Maybe We'll Have You Back: The Life of a Perennial TV Guest Star (21 page)

I, of course, was squirming in my seat. I felt invisible. I was like the maid they were talking in front of, who didn’t exist. They were talking money—how much they were getting on that show and how much they had earned on other shows and what other opportunities were ahead for them. They didn’t think to involve me and that was fine. I excused myself and headed back to my little dressing room. I hated to make any fuss about money, but making about $1,800 for that week, I realized I wasn’t really as part of the group as I thought I was.

On all the shows I’d done before, I had never been totally cut. I should have played it safe and waited until after I found out that I had made the show to let my mother know about it.

My mother does not take the normal ups and downs of life very well. If I have nothing going on, she’ll usually say, “So, that’s it? More disappointments?” It’s frustrating knowing that just me being myself without any achievements is letting her down. When my mother calls, a guest spot gives me something to tell her. Then she’s like a shark that you feed a sliver of meat to. It’s never enough. “Is that it? Anything else coming up? Is that all you have?”

One time, as she kept hammering me, I assumed the part on
Raymond
was safe, so I fed it to her.

After I was cut, she said, “Freddie, why do you think they took you out of the show? Did you do anything to annoy them? You know how sometimes you can be too much. Were you being pushy? Were you being a hypochondriac?”

No matter how much I explained, she couldn’t understand that these things just happen sometimes.

Even though my lines were cut, I was still in the background in the wedding ceremony scene, which qualified me for a residual check. Months later, I bumped into Ray on the lot where his show was filmed. I appreciated how he thought to ask if I’d gotten a check and whether I had made my health insurance. I was glad to tell him that I had.

I felt more consolation when my friend, Steve, who was on the writing staff, told me that they still liked what I did, and the main thing was that I had established myself as “the cousin.” Now, if any other family gathering would come up on the show, I’d have a good chance of being on that episode.

Two seasons after my first appearance on
Everybody Loves Raymond
I was back. Phil Rosenthal, the creator and showrunner, and Ray Romano joked with me on the set that most likely I’d be cut from that episode too. I knew that was impossible. I was cherishing one of those rare confident moments in show business. The episode was titled “Cousin Gerard” and the whole plot was about my character. It was my largest guest star part. I was in all the scenes but one, so cutting me from that one would be an impossibility.

In the episode, Ray’s mother persuades him to give me a job as an assistant for the sports book that he’s writing. After my first day of work, Ray comments to his wife, Debra how annoying it is to work with me. He says that I always find something negative to say, even when he compliments me, and that I always complain in that whiny nasally voice. Ray is then taken aback when Debra comments that the two of us share many of the same mannerisms. Later on, Raymond’s brother and father reiterate the horror of our similarities, but they also add how annoying I am.

“You think I’m like him. And you think he’s annoying. So you think I’m annoying too,” Ray says.

Instead of Raymond fixing what he dislikes about himself, he tries to fix those traits in his cousin. He tries to adjust my posture, forces me to smile, and tells me to say the word “now” instead of “neow.” I end up storming off and quitting my job after I rattle him when I tell him how annoying he is.

I returned to
Everybody Loves Raymond
over the next five seasons for five much smaller guest roles. And each time I cautiously called the production office to see if I made the cut before informing my mother I was on.

“Is it a big or a small role?” she’d always ask.

“Small,” I’d answer as I’d hear more heartache on the other end.

On the episode titled “The Cult,” where Ray’s brother Robert joins a cult, the whole scene where I enter his apartment and talk him into joining up was cut. Only two other lines of mine ended up remaining. After being informed what to prep my mother for in the length of the decimated part, I found myself temporarily brainwashed by her. I wondered if I was in fact annoying anyone on the set and that was the reason they cut most of my lines. Was I trying too hard to talk about the stand-up days with Ray? Was I asking Peter Boyle too many questions about what it was like working on one of my favorite films
Taxi Driver
? Should I not have asked Doris Roberts if orange juice and bagels and lox are bad for your stomach? Did I piss off Patricia Heaton when I didn’t take her up on her offer to marry her live-in nanny so she could become a U.S. citizen?

I was actually quite flattered at first when Patricia wanted to set me up with her Swedish nanny. I went to Ray and asked if he knew anything about the nanny.

“Well, it sounds exotic, a Swedish nanny, but well, I don’t want to say more,” Ray said.

But then I walked by the prop room and saw that Patricia was asking a group of crew guys if they were interested in marrying her nanny. I felt like such a fool. Here I was thinking she thought I was a desirable, attractive man suitable for her nanny, and she was randomly throwing her proposal out to anyone who would listen.

26

SOME FRIENDS

A
round the same time I made my first
Raymond
appearance, I had another big opportunity—a guest spot on the massive hit
Friends
. Needless to say, I was a little nervous before the start of the table reading. If I stayed the week and didn’t get cut, I was going to make $35,000! Well, that was according to my fellow actor friend, David. “You’ll make $4,000 for the week, and a show like
Friends
will be rerun twice in primetime! And there’ll be a few foreign checks, and I bet it’ll be in syndication for fifteen years!” But then again, every time I eat out with David, he never factors in tax, tip, or beverages when the check arrives.

I got to the stage early at Warner Brothers Studios, sat at the table, circled all my lines in the script, and muttered them to myself to prepare the best that I could. I had auditioned for the show to play the part of an owner of a restaurant. I didn’t get it, but a few episodes later I was brought in to play a waiter where Monica worked as a chef. I was among the annoying staff giving her hell because the chef we liked was fired to make room for her. In the episode, she hires Joey just so she can fire him to look tougher to teach us a lesson.

I looked at my watch and saw I still had fifteen minutes before the others would start milling in. I got up and asked a production assistant where the restroom was. “Follow me,” he said as he escorted me around the back of the set and up the stairs while he looked over a slew of keys he removed from his pocket. We walked down the upper level of this narrow hallway and then he stopped at this room. After trying several different keys, he opened it up and indicated for me to go in.

“It’s not a bathroom. This is a room,” I said

“It’s your room for the week. You got a bathroom in it,” he said, indicating for me to enter.

I was stunned. I’d never even had a room that was on the same stage I was working on. Most times they had me in a room that was so small and far from the stage, there was no point in even staying in it.

I entered the room, shut the door, and walked around like I had awoken in a dreamy tropical paradise. There was a couch, a phone, and yes, there was a bathroom. I knew Joel was waiting expectantly to hear of the perks on my new show as always. Sorry to disappoint, Joel, but after my week on
Friends
, I’d opt for great comfort over great food for my TV visits every time. Not to get graphic, but I’m not great with public restrooms. I can use them if I have to, but it’s easier without crew people, extras, and audience members coming in and out when trying to use it. I realized this was one perk Joel would perhaps not want to live vicariously through me.

When I stepped out of my room to return to the table reading again, the cast and crew had arrived. I saw Matt LeBlanc for the first time that week. It had been over five years since our little tenure together on the forgettable
Vinnie & Bobby
. I was wondering if he was so big now that he didn’t want to be bothered with anyone like me from his pre-star days. He happened to be very glad to see me. We talked just a little about our
Vinnie & Bobby
experience.

“Remember how they used to dress you up? They made you look so stupid with that tank top and all those bandages all over your arms,” Matt said.

I didn’t want to tell him that no one put bandages all over my arms. They just happened to be there. I don’t know why, but I always seem to have a cut I don’t know how I got, on one of my limbs. I wasn’t aware how peculiar bandages were and that they helped accentuate the pathetic cartoon-like character I played on the show.

Turned out my top-of-the-line guest star dressing room was next to David Schwimmer’s. To answer the question often asked about the cast, yes, they were friends off-set. I’d pass his room on the way to mine and see all the guys in there on a break playing a PlayStation racing car game. Matt told me that there was no one star of the show. He said if any of them ever got an ego for whatever reason, the others would kick that one in the butt and straighten them out.

I had one of those tricky little off-center parts. I had just a few lines scattered about in two scenes. First I tormented Monica, then she fired Joey and made us all see she was not to be messed with. When I entered the kitchen to give Joey all the Christmas tips he had coming to him, I had to say, “Hey Dragon, here’s your tips. And it never hurts to wear tight trousers.” After a run-through, Lisa Kudrow (Phoebe) was kind enough to tell me I was doing a good job.

“Those small parts are the hardest to nail,” she told me. “I had a recurring role as a waitress on
Mad About You
and having to come on and do just those few lines out of context were harder than what I do now.” I was happy to have that issue validated by such a high-level player.

I remember being on the sidelines at a
Seinfeld
taping and watched with horrific empathy as a guest actor flubbed his line. I heard Larry David say, “One line, he’s got one line and he messed it up!” That’s also what makes it so hard. You’re not supposed to mess up one line because it’s just one line. How could you?

During the taping, I managed to get the weird words right about how tight trousers get big tips, and I got fairly big laughs. I also scored some more laughs when I locked Monica in the freezer to taunt her some more.

Some writers said it would be great to bring me back, but that there were six characters they had to deal with and it’s not that often that they have a story line that involves Monica at her job. But if and when they do . . .

Over three seasons later I was standing around the
Friends
soundstage and watching Jennifer Aniston get out of her car. The security guard approached her, ready to escort her to the table read to start her week of work. She saw me, came over, and gave me a nice hug. (I don’t see how you could get a “bad” hug from her.) “Welcome back,” she said.

I was very surprised I had returned as the waiter at Monica’s restaurant. Returning to a show is like a murder investigation: the longer time passes, the more your hope diminishes.

At the table read I was so excited. Most of the cast knew me from the episode I did years earlier. One of the writers greeted me and said, “I told you we’d work you back in when we had a story that got Monica back in the kitchen.”

I told him how grateful I was. I then sat down by the little paper placard with my name written at the table. I was feeling very comfortable since I’d worked with all the producers before and even knew them from their previous shows. I had made four appearances as Fred, a delivery guy, on
Jesse
, a short-lived show starring Christina Applegate. And on their other show
Veronica’s Closet
I played the part of a savant on a plane ride. I got to meet Pete Rose who also guested on that episode. It was quite surreal that after a rehearsal, he’d clap his hands, pat me on the back, and say, “Good job! You’re doing a good job!” It was as if I were in a fantasy baseball league and I had scored a homer and he was greeting me at the plate.

The table read went fine. No major laughs for me. This other guest actor on the show told me that he thought the story line that we were both in seemed weak. He was nervous that it might be cut out. I agreed, but I felt the writers would rewrite it. It was a strange time for the show. Matthew Perry (Chandler) was in rehab and the producers were not sure if he would make it back to finish the season. They were hoping he would return and tape his segments separately so they could insert them in.

Friends
had just a table reading and no rehearsal on Mondays. So after the table read we were dismissed. At about 10:00 PM I got a call from one of the producers that the story line I was in just wasn’t happening and that they rewrote it in a different way. My part was written out. He assured me it had nothing to do with my performance at the table read. He said it’s not like they were replacing me with another actor. I had seen it happen to others.

I was hoping the cast would ask for my phone number and call me up as a group and say, “Fred, we’re bummed your story line got written out. We all think you’re great.” But I did look at the bright side. Work was work and getting it here and there was still something. And I’d still get paid. I just wouldn’t get any residuals. And I did get that hug from Jennifer Aniston.

When my scene was written out of
Friends
, I told myself not to take it personally. My frantic pep talks to myself really sunk in the following season when they brought me back again.

Monica was back in the kitchen. She feels bad that Chandler, her husband, didn’t have a bachelor party, so she hires a stripper for his party. In my scene you find out that the woman I recommended was a hooker and not a stripper. I was fairly confident I’d make it to the end of the week. I was a plot point.

We had had the Wednesday run-through and I was feeling good. When it feels like it’s clicking, I’m not as anxious to check for the revised script by my door late at night to see if my lines are still in the script or not. I was getting nice smiles, it just felt right. But I happened to wake up as I usually do in the middle of the night and I went for the door. One thing I learned being around crazy show business is you never know. Yes, I was feeling good, but I felt good that other time I was written out at that table read.