Jeff Hiller stopped to clarify what he meant when he said that he had been an actor before being cast in the HBO dramatic comedy “Somebody Somewhere.”
He hadn’t been a prop, of course — although that was the first word that came to mind. It’s just that his roles did not always reach the level of having names. In “30 Rock” he played one character named Stewart. Another was called simply Hotel Clerk.
So when the star of “Somebody Somewhere,” Bridget Everett, emailed Hiller asking him to audition for the role of Joel, her character’s best friend and a member of the main cast, of course the answer was yes.
“It’s not the same when you actually get to dig into a character and really explore,” Hiller, 49, said over onion rings last week at Betty on Manhattan’s Lower East Side (“Dimes Square adjacent,” as he put it). “So this is the first time for that.”
It also, last month, earned him his first Emmy nomination, for his work in the third and final season. The ensuing weeks have been a whirlwind of people from his past and present, telling him they’re proud, along with a string of media engagements.
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The post Jeff Hiller Came Out of Nowhere. It Only Took 20 Years. appeared first on New York Times.
