For the actor Jeff Hiller “Someone somewhere” the big break came after 40: NPR

During the majority of his career, actor Jeff Hiller felt firm. He had a number of small parts that often played rude people in customer service, but he longed for something more essential. Then he landed the role of Joel, a likeable and supportive friend with a great sense of humor, in the HBO series Someone somewhere.

“I am someone who is warm and likes to laugh and is happy. … [Playing Joel] I felt very much like something that I really knew how to do it, “says Hiller.

As he writes in his new memoirs, Actress of a certain age: my twenty -year way to success overnightPresent Someone somewhere Was the big break for which Hiller had been hoping for for decades. The show focused on a 40-year-old woman named Sam, played by Bridget Everett, who returned to her hometown in Kansas to take care of her sick sister. Hiller played Sam's best friend, who led a secret night cabaret for his LGBTQ friends in his church.

Someone somewhere completed his third and last season last December. Hiller is now nominated for an Emmy for the best supporting actor in a comedy series. He says that after so many years of the fight it was a relief to finally be successful.

“Whoever hears from someone who has his big break after 40 and now that I had a break after 40, I heard from many people,” he says. “I just didn't do the research right. But but [before] I had the feeling that I had wasted my life, and everything I had to show was credit card invoices and nothing else. “

At the most basic level, Hiller said that he was occupied in the HBO series that he no longer has to teach improvisation or work as a waiter to make ends meet. But it wasn't just a matter of financial security: “It only felt me as an artist.

Interview highlights

Is bullied as a child

I wanted to say I didn't love myself, but I didn't even like myself. I somehow thought I deserved it [to be bullied] And it deserves to be hated because I thought I was bad, naturally bad because I was gay and because I was girlish and chubby and not attractive in a conventional sense. I chose a little bit. But I have to tell you, I didn't make it almost as bad as some of the other children.

If I can surely grow up in the Lutheran church

When I grew up, this church was really about social justice and was called by God to help people. Not because we humans have to help to get to heaven or whatever, we have grace for it. But because this wonderful gift of life is given to us, it is important to help other people. And so the church was for me the place where they went when they had no food if they had no money to pay their rent. We had clothing subjects and always had families through this organization, which we would help with the apartment and with toilet articles.

Many people have the feeling that the church is a place that is the oppressive and “other” people “others”. And there are many such churches and they somehow co -opted the narrative. But for me the church was a place where they could be accepted and where you could be loved. And only when I came out that I was somehow realized and they weren't really for gay people.

With the support of his mother while he found his sexuality

You can't pull someone out of the closet. You have to let the door open yourself. The big snack for me was that she had carried out all of these research what it is. I mean, it's funny, but it's also nice and I feel so loved that she did all this work so that I can feel loved and safely. I am so grateful that I have it because I don't think I would have survived my school trip and had no safe home. It would have been too much.

Improvise at good

My best friend Katie had improved in college and she said: “I want to go to this audition, but I'm afraid to go alone. Will you come with me?” And I said: “Oh, I could never improvise. I'm so bad in it. But I'll go with you if this is a cult or whatever.”

And I went and I was so good that I was right in it immediately. And I loved being good in something. … I just loved it to appear and I loved the immediacy of the laughter of the audience. … it is a kind of conversation about what interests this specific group of people. And that's why I am really good at being in dialogue with an audience and finding what they like. And then it will be part of the improvisation show, the audience. It is not just the two scene partners who make a scene and find where they should go. It is also the audience. I will still improvise today, although I don't necessarily have a lot of time for it, but it feeds me.

When you see that the same age and students get their big breaks from the brigade of the upright citizens

I never thought: “You didn't deserve it.” I really wasn't like that. It was more like: “Why can't I get a break? All of these people who are from the same place as me are successful, but I'm not.” Now I have only compared myself to the people who were successful. I did not compare the people who looked at me and thought that I would be successful because I was on it Law & order this time. But I kept thinking: “It's something I do. I did something bad. I'm too gay or too ugly or I'm too big” because I am very big. … I was bullying myself.

But interestingly, since I had this success, I have a lot of confusion about why I have other friends who are also incredibly talented and who have not had the break I've had lately, and I'm not sure why. I always said, “Why I?” And now I keep thinking: “Why not you?” The truth is the showbiz is not fair. It is not a meritocracy.

If you get from commercials

The commercials saved me so often, financially and allowed me to take out health insurance through SAG. Commercial auditions are not like acting. Many auditions that you will enter and you don't say a word. You just stand there and smile or you mime something. It is a different kind of acting and you really have to learn the rules, and I was really good at following rules, and many actors are not good at it. … I think that also makes me a really good guest star, because in a way, if you have tiny little roles, you just have to do this one thing so that we can continue with it. We don't have to analyze what the character thinks. We don't care. We just want you to do the thing.

Lauren Krenzel and Susan Nyakundi produced and worked on this interview for the show. Bridget Bentz, Molly Seavy-Nesper and Beth Novey have adjusted it for the web.