Maybe We'll Have You Back: The Life of a Perennial TV Guest Star (8 page)

9

AMEN TO GREAT FOOD!

M
ost of the hard work in an acting career is actually
landing the job. No stress compares to the uncertainty of wanting to fill all of those vacant boxes on one’s month-at-a-glance calendar. So when I got offered a role on the sitcom
Amen
without having to audition, it was a real compliment, an actor’s dream. But it also made me even more nervous. At least if I’d auditioned, I’d know that they liked what I did. Instead I was flying blind.

It turned out the executive producer was familiar with my Thrill Seeker persona from some of the stand-up cable shows I had done. They had gotten a video of my jokes and decided that I didn’t have to read for the part. They even asked for permission to use several of my jokes in the dialogue.

The star of
Amen
was Sherman Hemsley, famous for playing George Jefferson on
The Jeffersons
, now playing Deacon Ernest Frye, who didn’t quite see eye to eye with his church’s new young minister, played by Clifton Davis. My episode was titled “The Wild Deak,” a parody of the Brando movie
The Wild One
. I played one of two biker thug brothers who harass the ministers at a food stop. I was the puny one who pretends to be tough but really lets his brother, a menacing psycho, do the dirty work. It was the most lines I had ever been given in the highest-profile show I had ever done. And so, nearly a year after my liberation from my coach, I had a relapse. Although I still resented her for how manipulative she was, I thought I needed professional reassurance before I read at the table.

I stood outside her fairly modest home in the San Fernando Valley, which was built on the fears and desperation of many actors like me. She walked a young actor out the door and gave him some extra free words of encouragement as I approached the steps, “Good-bye sweetie. You’ll be great. Call me and let me know how it goes.”

I felt a little something like the battered spouse who comes back to the abusive ex. I rationalized that I had done dozens of auditions and gotten
Lenny
on my own, so what’s the big deal if I needed this little boost?

She took me back in and didn’t openly chide me for leaving her, though I did notice a slight smirk on her face. But her coaching on my
Amen
scene assured me that I’d never break my vow again. She was way, way off. They’d cast me because I was a wimp, and she misread the part as if I were supposed to be a thug. Claudette had instructed me to act with menacing, powerful authority. “Show them who you are!”

The table read seemed to go okay, and the writers seemed to be in a good mood as they headed off to their offices to make minor adjustments based on the reading. It didn’t appear they’d have to spend many hours tweaking the script into better shape.
Amen
was a show that just had to stay above the radar and last long enough to produce the hundred or so episodes needed to reach syndication. But as I made my way to the food table, Don Gibb, the actor portraying Cashmere, my crazy biker brother, pulled me aside. Gibb, a big, bushy-haired guy with a lazy eye who looked like a WWF villain, is best known for his role as the bully in the
Revenge of the Nerds
movies. He looked at me intently with that one eye of his.

“What did you do, man? What were you doing there?”

“What are you talking about?”

“I’ve seen your act. You should just be yourself. You’re so funny. You were being too big for the part. Drop it down a notch, man. Do what you do at the clubs.”

I couldn’t believe it. This guy, whose signature piece was pounding his chest as he snarled and convulsed while screaming, “Nerds! I hate Nerds!” was telling me I was playing something too big. But he was right, and I felt like a fool telling him why I took it in that over-the-top direction. I suppose if Claudette had told me that it was as simple as Don Gibb told me it was, she wouldn’t be getting my checks.

“Be yourself. The acting comes out in the lines. Just say them. It’s not science. You’re funny. You shouldn’t have to push it ever.”

I almost wanted to take out my wallet and give him all the cash I had on me for finally curing me of Claudette.

At rehearsals, the producers echoed his thoughts in a very calm, reassuring way. They were not panicked at all. They also told me to be myself, to be deadpan like my act. It felt great throwing out my sides that were covered with all of her over-the-top instructions.

As the week progressed, I started to enjoy myself, after all, I was playing a version of my stand-up persona.

“You better listen to me,” I told Helmsley, “because I drank milk that expired yesterday! And I went to a deli and ate an apple right there without washing it first!” After that scene, Sherman Hemsley would point his finger at me, laugh heartily, and say, “You’re funny. You are a funny man!”

At the time, I wasn’t aware of how rare it was to be actually saying some of my own words on a sitcom. Usually, the material you’re handed each day is pretty set in stone. The actors, especially the guest actors, aren’t encouraged to stray from what’s on the page. Script supervisors read the text at the taping and rehearsals to make sure every word is being said exactly the way it’s supposed to be said in the script. They’ll run up to you after a take is over and show you their script if you are a little bit off. Some shows are so strict, the script supervisor will point out if you missed an “um” or if you said “okay” instead of “all right.”

Lunchtime came after our first day of rehearsal and I headed toward the door. Roz Ryan, who played the loquacious member of the church board, was on line with several of her other fellow cast members. “Where you going, motorcycle man?” she asked.

“To the commissary for lunch.”

“Why don’t you want to eat here with us? Are you too good for us?”

“I’m allowed to eat lunch with you here?”

“Of course! What are you talking about?”

“Well, I just did this show called
Lenny
and during the week, only regular cast members got free lunches. Guests had to go out.”

That was true. During the week, production assistants came by and took the lunch orders for just the regulars, who would leisurely select a choice meal, while I stood by trying to not glance at the tasty treasures on the menu that were forbidden to me.

She put her arm around me and guided me to the lunch line. “Honey, this ain’t no
Lenny
! This ain’t no
Lenny
here.”

Her invitation started a tradition with my friend Joel in Brooklyn that would not go away. Joel has been my best friend since we were seventeen. We bonded instantly in the neighborhood when we realized we both were overwhelmed underachievers from dysfunctional families who still wanted something better than what we saw around us. I call Joel “The Fugitive” because, like the TV character, he’s a bright guy who goes from terrible job to terrible job where his coworkers can never understand why he’s working there. He’s been bald since age twenty-three, wears big round glasses, and surprisingly is only twenty pounds overweight for someone that probably spends 86 percent of his waking life thinking about and craving food.

Some shows serve the guests free lunches during the week and some don’t. But all shows serve a free meal on tape night at least. So from there on in, whatever show I was on, Joel had to know what free food I got. It was like I was eating vicariously for him. He cared about that much more than my tales of showbiz.

After a while, Joel’s wife grew a little resentful of me. During dinner, he’d be on the phone moaning in ecstasy, hearing my description of his favorite baby back ribs, while she was serving him frozen fish sticks. Years later, if I ever mentioned a show I’d been on, he’d joyfully reminisce about the scrumptious meal they had offered, as if it were he who had eaten it.

“Joel, can you believe the enormous contracts the guys from
Friends
got?”

“
Friends
: Salmon baked well with hard crunchy edges and Oreo ice-cream cookies melted with hot fudge for dessert!”

I ran into trouble on
Amen
on the night of taping, not because of my acting but because of my physique. The makeup guy had a tantrum because my arm was too thin for him to put on a fake tattoo. Frustrated, he tried different ones, but most were too large, so he cursed and kicked a chair. He then claimed he wasn’t mad at me, just at the assholes that cast me.

But the taping went well. From what I’ve seen, when a stand-up comedian does his material in the context of a show, it always looks rather fake, like a show within a show. I felt that way about my part, but the crowd ate it up. When I ordered my big brother, Cashmere, to cause major bodily harm to the heroes of
Amen
, the Deacon stood up to Cashmere and punched him in the stomach as the crowd went wild. Then Jester Hairston, who played Rolly, the wise ninety-year-old church board member, raised his fist to me, and I ran out screaming for dear life.

The cast and producers thanked me for my week on the show and a producer suggested to Don Gibb and me that it would be “a kick to get the two of you back.” I knew that would be a stretch but I didn’t even have time to imagine ways that my biker brother and I could return, because shortly after our appearance,
Amen,
having made its requisite number of episodes for syndication, meandered into the TV graveyard. I was back on the audition circuit.

10

MURPHY BROWN

I
n 1991, I hadn’t actually seen an episode of
Murphy Brown,
but I knew it was a critically acclaimed top-rated show. And from the overheard discussions of the competing actors in the crowded casting session I was on, I learned it was one of a few shows that was not very inclusive to the guest casts passing through.

“My friend did
Murphy Brown
a few weeks ago. He said the regulars are really cold to the guests.”

“Yeah, I heard that too,” another actor offered.

“But the coldest set I ever worked on had to be
Night Court
. Harry Anderson is not a good guy.”

“Harry Anderson?” I asked. “I did a few stand-up gigs with him a long time ago. He seemed like a great guy.”

“When was that? Have you worked with him lately? I tried talking to him, it was like, ‘What do you want from me?’ And John Larroquette, our scenes were together all week and not once on a break would he say hello or even give me eye contact.”

“Have any of you worked on
Cheers
?” Another actor chimed in. “There were two different camps of regulars that hung out with each other. And none of them hardly acknowledged the guests.”

As much as I was enjoying the guest star war stories of the journeymen alongside me, I excused myself to step outside to concentrate on the material. Like
Singer & Sons
, the airing of
Amen
and its inclusion on my demo reel failed to send my career into the stratosphere. I spent nine months afterwards in a state of unease and unemployment, desperately trying to affirm some positive or negative big star interactions of my own. This was a part I wanted—actually I wanted any part. I was auditioning for the part of one of Murphy’s many secretaries. This one was supposed to be an obnoxious, hack comedian walking around the office doing dozens of lame jokes.

I was still new enough that I had to first audition for Andrea Cohen, the casting director, before being seen by any of the producers. After watching me she stared, confused. “That’s an interesting way to go. It’s supposed to be a typical, annoying comedian, but you read it as if you were a special-ed kid, who’s pathetic and takes night courses on how to be a comedian.”

Obviously, she didn’t realize that I was basically just being me, but that’s not a bad way to describe how I probably come off in most things I do.

She kept staring at my résumé, quizzically, like a doctor looking over a patient’s chart. Finally, she said: “Know what I’m going to do, if you don’t mind? Can you do what you just did again? I’m going to bring someone in from next door to take a look at it.” Huh, I thought. I must have been so different from what the producers had envisioned that she needed a second opinion. Little did I know she’d be calling in a specialist.

The woman who came in from next door turned out to be Deedee Bradley, the casting director for the drama
Life Goes On
—a show about the life of Corky, a tenacious kid with Down syndrome. Suddenly, I wasn’t as concerned about getting the job as I was about convincing these two women that I wasn’t mocking the mentally challenged, or wasn’t mentally challenged myself. The last thing I wanted was for Deedee to say, “That’s not funny, that’s what we do on
our
show.”

For a moment, I thought about doing it differently, but risked coming off even more insensitive. So I read it again the same way. When I finished, I looked up from my script, awaiting the diagnosis. Deedee smiled, turned to Andrea, and said, “It’s funny.” I’m sure all three of us were relieved.

The next day, I came back and auditioned for the producers. The show’s Diane English was one of the few showrunners who had become a household name. To me, the room looked like her and a clump of other people out of focus. You could tell she was in charge. I felt the same kind of pressure I felt auditioning for Brandon Tartikoff at NBC. I could try to pretend that she wasn’t there, but it would be impossible.

I read the lines the way I did the day before, maniacally and pathetically. They seemed intrigued. They had me step out, come back in, and do it again.

I didn’t get the part. I was a little disappointed, but my agent conveyed to me that the producers loved me and it would be just a matter of time before they found a spot for me on
Murphy Brown
. I was naïve enough to be excited about what I believed was the undeniable impression I had made. I was informed the part ended up going to a comic who more fit the prototype of the annoying, “always on” comic. I instinctively knew most shows don’t stray from the breakdown description of the guest star parts. Now I try not to take it so personally when I am passed over for an audition when I know I’m way off from what they’re looking for.

A few weeks later, I’d get another chance with
Murphy Brown
. I auditioned for another part. It was for an usher who wouldn’t let Frank Fontana, one of the reporters of “FYI,” the show-within-the-show, played by Joe Regalbuto, into an awards show. Frank was up for an award, but had forgotten his ticket. My whole job was to rebuff him with the mantra, “I need a ticket.”

“You don’t understand,” he’d plead. “I want to just peek in and then I’ll come back.”

“I need a ticket.”

“Don’t you know who I am? I’m up for an award.”

(Long beat) “I don’t think so. Ticket please!”

This part I did get. I felt connected when I came in for the producers who had enjoyed my version of the “always on” comedian a few weeks ago. Most times I have found that what nails a part is a prior favorable audition or performance, and that the reading is almost secondary. The role is preconceived in your favor.