Anyone who has worked retail has encountered the creepy older guy who works in their store and will probably stay there until the day he dies. On Chuck, that creepy older guy is Jeff, who is played brilliantly by Scott Krinsky, a standup comic and character actor who had a reoccurring role on Josh Schwartz previous hit show, The O.C. We recently talked to Krinsky about his role on Chuck, the writers’ strike and how to deal with hecklers.

We know you are you originally from the Washington, D.C. area. What was it like growing up there and where do you call home now?

I call Los Angeles home. I grew up there basically until I moved out here in my early 20s, so this is basically my home base now. And most of my family has moved out of Maryland, my parents live down in Florida now and I have family in New York, so I don’t get back to Maryland that often.

How exactly did you get into acting, and when did you decide this is what you wanted to do for a living?

When I was younger, it was always what I dreamed of doing, you know, watching TV shows as a kid. It was always my passion. I didn’t know that I would actually pursue it, but in high school and middle school I was always the class clown, so I think naturally I wanted to perform. And I did perform a lot as a kid, but I got in trouble for it. Got sent to the principal’s office a lot. I used to have periods even as far back as elementary school where I was always kind of acting up – I would have to bring notes home to my parents every day.

So I think it was like a natural instinct of mine to perform and have fun. As I got older, in college, I kind of decided on what do I really, really want to do with my life and I decided that doing something behind a desk was not going to be fulfilling to me and this was sort of a make or break in my early 20s where I just decided to go for it.

How tough is it to break into the business? How many auditions did you go to before you landed a role?

The first few years I came out to Los Angeles – what you hear from a lot from people of my category, I mean I couldn’t get arrested. I don’t want to sound cliché, but I really felt like I was doing everything. I feel like the first two years are an adjustment, you’re sort of getting used to a new place, you’re meeting new people, the scenery was a lot different on the West Coast, but soon enough I got really serious studying and trying to contact agents, trying to get seen and just could not get anything to happen.

But as the years went on too, as I was studying a lot too and meeting with people, a lot of them would tell me, “You’re a real character actor, that’s your type. You just have to be patient, when you get into your 30s, that’s when you’re going to work.” And, sure enough, those people, almost all of them were correct. It was a matter of just being patient, I guess. So many people set a deadline of 30, when they come out here young, as this milestone age where you have to achieve certain things. And, I guess some of the people too, if it’s their true passion, they just really hang in there. I just try to keep believing in myself and trust what so many people have told me and sure enough, things did start to fall in place.

On television, you have played roles such as Blurry Man, Grocery Bagger and Potential Buyer. When you play unnamed characters, do you find yourself coming up with a name and a background story for them?

I think the more specific that you can be coming to any character, whether it’s the smallest part, I think it helps. And I think the more specific you can be, the more prepared you show up, the more professional you appear to everyone around you. Doing those small roles, I was so happy in those early days just to be working or doing anything that I wanted to be there and take everything in and know that one day there’s going to be a bigger role. So I think the more you condition yourself to prepare for the small roles helps you when you get an opportunity to do a lot more.

You had a reoccurring role playing Darryl on The O.C. How did you land that role and what was it like working on the popular teen drama?

That came about from auditioning. It was just another audition and actually that role was meant to be one episode. It was a Thanksgiving episode of The O.C. at the Cohen family house and I just went in there and auditioned and got the job. Then, surprisingly enough, maybe like two weeks later, they called me up to let me know they were going to be using me again.

Were they just really impressed with you and wanted to bring you back or did they decide that there was more to do with the character?

I think that Josh Schwartz apparently took a liking to the character and he thought that I was funny and thought that the character could have some interesting moments with the other characters, I guess and decided to keep having him pop up in their lives over the next few episodes. That’s what I heard from some of the people on the cast. The show was a soap opera, but it had a lot of campy humor in it too. So I think this was a character that could help provide some humor.

Did your work on The O.C. lead to you being cast as on Chuck?

Yeah. I guess you know Josh Schwartz is one of the creators of Chuck and that was a dream come true. I got a call from my agent. It’s funny enough that Josh was offering me the role, it was the same casting director too, and they were offering me the role of Jeff on Chuck.

Did you have to come in and read for the role?

I did end up having to go in and read, just for the approval of the network and studio people. I think that as long as I didn’t fall on my face or something – it was like, “We want to see this guy again on camera.” So I was still like a little nervous. I was like, “Oh my god, I hope I don’t ruin this.” When I got the role, I had seen the breakdowns for a lot of the pilots and it’s funny enough, I had seen this role and I thought, “God, you know, I’ve worked with Josh and this role seems kind of right for me, I hope I can come in and read for it.” Then when I got the call that they were offering it to me, I was really, really elated.

What was the original breakdown for the character?

He was just a little creepy, a little inappropriate with the customers. A little bit on the creepy side. You know, kind of the lifer older guy at work. He’s kind of worked there the longest and he’s probably going to continue to work there long after the other characters. For them, it’s probably a stepping stone or sort of where they’re at in their lives, but for Jeff, this is it. But even when we shot the pilot, this role, it said, “May recur.” Again, I had no idea I would be in every episode.

Do you have any experience working in a retail outlet that you were able to use when preparing for this role?

Well, I had waited tables for many years, so I definitely had the experience of working at restaurants and working at places for a long time and sort of feeling sometimes a little older. Coming to a place where you’re the younger guy, then also feeling later on that you’re kind of like the older guy. And all the different things that come up putting all these different personalities into that kind of work environment. There’s a lot of immature sides of you that come out in those jobs because they’re there to pay the bills.

Many people really enjoyed Jeff’s role on the Thanksgiving episode of Chuck, but we were wondering if you have a favorite episode so far? If so, why is it your favorite?

I really liked that episode because of the physical comedy involved in it. I think that would be my favorite, where he gets the box dropped on his head and then the megaphone that Morgan’s talking out of comes flying into his face. I really liked doing the physical comedy, that was the first time that we’d had an opportunity to do anything like that and I hear that there could be more of that in the future.

Have the writers given you any indication that we might be seeing more screen time for Jeff in future episodes?

Yeah, there’s the likelihood that the Nerd Herd is going to be further explored. They’ve kind of told us ideas and that they have the seasons sort of outlined. But, of course with the strike, we’re all sort of in a holding pattern right now.

What is it like finding yourself in that holding pattern? Are you trying to find other things to fill your time?

Well, there’s not a whole lot of work going on right now. I do stand-up comedy, so I’m kind of keeping busy, focusing on just being out there, performing and writing. But there’s not, as far as acting, there’s not a lot going on.

But, of course, as an actor I’m in total support of the writers because we’re going to be facing the same battle that they’re facing right now. So I want the writers to get everything that they want.

Why do you think the two sides have been unable to work out a deal?

The whole business model is changing. People are going to be watching TV, everything is going to be delivered though your computer. Even if you watch it through your TV, it’s going to be coming through your computer. It’s the future at stake.

If Chuck‘s playing 20 years from now, as you watch Nickelodeon or TV Land and you see shows like The Brady Bunch, and whole new audiences are discovering them and people want to be able to get paid for their work down the road and even now, in the present, but definitely down the road. It will be so easy to access any kind of entertainment from any era in 15 – 20 years, or even farther after that. They just want to make sure that they’re compensated for it.

You mentioned that you also do stand-up comedy. Which do you think is the harder medium?

They’re so different. I guess stand-up is a little scarier. They are both sort of challenging in their own way, but I guess there is such an immediacy to stand-up that you’re right there with a live audience and they’re hanging by your every word and of course they want to laugh and be entertained. I try not to look at things as scaring me as much as I’m excited by the challenge and I try not to feel like I’m nervous, but it’s more of like an anxious energy.

Have you had any rough stand-up experiences with hecklers or anything like that?

Definitely I’ve had some hecklers. My comedy’s a little more on the dry, observational side, so it’s not like an angry ranting kind of comedy, so I guess I don’t provoke that kind of heckling as much as other comics might. It’s definitely uncomfortable. But I feel like the comic seems to always win because he’s on stage, so even if it’s just with silence, the comedian always seems to win and the heckler looks like an idiot.

People aren’t there to hear the heckler, which is another advantage for the comedian.

The heckler is ruining the show for everyone else. People are there to listen to the comedian and if someone keeps heckling, then it ruins the flow of the show. The best thing is just to tell a heckler to come on stage and if he gets on stage, then he’ll really embarrass himself usually.

Though there is that one chance in a million that he could get on stage and do a killer set.

I haven’t seen it yet.

According to your bio, you interned and briefly worked for CNN. What exactly did that job entail and what did you learn during your time there?

In college, I was a journalism major. I worked there during the time when the Berlin Wall was coming down, so it was really exciting. I worked for their show called The Capital Gang, a show that is was similar to in format was The McLaughlin Group. It was really exciting to be working there and I kind of helped the producer producing the show and researching whatever was in the news that day, reading all the papers. And I got to meet a lot of senators and Washington elite. I used to have to go down to the main lobby and escort them up.

And I also got to go with reporters to the Capital, to the White House, and help them write stories, which is sort of how you would learn. They would let you take a crack at a story and then they’d kind of proof it. So it was really exciting being a part of that whole live TV experience. And also, with everything that was going on with the Berlin Wall in Europe. It was really an exciting time because there was so much news breaking all the time. It kind of reminded me of the movie Broadcast News.

What made you decide to leave CNN?

That was during that period that I had taken classes in college in acting and it had always sort of been a dream in the back of my mind to pursue it and during college and after college, I was just at that point where I decided – I realized I was in a job where, if I stayed there, I could do really well and this would be my life, but at the same time, it just kept coming back to me – what do I really, really want to do? And I thought, “If I don’t go do it now, then I’ll just keep getting more settled in to where I’m at right now and I might not really ever go pursue those dreams.” So I decided to go pack up the car and I drove out west.

It was a little scary at the time, but at the same time it was exciting. Plus, I’d always loved California and watching all the TV shows as a kid, so many shows were set in California and Los Angeles. And I liked the warm weather. I just had this thing in me and I was just like let’s go for it.

What goals do you have set for yourself? Where would you like to see your career go?

I hope that I’ll be working on Chuck for the next few years. I’d love to start working on some bigger feature films. Some of my dream people to work with would be like Woody Allen, Wes Anderson or Christopher Guest. I’m a big fan of all three of them. So I would love hopefully with the success of Chuck, to sort of be able to have those opportunities come up.

What do you do to unwind when you are not working?

I paint and I do yoga. I like to cook.

What would you do for a living if you never got into acting? Would you have stuck with the journalism?

I think if I hadn’t pursued acting, what I actually would have done is become a chef. Even when I was out here having some tough times and I had already kind of explored the journalism a little bit, I loved to cook. There was a period for six months I went to a small little culinary school and started taking up a baking program for pastries and baking.

And right when I finished that, I started working a little bit part-time for some chefs, sort of assisting them in catering and some different jobs that they had. It was kind of interesting because right at about that time is when I started getting a lot more acting work. But I probably would have, if I didn’t act and if I sort of lost my drive for it, that’s the only thing I would probably want to do.

What is the best dish you can make?

I think I can make a mean chocolate cake. I’m a chocaholic.

Tell us something most people don’t know about you.

In contrast to all of the roles I have played, like a homeless guy I’ve played a few times, I’m actually a very neat person. I’m kind of a neat freak.

Interviewed by Joel Murphy, December 2007. For more information on Scott Krinsky, visit his MySpace profile.

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The surprise hit of the season has been Chuck, NBC’s comedy about an employee of an electronic store who unwittingly becomes a government spy. Chuck Bartowski gets his orders from General Beckman, a no-nonsense general calling the shots from our nation’s capital.

Beckman is played by Bonita Friedericy, a talented character actress who recently talked to us about sharing screen time with the Candyman, having a husband who excels at playing creepy guys and what it was like being in a Bobcat Goldthwait movie about bestiality.

Where are you originally from and where do you call home now?

That’s an interesting question. I’m originally from the Commonwealth of Virginia. Virginians are fiercely independent, shall we say? I actually even have, it looks like a little credit card that’s my birth certificate – you can carry it around with you wherever you go and it’s from the Commonwealth of Virginia. I was born in Charlottesville, Virginia.

We moved out here when I was five and I call Los Angeles home.

How exactly did you get into acting, and when did you decide this is what you wanted to do for a living?

Have I decided that yet?

Perhaps we are assuming too much –

(Laughs.) No. Let me think, I come from a kind of odd family where there were a lot of puppets and playacting that occurred. For some reason, we put on little plays when I was a little kid, which I think my brother wanted to do. And my brother, he was gay – he passed away – but he would always play like the witches and things like that. We would do like Hansel and Gretel and he’d play the witch and my sister would always play the princes and I had to play the little princesses. And everybody would yell at me because I would pick my nose and basically not behave because I didn’t understand what was going on.

And then, when I was 10 years old, my brother did the play Fiddler on the Roof at his high school and they needed a little girl, so he brought me with him and I did my first play. And I continued doing theatre from that moment on.

I think I decided I actually wanted to make a living at it about nine years ago. That’s when I started doing TV and film.

How tough was it to break into the business when you decided to pursue it nine years ago?

Well, it’s funny, I think because I started older, it’s hard when you are a middle-aged woman just because there aren’t a whole lot of parts out there. However, I was very determined and I was older because I started at about 36. Pretty quickly I was making more than I was making doing theatre, which isn’t saying much.

I still think I’m trying to break in to the business, I have to say. (Laughs.) It’s not easy.

You’ve had guest spots on a wide variety of popular television shows. Do you enjoy the variety of your work or is it tough to constantly be bouncing around to different sets?

You know, it’s interesting. For years, I was a substitute teacher because it would supplement my theatre earnings, and it kind of does remind me of being a sub. It is kind of funky to pop around because you don’t quite belong and your job really is to know your lines, not bother anyone and be fun to work with. I do like the variety, I have to say. I’m a character actor and I think being able to play a general one week and a horrible mother the next week and then a secretary on Drew Carey or something, that I really like a lot. I like the variety.

My husband is an actor, too and we talk about it sometimes because he’s been on a number of series. And I think the idea of being able to go to the same job and getting to work with actors that you get to see on a regular basis and writers and things like that and developing a character more deeply has its own merits too. I just sort of figure you do whatever comes your way.

So do you get treated pretty well when you show up to the different sets?

Like I said, it is kind of like substitute teaching and I think there’s probably nothing more painful than going from one East LA middle school classroom to a Central school and being faced with anywhere from 30 to 50 children per class who really don’t want you there.

So do you think it’s tougher to win over the classroom full of kids?

Who could potentially hurt you physically and also where you have no books because the teachers have locked everything to keep them from you because they don’t trust you.

It actually prepared me very well to go from set to set. It depends on the set, I have to say. If you’re on a show that’s not doing very well it can be really intimidating. Years ago, I worked on Payne, which was a John Larroquette show. It was Faulty Towers, they were trying a remake of it and it wasn’t doing very well and it was really terrifying because nobody was happy and if you crossed your eyes the wrong way, you got the feeling you’d be fired. So stuff like that, it’s not so good. But ones where the show is doing really well – and I have to say, Chuck is just a wonderful set and a lot of that is because of Zachary Levi, he’s a really nice guy and he’s very fun to be with.

Speaking of Chuck, you play General Beckman on the show.

General Chuckles Beckman. (Laughs)

How was the character explained to you initially and will we be seeing more of General Beckman in future episodes besides just your cameos on the television screen at the Buy More?

You mean the Charlie of Charlie’s Angels? You know, I really don’t know what they have in mind with that, quite frankly. I’m sort of curious myself. I mean, every so often I run into a writer and they were pitching around at one point having Beckman getting married and having an assassination attempt on her and there’s been murmurings of back stories and things like that and I have to say, it’s developing a little bit. So I’m kind of curious because there’s this whole storyline now that they’re rebuilding the computer that got blown up that Chuck represents now and the basic riff is that as soon as the new computer is up and running, she’s going to have the Adam Baldwin character do Chuck in.

We don’t think Chuck will die though. It wouldn’t be very good for the show.

Hey, it’s going to be called Beckman after that. (Laughs.)

So it will just be a spin-off about the adventures of General Beckman?

Well, I think so. Don’t you think? You can just have like a blog with her where she just comes up on the screen for the entire hour.

And Tony Todd could be your wacky sidekick.

Particularly since he’s 6’5″ and I’m 5’3″, which is frankly why he’s always leaning on my desk because they can’t fit us in the same frame. I’m usually sitting on five cushions. I think they conceived Beckman as being a little bit bigger than I am because we try different things, we try to have me walking around my chair and stuff like that, but the chair’s twice my size, so I always end up sitting in it. It’s kind of funny.

And I love Tony Todd, but I think it’s hysterical – when I stand next to him, I come up to his waist. You know, he actually is the Candyman. People come up to him constantly when we’re working and get this “in awe” expression and say, “Oh my God, you’re the Candyman,” which I’ve never seen, but I guess you say his name three times in the mirror and he comes and gets you.

So even though it’s a small part right now, do you enjoy playing General Beckman?

I actually really like this part a lot. I like the fact that she sort of has a weird wryness to her. I really do call her Chuckles Beckman because her response to just about everything is to not register it and then shoot some mortars out there.

And frankly, I just want to stay in the show. Because, I don’t know if you realize this – I don’t think anyone knows this, I’m not the original Beckman. In the pilot, that’s another woman. They don’t show a whole lot of her, but we kind of look similar and actually I was at the premiere screening of it at McG’s and a number of people came up and said they liked my work and I kind of said, “Nope, wasn’t me.”

What I think is kind of interesting is the gal who was in the pilot, her name is Wendy Makkena, she actually – I played my husband’s wife on the show The Nine, he left me after several episodes and in the unaired episodes, he started dating and the woman he started dating on the show is Wendy Makkena. It was actually down to the two of us for Beckman and they couldn’t make up their minds and eventually went with Wendy and then, I don’t know what happened but after the pilot, they called me up and had me come.

So is that your way of getting her back for stealing your husband away?

I think so. (Laughs.) Actually John loves her. I’ve never met her, but he liked working with her very much. So I was just minding my Ps and Qs for a couple episodes just to make sure I would keep coming back.

You mentioned your husband John Billingsley, who is known for playing Dr. Phlox on Enterprise, and we know you even appeared on an episode of the show. What was it like working with him on that show and what sort of encounters does he have with Star Trek fans?

That’s so much a part of our life. We really enjoy it. Star Trek fans are actually some of the nicest, kindest people you’ll ever meet. It’s a part of why they’re attracted to Star Trek. I don’t know if you realize what goes on, I guess particularly in the original Star Trek – you had Uhura, a black woman with a major role, you had George Takei and you had Chekov. I think with all of the different aliens and things like that, this whole idea of acceptance and to be different is acceptable and it’s the kind of world we’re striving to have – that speaks very loudly to a lot of Star Trek fans. They’re very kind people and very accepting people and we love going to the conventions and getting to talk to them. My husband is a very, very nice man and he’s very, very generous.

That being said, working with him, we just like scream at each other, hit each other, throw tantrums, basically work out all of our marital problems on the set – no, actually we really like working with each other. We also did a terrible Christmas movie, the 12 Dogs of Christmas together.

We would also just like to say that your husband plays a creepy guy very well.

Doesn’t he? Did you see Cold Case? I loved him. It sort of bothered me, but in a really good way. I’m his biggest fan, by the way.

But I was sitting next to him when we were watching and it was like I didn’t want to be sitting next to him. He’s kind of sexy creepy too, I think. We joke about the fact that he’s played quite a few serial killers, child molesters – there’s an old NYPD Blue that he did where he is a child molester and god, it’s just so frightening, it’s just so good.

“You were a really good child molester” has got to be a weird compliment to give to your husband.

Yeah, it is, but what are you going to do?

How often do the two of you get recognized in public?

He does. Me no. It’s funny because he has different groups of people who recognize him for different work and you can usually figure out which are the Star Trek fans because I see them glancing at him from the side and they just sort of stand there transfixed. And I’ll go, “Yeah, it is.” He also has a lot of fans because he was in the Denzel Washington movie Out of Time. Me, I am not usually recognized. I’m perfectly happy not getting recognized, quite frankly. When I was younger, people used to think I was Carol Kane, and that was kind of interesting.

That’s got to be bizarre to be mistakenly recognized as someone else.

What’s kind of bizarre that I’ve noticed is people don’t know what I’ve been on and it happens with John sometimes too. The people will come up to me and say, “God, I feel like I know you” or “Where did we meet?”

It’s that funny thing where you kind of eventually go, “Well, maybe from a TV show.”

And they’ll go, “Oh, oh yeah, that’s right.”

But it’s kind of funny at first when people just sort of feel like they know you and you don’t want to go, “No, not really, from TV,” so you kind of pretend like, “Well, where did you grow up?”

You were in Sleeping Dogs Lie, which Bobcat Goldthwait wrote and directed. What can you tell us about this film and what was it like working with Bob Goldthwait?

It’s one of my favorite things I’ve ever done, I have to say. You know, he’s actually not like his persona that he puts out there at all. He’s a really, really shy, very sweet, very quiet man.

I played the mother and I actually ended up wrestling another woman in my underwear for Elvis’ delectation at the end of the movie, which I’m very proud of.

What is the movie about?

Bestiality. It’s about a girl who has sort of a strange experience with her dog when she’s bored one day in college in her dorm. And then you flash forward to about five years later when she’s in love with a guy and he wants to get married to her and he wants them to have no secrets between the two of them and her having to deal with this because it was just a stupid thing that she did.

It’s funny because people get freaked out by the first three seconds of the movie or 20 seconds of the movie are the flashback with her dog and they don’t show anything, but you get the point. And people get completely nonplussed and shocked, but actually the rest of the movie is about her dealing with it and it’s screamingly funny and it’s really touching. And I was just so happy to be in a movie about bestiality.

I was also in Fart: The Movie. Bobcat told me one of the reasons why they cast me in Sleeping Dogs Lie was because they noticed I’d been in Fart: The Movie and that made him really happy. It’s all interconnected.

You were the first recipient of the Natalie Schafer Award for Comedy Acting. Please tell us about the award and what it meant to win it.

There were a total of 10 of us. The last recipient was Kirsten Vangsness, who is Garcia, she’s the techno gal with the glasses on Cold Case, she’s a friend of mine.

Natalie Schafer, that’s Lovey Howell from Gilligan’s Island. She was a character actress and she created this award before she died. It was in her will that a lump sum of money would go to emerging comic character actresses to help them with their careers and every year there would be a different recipient. They ran out of money after 10 years.

Yes, but it’s interesting – Natalie Schafer had a lover who was 20 years her junior. She died when she was like 90, and he was the one to make sure how the award was transferred and given and all of that stuff. It was interesting talking to him.

So how were you selected to win this award?

It’s the LA Drama Critics Circle critics. There were like 10 of them or 12 of them – they were the ones who were given the task of deciding who receives the award. I guess, there was a very lovely gentleman named Tom McCulloh, who has since passed on, who is a critic, who saw me when I was 18 years old in a play I had done with my college professor and his wife at a small theatre, and he had always been a champion of mine.

So I think he nominated me and I had just done a lot of theatre for years and so they all put their heads together and had decided that I had earned that award. And they gave it to me at the LA Drama Critics Circle awards. They gave me a big check, which was really helpful. That was one of the things that enabled me to think about taking a dive and to try to make a career in TV and film. It was enough of a chunk of money that I thought, “I can stop teaching part-time and just try and hang in there and get TV work.”

One of the things I did – I didn’t know how you got TV and film work. I hadn’t had an agent before. I’m really lame; I’m actually like a big chicken. I didn’t know how you did any of these things. I used to call my sister on the phone every day because she’s really smart and we’d try to figure out how you get ahead in TV and film. And she said, “There’s got to be a way to meet casting directors.” And a friend of mine told me about casting workshops. So I took about 400 of those, I think, over the course of two or three years and I did showcases and stuff like that just to meet people. And I needed to kind of have a little stake money there to be able to do that.

So do you have any advice for aspiring actors?

Yeah, John and I, if anyone ever wants to sit down over coffee and ask us, which they do quite a bit, because John did pretty much the same thing. He came down like 12 years ago from Seattle. He was a theatre actor up there and he started a theatre company called Bookends, which is what brought Cider House Rules down to that area. But, when he came down here, he was trying to figure out what to do to and he did pretty much what I did. We both just started taking these casting workshops and meeting casting directors and talking to them and seeing them again and making sure you do really good work.

And, I don’t think people do them anymore, but for a while, the acting showcases were pretty big. I did one in particular where I thought it was a pretty good showcase and picked out scenes that were really good for me and tried to get really strong partners and then I could invite all of the casting directors that I met to come see me in those and then I could use all of those contacts to talk an agent into taking me on. And then I could go back and tell the agent, “Look, I met so and so, I think there’s a part in such and such, could you try to get me in?” And sort of tried to make a triangle working there.

Then, never be scared to leave an agent or a manager. When I first started, everyone told me you weren’t supposed to change agents, like you’d never get another one or you’d get a bad reputation, and it’s so not true. It was very hard for me at first, but I think I’ve had three managers and four agents and it’s only gotten better each time that I’ve changed.

What goals do you have set for yourself? Where would you like to see your career go?

Don’t we all want to be Meryl Streep? She’s so good. Or Philip Seymour Hoffman? He’s so good. You know, it’s funny – one of the goals I had set for myself was to be able to make a living at this and that I have achieved. It’s funny, I was talking to an actress that lives down the street from me – I didn’t realize she was an actress and she didn’t realize I was an actress, she was walking her dog and I was walking around.

We started talking and she was saying, “Oh my god, I create projects for myself, I’m producing a movie that I wrote. You’ve got to just think of the parts you want to play” and stuff like that. I did when I was younger, I don’t so much anymore. My goals kind of extend more I think to being involved in projects that are entertaining to people and it’s not necessarily what I’m doing – it’s not about me, it’s just that the project is working for people.

It’s really hard with TV and theatre and film to know what kind of difference it’s making, particularly in the world right now. You’re not being a doctor, you’re not a nurse. You’re there to either help people escape for a while or to inform them or to make them feel not so alone, things like that. And that is very important to me, so being involved in something that serves that purpose makes me happy and is a goal.

I also – I’m feeling lazy, but I like directing theatre and I haven’t done that in a while. I do want to direct a piece in the next few years; I just have to find a piece I want to work on.

What do you do to unwind when you are not working?

That’s an interesting question. I play with my husband. We go doodle around, we go on trips. I like to read. Actually, a friend of mine is training to become a Pilates instructor, so she talked me into being her guinea pig because I actually used to dance when I was younger and Pilates uses a lot of that. So she can try things out on me and even if I don’t know what I’m doing, I can tell her what works and doesn’t work. And actually, I’m getting really interested in it. Pilates is great. Joseph Pilates was a very smart man.

What would you do for a living if you never got into acting?

That’s an interesting question too. I have a feeling the answer’s supposed to be, “Oh, acting is the only thing I could do.” It’s probably the only thing that saved me as a human being, was acting, because I got to play all of these different parts I couldn’t in my own personal life. But I probably would be either a nurse or a teacher, although I was a really bad middle school teacher – because I was teaching full-time while doing theatre.

I would do theatre at night and teach during the day and I taught every subject under the sun although I was completely improperly credentialed for any of it because this is LA. My sister mentioned to me at one point that she really wouldn’t want me teaching any of my nephews.

I thought about that for a while and I thought, “You know, that’s probably really true. I should either just go back to school and become a full-time teacher or totally make my living as an actor.” And obviously I was too lazy to go back to school, so I took the road of less resistance. But I think teachers are fabulous.

But I think I would probably be a nurse. Actually, my mom and I, we call each other the young junior medics because we can diagnose on a dime, I actually do read the Health section of the newspaper.

Tell us something most people don’t know about you.

I noticed that’s what you ask people in your interviews. Well, nobody knows anything about me. I don’t know. Probably that I’m part Indonesian. I don’t know if that matters, but I always think it’s kind of interesting. I don’t have a fake leg or a glass eye. I think most people realize I’m not 21 years old.

Interviewed by Joel Murphy, December 2007.

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Chuck Bartowski may moonlight as a government spy, but he still has to work a day job at the Buy More. And while his government handlers may be a bit difficult to deal with, luckily his Buy More boss Big Mike is a bit more down to earth.

Playing Big Mike is Mark Christopher Lawrence, an easily recognizable character actor who has appeared in a variety of television shows, as well as the cult classic mockumentary Fear of a Black Hat. We recently talked with Lawrence about Chuck, the Tijuana Boys Club and the possibility of a NWH reunion.

Where are you originally from and where do you call home now?

I’m originally from Compton, California and I call San Diego home now.

How exactly did you get into acting, and when did you decide this is what you wanted to do for a living?

Wow, it’s a long story. I grew up in Compton, as I said. My English teacher in the 10th grade and she actually ended up being my English teacher for all three years of high school taught speech and debate and she ran a speech team for my high school.

I was playing football and in my fifth period class I had a teacher who was the football equipment manager and he was the drafting teacher. And I wanted to really be an architect and so me and two other friends would get there early and we were way ahead of pretty much all of his classes in drawings and all of my work was A/B work. When grades came out, I had a D and I was shocked.

I went and told my mother, so we went to the principal to have a conference with this teacher, brought my work in and basically, his thing was he thought that I talked a lot in class. And, what it boiled down to was that he didn’t like football players in his class because he sees them after school and that was the thing. And so I got out of his class, I was totally disillusioned from wanting to be a draftsman, architect and all that and I didn’t have a fifth period class. My English teacher said to me, “You can take my fifth period class,” which was the speech and debate class.

Once I was in there, she said to me, “You can’t pass this class without going to tournaments.” And I did that and loved it. From there, she talked me into doing a play – she was also the drama teacher. And our school was a small school in comparison to other schools, so we didn’t have a theater. Plays were produced in a double room sort of configuration – two rooms that didn’t have a wall between them. So in the three years in high school, I did two plays. One of the plays we took to the literary Olympiad and I won best actor in the Compton Unified School District.

And then, I went to college at USC on a debate scholarship and at that point I decided I was going to be a lawyer. Clearly, debate was the tool that was going to teach me to do well in court and I took a voice class for speaking and centering and the professor talked me into the acting program at USC and at that point I was already a junior. So I auditioned probably thinking that I wasn’t going to get in because it was one of the harder programs to get into in the country at the time and I got in. And they put me in as a sophomore, so it added two years to my graduation.

That same year, I started working professionally. Clearly, the bug had bit me at that point and there was no looking back.

Once you made the decision to go for it, how tough is it to break into the business?

I was in the program – that same year, I started doing an underground play called Tracers, I say underground in that it wasn’t part of the school curriculum, so we would put it up in a different building every night and it got to be so huge that the security guards would tell us what buildings we could use – you know, “If you got to this building at such and such a time, you can set up your lights and all that stuff and do your play here.” And so, it became a huge thing that lasted all semester. There were several letters that we sent out just trying to get a little funding to help this thing along to draw some attention to the play itself.

And, in the process, what we did was send a letter to John DiFusco who originally wrote the play and was in it off-Broadway. He and Merlin Marston came to see our first preview of the play and Merlin asked me if I did Shakespeare. I said, “Yeah.” So he gave me an address, which was the address to the Los Angeles Theater Center, which at the time was being run as a theater company. So I go over, do the audition and get a job and proceeded to do probably 10 plays at the Los Angeles Theater Center between that audition and the year after I got out of college. So theatrically, I worked right away. And then the next year, one of my debate coaches was friends with an agent and he brought her to see me in a play at USC and she said to me, “Come and meet me at my office tomorrow, we should have a conversation.” We talked and she became my first agent, sent me out the very next day for a part on Hill Street Blues and I was hired. So I started working immediately.

Here’s the thing that I always tell kids – if you’re going to be an actor, know that there are going to be good times and bad times. Before I got home from the audition, the message was already on my machine that I had gotten this job.

So then, after every audition for the next year, I rushed home to check my machine – and I didn’t work again for a year. And then it hit me, which was great.

It was the best thing that could happen to me because now when I go to auditions, I let it go. It’s like I do it, if I get it, I get it. If I don’t, I won’t.

So now I go to an audition and I’m very comfortable with the fact that I may or may not get this job. No matter how well I do, sometimes it has nothing to do with me.

You have been a bit of a journeyman actor, appearing in small roles in a variety of popular television shows, including Seinfeld, Murphy Brown, Martin, Malcolm in the Middle and 3rd Rock from the Sun. What was it like appearing on so many different popular shows and what stands out to you from those experiences?

I think the thing that strikes me about my career is that I haven’t been sort of pigeon-holed as a certain type. I’m truly a character actor in that I’m not just the guy who plays the drug dealer or the pimp. Early in my career, I think part of it was that at the time that’s the sort of thing that was available to black actors, but at the time, I had such a sort of baby face and such a likeable demeanor that even if I go in and knock that audition out of the park, they look at my face – in fact, Gail Levin said to me one time, it was a part for a drug dealer in some gang movie, she said, “Clearly, you were the best actor in the room, but I just want to hug you. So they’re going to go another way, but we wanted to tell you that, wanted to let you know that it has nothing to do with your acting.” I was like, “Okay.”

So, I think it’s been great that I haven’t had to play the drug dealer or the pimp again and again and again and again and it opened up doors to me to play things that are real life characters that you would see every day because not every black person is a drug dealer, not every black person is a pimp. So the experience has been wonderful in that it allows me to really stretch and grow because every time you do the homework to learn about what this character does or who this character is, you’ll learn something that you didn’t know. And so, it’s been fabulous.

You played Tone Def in the underrated film Fear of a Black Hat. How much fun was it working on that film?

Fear of a Black Hat is probably the only thing I’ve ever done that I watch and I have no regrets. Sometimes you watch something and you go, “Ah, I should have done this, I should have done that, I should have said this line like that,” and I watch that and just laugh every time.

It’s funny, Rusty Cundieff and I are still good friends. We’ve been friends since the 11th grade. He was a frat brother of one of my mentors. In fact, he and I just got back from D.C. doing one performance of his play Black Horror Show and he and I were actually talking about possibly touring during the strike as NWH. Right now, we are kind of looking at colleges and seeing where to go. We screened Fear of a Black Hat here in San Diego at UCSD last semester and the response was so huge that we thought, “Wow, there’s a whole other generation of people that are starting to see this movie,” so we thought while the writers’ strike is going on, it could give us something to do.

We’re seriously rolling it around – trying to figure out how to do it. My original idea was, “We should do Fear of a Black Hat the musical and put it up like a play.” Then that morphed into, “Let’s just tour,” which morphed into, “Well, we could tour and kind of have some theatricality by adding in some sketches that sort of resemble what these guys are like in the movie.” And then we decided we’d have to travel all these people, so what we’ll do is maybe shoot some sketches and then as we do numbers in the show, we’ll show a sketch, then do another number. We’re still working out the details, but I think it’s going to happen. We’ll probably call ourselves FNWH – formerly NWH – because we don’t own those characters.

How did you land the role of Big Mike on Chuck, and how was the character explained to you initially?

Well, it’s interesting – Chuck came along right at the end of this past pilot season and I was up for a series regular on about five other shows and Chuck wasn’t my highest priority in studying for because it was just a guest spot with possibly reoccurring.

It was literally within the last week and a half of pilot season, all of the sudden I was out every day going to producer, the next day going to studio, next day go to network and it was five pilots and right away two of them got weeded out. Then I was down to three and then Chuck came along and my agent said, “Well, it’s just reoccurring, but you should just go in there anyway.”

So I go in, do the thing – I didn’t even read the script. I just read the sides and just from what was given in the sides decided that I knew who this guy was and went in, auditioned and actually, when I went in to read, I read for the role of Harry Tang.

So, I finished up these other auditions over the next week and a half and then I was sort of in vacation mode. I was like, “Okay, I’m going on vacation – get out of here and I’m going to let this crazy sort of half-baked pilot season go,” because I had all of these pilots rolling around and dropped them all.

So then, I get a call, “Hey, they gave you a job on this thing Chuck. It’s not the role that you originally read for; it’s the role of Big Mike.”

I was like, “Oh, okay.” So I literally came in, worked one day on the pilot, drove to San Diego that night at like three in the morning and was on a plane to Maui at 6 a.m. out of San Diego, so I had to drive home and fly. I really just let it go, I didn’t even think about it.

Then, March rolled around and I thought, “I wonder whatever happened with that thing Chuck – if it got picked up or not?” And then, June rolled around and then I get a call, “Hey, we’re going.” And all of the sudden, there was this job with Big Mike and I hadn’t seen the pilot because I was in Maui when they did the screening. My first day on the set, Adam Baldwin asked me if I had seen it. I said no, se he went and got a copy and I watched it in my dressing room and I thought, “Wow, this is a really interesting and funny script.” Because I hadn’t read the pilot. And it was all of the sudden looking like a piece that had legs. I said, “This thing could probably go.”

The opening night, Peter Roth was there, he’s the head of Warner Bros. Company and I know they had a bunch of other shows that were opening that same night. I was like, “If he’s here, this show is high on his priority list.”

And, all of the sudden, it sort of did what it does – the writers have been writing really funny and interesting things, which makes it easy as an actor when you don’t have to make something funny. So I really started getting into the role of Big Mike and each episode when a different writer would come in with their script to shoot, they all kept saying to me, “Wow, we love writing for Big Mike. You’re really great in it.” It’s been a lot of fun, because you usually don’t hear that. Writers kind of stick to themselves. It was great to sort of get this feedback.

For me, I’m going to do my best anyway, but once you hear that somebody is really taking an interest in your work, it really makes you step up even more. The stuff that they’ve been giving me has been getting really funny and a lot of fun to work on.

Big Mike and Harry Tang are two of the best characters on the show. We were really sad to see Tang written out of the show.

He’s on the show Dexter and they didn’t want to share him. He’s just a great guy and really just a great actor, so it was kind of a bummer.

Do you have a favorite episode so far? If so, why is it your favorite?

I think my favorite episode hasn’t aired yet, so I probably can’t talk about it. But you learn something about Big Mike that seems to be out of character and it’s really funny. It’s hysterical. When you find out what it is, it’s like the last thing in the episode and it’s hysterical.

How will Chuck be affected by the writers’ strike?

Our writers worked really hard to finish the order. The first order of Chuck was for 13 episodes and so they worked really hard and finished the order so that it could be as seamless as possible and then they came in and apologized and said that they have to do what they have to do. I write as well, so I clearly understand it. I’ve also been on the negotiating team with SAG and AFTRA for the last contract that the actors had with the producers, so I know what they’re up against and don’t envy them at all.

So yeah, it’s going to affect Chuck – once we finish the next two episodes, we’re down until the strike is over. So hopefully, that doesn’t affect whether or not we’re picked up for the back nine. And all indications seem like it should be okay for us. Our numbers are pretty good and it seems like the network really likes the show, so we’ll see how it goes.

You also appeared as Mr. LaMarr on an episode of Heroes this season. What was that experience like for you and will we be seeing Mr. LaMarr again in any future episodes?

It’s funny that you mention that because Dana Davis that I’m in that scene with, she auditioned during pilot season with me for one of the pilots that I was up for series regular for and she was auditioning to play my daughter – my 16-year-old daughter. And clearly, she’s a woman, she’s a 28-year-old woman, but when I saw her at the audition, I thought she was a kid. She had a little Catholic school outfit and a little backpack and standing next to the other kids, she looked like a kid.

And then, when I saw her at Heroes, I was like, “Okay, clearly, you are a woman. That’s a purse, not a backpack.” And she starts laughing. She and I have talked recently and she said that her character is still working at the Burger Bonanza, so there’s a possibility that I could end up over there again, but really the role itself is kind of a nothing role, it doesn’t really go anywhere.

Both Chuck and Heroes are action-packed shows, but in both shows, you have played a store manager. We know you’ve got more to offer than your mild-mannered manager role suggest. Do you ever wish that you were the one kicking bad guy’s asses and who do we need to talk to to make it happen?

I do get a little action in Chuck, there’s an episode that we shot where there is a small action sequence that involved a stunt and I suspect that because they know that I’m pretty physical and can do physical comedy and I’m very athletic for my size that I suspect that the character will have more fun stuff to do.

And sure, you always want to be the guy the show is about but I understand the business and I understand that I’m a character actor and I understand that they hired me because I’m funny, as opposed to sexy. Even though my wife thinks I’m sexy.

We’re surprised that the ladies didn’t go for the pimp outfit you wore on the show.

(Laughs.) Yep, I got about 20 phone calls when that aired.

How often do you get recognized in public?

Every day.

What role do you usually get recognized for? What types of people approach you?

Most of it is people not really knowing where they know me from. They’ll go, “Tell me what I’ve seen you on.”

“I don’t know what you’ve seen.”

Or, sometimes people think that they know me. They’ll go, “Hey, where’d you go to school?” or “Where do you go to church?”

In fact, one of my good friends, she and her husband were misplaced by Katrina and I actually met them in TJ. So now they’re really good friends of ours and she’s a professor at San Diego State. When I met her, that’s what she said to me – she said, “Wait a minute, why do I know you?”

I said, “You probably saw me in a movie or TV or something.”

She goes, “Nah, that’s not it.” (Laughs.) Her husband just started cracking up.

He goes, “That is.”

So literally, everyday. When I leave the house today, I expect if I go to the store or if I go to the gas station, somebody is going to recognize me and they may not know why, but it will start a conversation.

Do you enjoy that?

Yeah, as long as people are respectful and talk to you. You know, sometimes people just kind of stare at me from a distance and it makes me a little nervous. I grew up in Compton, so if someone is staring at me, immediately I’m getting defensive.

So, it’s fun sometimes – especially when other people who haven’t seen it before.

So you can kind of show off a little bit?

Yeah, it’s kind of interesting. I was doing a play at the San Diego Rep a few years ago and me and this guy Fernando went upstairs to the food court and I got stopped like 20 times and we got back to the theater, Fernando was going, “How come you don’t have this guy’s picture on the poster? Everybody knows him.” (Laughs.) So it was pretty funny.

What goals do you have set for yourself? Where would you like to see your career go?

I think early on I said that I want to be in that group of actors who you see all the time like J.T. Walsh, somebody like that, where people don’t necessarily know who they are, but they recognize them and then the people the do know who they are really like their work.

I just want to have that career where I can always work, I’m just floating from one thing to the next so that you don’t get into that rut of “Man, I wish I had another job” because early in your career, it’s so much of that that you have to feel like there’s got to be something better. So far, I’ve been very lucky to float from, if I’m not doing a movie or TV, I’ll get a commercial or I’ll do some voiceover or a play. I’m also a standup, so I’m always floating from one thing to another. In one respect, I’m doing what my goal was, but on the other side of it is I think when I’m working in film and TV, I just need to get to that point where more people are calling me and I’m not jumping through all the hoops.

What do you do to unwind when you are not working?

Tequila and cigars. A couple of my closest friends, we have a club called the TJBC – the Tijuana Boys Club. We consider ourselves tequila aficionados and cigar aficionados.

So what are your brands of choice?

Well, I’ll tell you, by far, my favorite tequila, not necessarily my favorite brand, is Jose Cuervo De La Familia Reserva. It’s Cuervo’s family reserve. Every year, they get a different artist that creates the artwork on the box that it comes in – it’s a wooden box – and then the bottle is like a really dark green bottle and the tequila has sort of an oaky flavor to it and it’s really, really smooth, it’s very high end. It kind of reminds you of a Cognac. It’s really awesome. If you’ve never had it, treat yourself. Costco sometimes has it for like $70 and it’s worth every penny.

And I’ve had tequila that – down here, there’s a place that has hundreds of tequilas. And they have one that’s 600 bucks. So one day, I said, “You know what, I have to know.” And so I got a shot – a shot of it was $30 and it was okay. It wasn’t in the ballpark of Familia Reserva.

And cigars, I was definitely a Rocky Patel Vintage series kind of guy. He does the Vintage 1992s with a 60-ring gauge and that was my favorite cigar until recently, on my birthday, my friend Aaron gave me a Gurkha Fuerte and that is fastly becoming one of my favorites. I think my top three in cigars would be the Rocky Patel, the Gurkha Fuerte and then La Gloria Cubana Series R.

What would you do for a living if you never got into acting?

I think if I would have never gotten into acting, had I never taken that voice class, I’d probably be a lawyer today. If my career were over today, like if I got punched in the throat or something and couldn’t speak, I think I would go with costuming.

Is that something you’ve tried before?

I like to shop and I like to design. I started doing my own clothes – designing my own clothes and going to the tailor and having them put things together based on kind of what I had in my head. And I started doing a very small boutique business of it with big guys who were friends with, you know, “Hey, you don’t have to wear just jeans or just suits. You can wear other stuff that’s nice.”

Tell us something most people don’t know about you.

Most people probably don’t know that I volunteer – I’ve sort of adopted a school down in Palo Cedro called Willow Elementary and over the past few years I’ve taken to them people from different walks of life to show the kids there that you don’t have to be a drug dealer or the next Kobe Bryant to better yourself. For instance, I took them a master diver, one of five black master divers in the Navy ever – Mike Washington. I took another guy, Tony Washington, whose actually Mike’s son, he does animation work for Sony. I took them a financial planner. Just so that they could see that there’s other things – you can be happy without being a millionaire.

Most people don’t know that because I work in LA and the people I hang around with here in San Diego are very, very close friends, so the two sides of me never really meet.

Interviewed by Joel Murphy, November 2007. Chuck airs Monday nights at 8 p.m. on NBC.

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