For much of his career, actor Jeff Hiller felt stuck. He had a string of small parts, often playing rude people in customer service, but he longed for something more substantive. Then he landed the role of Joel, a sympathetic and supportive friend with a great sense of humor, on the HBO series Somebody Somewhere.
"I'm someone who is warm and likes to laugh and is joyful. ... [Playing Joel] felt very like something I really knew how to do," Hiller says. "He did feel a lot more like me rather than putting on a scowl and acting."
As he writes in his new memoir, Actress of a Certain Age: My Twenty-Year Trail to Overnight Success, Somebody Somewhere was the big break Hiller had been hoping for for decades. The show centered on a 40-something woman named Sam, played by Bridget Everett, who moved back to her hometown in Kansas to care for her sick sister. Hiller played Sam's best friend, who ran a secret nighttime cabaret at his church for his LGBTQ friends.
Somebody Somewhere concluded its third and final season last December. Now Hiller is nominated for an Emmy for best supporting actor in a comedy series. He says after so many years of struggling, it was a relief to finally find success.
"Whoever hears of someone having their big break after 40? And now that I had a break after 40, I've heard of a lot of people," he says. "I just didn't do the research properly. But [before] I did feel like I had wasted my life and all I had to show for it was credit card bills and nothing else."
On the most basic level, Hiller says being cast in the HBO series meant he no longer has to teach improv or work as a waiter to make ends meet. But it wasn't just a matter of financial security: "It also just made me feel like an artist. ... I do feel like I'm someone who had more to give than I was able to give previously. And I feel like Joel let me show that."
Interview highlights
On being bullied as a kid
I was going to say I didn't love myself, but I didn't even like myself. I did kind of think I deserved [to be bullied] and deserved to be hated because I did sort of think I was bad, inherently bad, because I was gay and because I was girlish and chubby and not attractive in the conventional sense. I did pick on myself quite a bit. But I have to tell you, I didn't do it nearly as badly as some of the other kids.
On feeling safe growing up in the Lutheran church
When I was growing up, that church was really a lot about social justice and being called by God to help people. Not because we are required to help people in order to get into heaven or whatever, we have grace for that. But because we are given this wonderful gift of life from God, it's important to help other people. And so for me, the church was the place that you went if you didn't have food, if you didn't have money to pay your rent. We had clothing drives and we always sort of had families through this organization that we would help provide with housing and with toiletries, things like that.
A lot of people feel that the church is a place that is oppressive and "othering" people. And there are a lot of churches like that and they've sort of co-opted the narrative. But for me, the church was a place where you could be accepted and where you could be loved. And it wasn't until I came out that I kind of realized and they weren't really into gay people yet.
On his mom's support while he was figuring out his sexuality
You can't drag someone out of the closet. You have to let them open the door themselves. The big takeaway for me was that she had done all of this research, which is so her. I mean, it's funny, but it's also beautiful and it makes me feel so loved that she had done all of this work to make me feel loved and safe. I'm so grateful for having her, because I don't think I would have survived my school journey and also not having a safe home. It would have been too much.
On being good at improv
My best friend Katie had done improv 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 was like, "Oh, I could never do improv. I'm so bad at it. But I'll go with you in case this is a cult or whatever."
And I went and I was so good at it, I was good at it right away. And I loved being good at something. ... I just loved performing and I loved the immediacy of the laugh from the audience. … It is sort of a conversation about what this particular group of people is interested in. And so I've become really good at being in dialogue with an audience and finding what they like. And then it becomes a part of the improv show, the audience. It's not just the two scene partners doing a scene and finding where to go. It's also the audience too. I still do improv today, even though I don't necessarily have a lot of time for it, but it feeds me.
On seeing peers and students from Upright Citizens Brigade get their big breaks
I never was like, "They don't deserve it." I truly 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 having success but I'm not." Now, I was only comparing myself to the people who had success. I wasn't comparing the people who looked at me and thought I was having success because I was on Law & Order that time. But I really kept thinking, "It's something I'm doing. I've done something bad. I'm too gay or I'm to ugly or I am too big," because I'm very tall. … That was me bullying myself.
But interestingly, now that I've had this success, I feel a lot of confusion at why I have other friends who are also incredibly talented who haven't had the break that I've had recently and I'm not sure why. I used to say, "Why me?" and now I keep thinking, "Why not them?" The truth is showbiz ain't fair. It's not a meritocracy.
On getting by from doing commercials
Commercials saved me so many times, financially and allowing me to get health insurance through SAG. Commercial auditions are not like acting auditions. Many auditions you'll go in and you don't say a word. You just stand there and smile or you mime drinking something. It's a different type of acting and you really have to learn the rules, and I was really good at following rules, and a lot of actors are not good at that. ... I think that's what makes me a really good guest star too, because in a certain way when you have tiny little roles you just need to do this one thing so that we can get on with it. We don't need to analyze what the character is thinking. We don't care. We just want you to do the thing.
Lauren Krenzel and Susan Nyakundi produced and edited this interview for broadcast. Bridget Bentz, Molly Seavy-Nesper and Beth Novey adapted it for the web.
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