN code. Jerry’s story involved his foot constantly falling asleep. He stomps it to wake it up and inadvertently causes a fire. Kramer’s story line had him riding the rear of a fire truck. I was playing a sad sack who drives Elaine crazy. She was attracted to me because every time I bump into her, I don’t remember her.

Perhaps it helped that I didn’t have time to prepare my lines. I might have agonized too much over them. I basically did what I always do. I read the lines as me and hoped for the best.

My first line was in the diner, just passing Jerry and George. “Hey Jerry, hey George.”

It wasn’t a funny line, but Larry and some others cracked up. They must have realized at that moment that I definitely fit what they were looking for.

After the table read, Michael Richards, hearing me read for the first time, came over and said, “I like what you did. I do that too sometimes, where you hold back.” He thought I was making a conscious choice to underplay it. I just nodded. He didn’t need to know that I hadn’t given it any thought at all.

In the next rewrite, Larry actually changed the character’s name to Fred and even seemed to alter it more for my persona. My moping around the office the year before must have made an impression, because he wrote some great lines that fit me rather effortlessly.

For instance, when Jerry says that his foot fell asleep, I comment, “You’re lucky, at least you got something to do.”

And one of the times I bump into Elaine I say, “I’m depressed. I bought this new shirt. The button fell off. Once the button falls off, that’s it. I’ll never fix it.”

Julia Louis-Dreyfus was very nurturing. She kept reassuring me that I was doing well and gave me a few tips. She told me to pause for laughs, since we weren’t taping in front of an audience. There were too many complicated, outdoor scenes and they would get the laughs by screening the entire episode for a live audience before the taping of their next episode.

“You don’t want them laughing over one of your lines,” she told me.

I took her advice. In the middle of this monologue, I took a long pause anticipating a big laugh. When it was screened in front of a live audience, there wasn’t one, but hopefully it looked like I was taking a brilliant dramatic pause.

Julia couldn’t quite put her finger on it, but I reminded her of someone. She asked Larry about me, “Who does he remind you of? Who’s he like?”

“I don’t know,” he said, “the proverbial schmuck I guess.”

I couldn’t tell at that point how big my part would be when it actually aired.
Seinfeld
was notorious for going as long as fifteen minutes over before it was edited to the allotted twenty-two minute format. When time needs to be cut, it’s always the guest actor who gets snipped first. Experience told me that some or maybe most of my scenes were vulnerable. But regardless of the final cut, I knew I had just played the funniest role I’d ever had on a sitcom up to that time, tailor-made for my persona.

For the second time in six months, I thanked Jerry and Larry for the privilege of being part of their classic show. But this time, I was a lot more upbeat and hopeful that the work I had just done would really propel me to something amazing. I couldn’t wait.

20

SEINFELD
AFTERMATH

O
ne thing I try not to do is get noticed for the wrong
reason, but I think that might have been the case with Nancy McKeon. I was back on
Can’t Hurry Love
, playing Sid, the coffee-muffin guy. This time my character was supposed to have a big crush on Nancy. I tell her that I wish I could go out with the likes of her, because my girlfriend was such a nag. When my girlfriend shows up, we see that she’s a tall, beautiful model.

I joked around off-set that maybe I could end up with this woman the way Michael J. Fox ended up with Tracy Pollan when she was cast as his girlfriend on
Family Ties
.

“Yeah, I remember that,” McKeon said. “I was going out with him at the time.”

Then she walked away. Normally this would have crushed me, but because I was still happy from coming off of
Seinfeld
, it didn’t bother me.

A week after appearing on
Seinfeld
for the first time ever, I flubbed my lines. It was only a two-line part on
Mad About You
, and I bobbled it twice. Ironically the smaller the part, the more difficult it is to nail. Other guest cast actors have described having just one line as jumping onto a merry-go-round in motion and then jumping quickly off.

The director, former comedian David Steinberg, took me aside and asked what my problem was.

“There’s no problem,” I explained. “I’ve been doing this for years. I just had a very big part on
Seinfeld
and had no problem. I had four big scenes.” (I was trying to seem confident to reassure them I was not a concern, but I think I stuttered when I said, “I had four b-b-big scenes.”)