Maybe We'll Have You Back: The Life of a Perennial TV Guest Star (19 page)

“Are you going to wear a shirt like that if you want a woman? Would you walk so droopy like that? You know, macho is not bullshit.”

He took pleasure in preying on my vulnerability. I was beginning to doubt that my investment of time away from L.A. was worth it. I was getting a strange feeling that the independent movie might not be the quirky breakout hit I thought it would be. Reality began to set in. I realized that wearing a flashy red suit and smoking a cigarette in the film wouldn’t guarantee anything more for my career than playing the muffin guy in
Can’t Hurry Love
. A struggling actor who hung out at Kramer’s told me about independent films that he had been involved in with names as big as Danny Aiello, that never saw the light of day.

I was also sad about not being able to last more than my three-day limit with my parents. Not only that, but I found out that the one woman I had ever felt I might get serious about, a musical theater actress named Sandi, was a newlywed and living a few floors above Kramer’s. I’d duck in and out of Kramer’s apartment, hoping not to bump into her and her husband. I’d walk the streets identifying with the movie I was obsessed with at that time,
The Shawshank Redemption
, the story of a man wrongly convicted of murder; we both were hoping we’d be free one day. But unlike Tim Robbins’ character in
Shawshank
, I didn’t have to dig a tunnel through Kramer’s wall to get away. I managed to get a ride up to Massachusetts. As I thanked him for letting me stay there, Kramer boasted again that he had helped me enormously with all of his life lessons about being a man.

“You think I’m a pain, but you know I’m right. If you stayed here longer, I could help you even more.”

I nodded my head in exhausted agreement.

It was fun finally meeting Danny Aiello. I asked him about various New York City character actors and how they got started. And I told him how fascinated I was with his role as the chiropractor/angel in another Tim Robbins film,
Jacob’s Ladder
. In it, he helps Robbins’ character find peace after living in a maddening Hell in New York City. Aiello was an easy going, good-natured guy who liked to laugh a lot. After the hell I had gone through with the real Kramer in New York, in comparison, Aiello
was
an angel.

We were filming a scene at a fancy restaurant where I, as the mobster, am asking his permission to marry his daughter. He is not sure if he can approve, because he doesn’t want to look at my gangster face at every family get-together. We rehearsed the scene a few times, and then on a break, Sally Kirkland told me to step into her dressing room. She shut the door and said she had very important words for me. First, she told me her credentials, and why I should heed her urgent words of advice. Apparently, she taught comedy to Robin Williams and had something to do with Al Pacino getting his part in
The Godfather
.

Then, she told me that I was not portraying a mobster effectively. She couldn’t stress enough that my character was Italian, not Jewish. I was being too meek. I was supposed to be a person of power. I tried to explain that that’s what I thought would make it, that I was not the cliché mob character. She still stressed that power was power, and I absolutely had to be a man of authority.

When I went back to the set, I was a little more confused when Danny Aiello’s assistant agreed with her. He volunteered on his own that he knew many tough guys firsthand and how they carried themselves. The director was so busy with other things, I didn’t want to rattle her and come off insecure. We sat back down at the table and Sally kept whispering for me to sit up straight. When I stood up to do my speech, she’d wave her hands to indicate I should amp it up and then reassuringly wink to let me know I was getting it. And I did amp it up. No one else said, “Hey, why are you doing it that way now?” so I felt that maybe she was right.

When I finally did see the rough cut, I looked like I was doing bad acting on purpose. I looked the way a non-actor like Charles Barkley or Rudy Giuliani might play a tough guy in a
Saturday Night Live
sketch, strutting like a spastic, bobbing his head up and down, and speaking like the stereotypical tough guy, “Hey, how you doin’? I is tough!”

There was much fighting after the film was wrapped. Everyone had been nice to me, but apparently, the man who had financed
the film
was a lawyer who enjoyed suing people and had gotten his money from a settlement after being hit by a car. Among other disputes, his partner, an ex-porno movie actor, had stolen a copy of the film from him. And he had also tried suing the director for being a bad director.

As a favor to the producers, I went to Las Vegas to watch a film festival screening of the film that still was juggling different titles. I had given it my best shot, but in the end, I was beyond not believable as this mob guy. Walking out of the theater, I thought the lawyer/producer had definite grounds to sue me for being a bad actor. As far as I know there’s no evidence of this film. I haven’t seen it on Netflix. I even have bumped into Sally Kirkland a few times; she doesn’t remember me. Maybe that’s a good thing.

23

MY NANNY EMMY

I
started 1997
off with my final guest-star appearance on
Murphy Brown
, which was my last booking for my second talent agency before their shameful collapse. I had one of those small, off-kilter roles where I had to say words people don’t
say. It was one of those parts that was so dumb and small it was difficult.

In the episode, Murphy took her young son to a party that had a Martians and Robots theme. I played a guard, dressed as a robot, who wouldn’t let her in because she wasn’t on the guest list. I had to say lines from the movie
The Day the Earth Stood Still,
“
klaatu barada nikto
.”

In rehearsal I kept mispronouncing them. Losing her patience with me, Candice Bergen said, “Say them phonetically, like they’re spelled.” I thought, “Like they’re spelled? These are alien, made-up words. They aren’t spelled like anything.”

Almost six months later I finally got my next booking. I didn’t have to audition.
The Nanny
needed an annoying, moronic pharmacist, and someone in the office suggested me. I had no idea that guest star appearance would be such a source of arriving in the big time. The pharmacist I played embarrasses Fran Drescher by announcing her symptoms over the store loudspeaker. We had some fun interplay when I yell out that she has head lice and she tries to shush me up.

That season Fran chose to not film in front of studio audiences. Some on the set had said that it was because she had just broken up with her husband, who ran the show with her, and she didn’t want the crowd asking her questions about the breakup.

The other cast members all were kind. Benjamin Salisbury, who played the oldest of the kids, came up to me and asked if I wanted to be included in the Academy Awards pool coming up. He then awkwardly realized a moment later that I would not be around the following week if I should win. He stumbled uncomfortably and then figured out that a production assistant could send me the money.

Fran was very complimentary toward me. After the episode aired, she sent me a nice personal note, telling me what a great job I did. At the time, some writers joked to me that if more ailments came up, they’d try to bring me back. And surprisingly, that did end up happening. The next season, I returned when she had a rash, and I embarrassed her about how gross it looked. The season after that, I loudly told her when to have sex when she bought hormone pills trying to get pregnant.

Several months later, I chose to skip sitting at home to watch the 1997 Emmy Awards. Instead, I opted to take advantage of what I hoped would be an empty city and eat at a nice restaurant and not feel self-conscious about eating alone, or perhaps see a movie in an empty theater. It was my way of rebelling, going against the norm.

The first restaurant I went to was in fact, empty. Still, the waiter brought it to my attention that I was alone by insisting that I move from my table because it was for four or more customers only.

“Okay, well, I’ll come back for this table with three of my friends,” I said, and walked out the door.

My desire for the nice dining experience by myself was ruined for that night, so I settled for pizza at the mall’s food court instead. When I got home, I noticed that there were six messages on my answering machine. The first was from a peripheral friend.

“Hey, Fred, saw you on the Emmys! Way to go.” And strangely, the other five also congratulated me for my Emmy appearance. My what?! I called back the first person to see what the hell this was about.

It turned out that Fran Drescher had been nominated for best actress in a comedy that year. When her name was announced, they showed a clip of her and me at the pharmacy. This felt like a private victory. One of those little utility parts I had been playing had received a nice, small dose of recognition. There is in fact an Emmy award for guest actor, but almost always those nominations go to celebrities such as Brad Pitt in
Friends
, Michael Douglas in
Will and Grace,
or Mel Brooks in
Mad About You
. But my jerky, four-line pharmacist had snuck his way into TV’s biggest night to be seen by millions. For those few moments, a guy who had been hiding in empty restaurants for so long had inadvertently crashed the big party. I knew it wasn’t normal to have this secondhand sense of pride, but I was beaming nevertheless, although I wished Fran Drescher had won. Around fifteen years later Fran brought me back to her new TV Land show
Happily Divorced
to play an annoying waiter. I had those Emmy dreams all over again.

24

SUDDENLY GAY

I
was finally getting married, but my mother would not be proud. I already knew she was adamantly adverse to who I was seeing. Actually my wedding was to be on another guest appearance, but it still didn’t sit well with her.

At the table reading for the Brooke Shields series
Suddenly Susan
the director began by introducing the guest and recurring cast.“And welcome back, again playing our beloved office mail guy, Pete—Bill Stevenson.” Everyone applauded and laughed just thinking of the goofy work Bill had done on his previous appearances.

I was certain that “Pete” was the role that I had missed out on when I was away working on that independent movie that never got released. He had done four episodes the first season as the monotone office mail guy and a few already that season. I have to admit that he really fit the part and I was surprised they didn’t use him more.

In
Suddenly Susan
, Brooke Shields starred as a woman looking for love while working at a San Francisco magazine. In the second season, they realized that there were no gay characters on the show that took place in the country’s heaviest gay-populated city. So they decided that Pete, the mail guy, was gay all of a sudden. And I was brought in to play his lover. Pete was trying to get me jealous and told me that he had a thing going on with one of the regulars, Judd Nelson. The whole episode was built on the tension that this unseen lover was going to come over and kick Judd Nelson’s ass. Then wimpy me appears, makes a scene, threatens Judd, and leaves. The crowd seemed to get a big kick out of it.

My week of work on
Suddenly Susan
was not as pleasant as it could have been. It wasn’t the cast, they were all very accessible. Okay, the women didn’t really eat lunch with us in the commissary. Brooke Shields and Kathy Griffin would nibble on something they brought in and use lunch to rush off to the
Warner Brothers
gym next to the set. And the producers were great. Steven Peterman and Gary Donzing, who I had previously worked with on
Murphy Brown,
brought me in for that week of work without making me read for the role. No job can get off to a better start than that. My week was marred by myself.

I began obsessing that Bill’s role was the one I could have had if it wasn’t for bad timing and anxiousness. He looked so happy to be there. It was obvious the show needed the bizarre jolt that he provided when he wheeled his mail cart into the gang’s workspace. It was clear he’d be coming back a lot. I was pleased for him, but just couldn’t stop thinking about how that could have been me. Weeks later, I felt like a fool for not enjoying my time there by dwelling on what might have been. Then, typically of me, I wasted more time obsessing about how I shouldn’t have obsessed.

After the episode aired, I talked to my parents on the phone. They never fail to amaze me with their reactions to my work. I spoke to my father first. It was the usual one-word conversation between us. They had just moved to a retirement community in Florida. “So, Dad, you like the retirement community?”

“Painting class.”

“Huh? What do you mean, painting class, Dad?”

“I take a painting class.”

I thought it was strange for him not to mention the show. It was a decent-sized role. One scene, but it was a big scene. So I brought it up.

“Dad, did you see me on
Suddenly Susan
?”

He was flustered. He laughed nervously, “Freddie, I don’t know. Let’s talk about something else.”