[background music]

Ron Lisnet: Welcome to “The Maine Question” podcast, from the University of Maine. We are doing something a little bit different for this episode. We are in the Cyrus Pavilion Theater on the campus of the University of Maine, where a lot of theater productions and classes happen. We’re going to switch it up a little bit for this episode.

I’m here with Allen Adams from the School of Performing Arts and from the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences.

Allen, we had a chance to catch up with one of the more up-and-coming famous alums, you have to say, from the university, Tim Simons, class of 2001, who is making a name for himself in the TV and film industry. He’s going to speak at commencement this year. Boy, it was a fun time talking to him.

Allen Adams: No, it was really great. It’s really exciting to have someone like Tim come back and address the student body in general. I think it’s particularly nice for our School of Performing Arts students to get a chance to see someone who has been in the same classrooms and walked the same hallways that they have, who has gone on to really significant success in the industry.

Ron: Tim Simons certainly had some classes and performances in here and took a lot of classes from a former theater professor, now passed away, Sandra Hardy, who I know you know as well.

Allen: Sandra was still just a force to be reckoned with here in the theater department. She was one of those passionate instructors that, obviously, leaves a real impact on the students.

She was someone who…she could be challenging, which I would argue all the best teachers are. You shouldn’t be able to live completely comfortably all the time in a learning space, particularly a space where you’re learning about theater because theater is an inherently challenging art form.

For you to be able to fully invest yourself, you have to be able to confront things that are a little stickier, a little tougher, a little harder for you to process. Sandra was one of those instructors who definitely made those demands of you but was also very much on your side.

It felt like Tim had a similar relationship with her, and I know so many of his cohort and my cohort when we attended, whether we were in her classes or being directed by her or what have you, it was one of those things where it was hard sometimes, but the results were inevitably worth it.

Ron: They don’t call it drama for nothing.

[laughs]

Allen: Amen to that.

Ron: If you look at his resume or the films and TV shows he’s been in, it’s like 30 films and 30 TV shows. He’s not an A-lister, but he’s a B-lister or headed in that direction, right?

Allen: You look at the projects that he’s doing and the sorts of people that he’s working with, and it’s clear that he’s someone that talented people like to work with. I think that’s really indicative of what he brings to the table as a performer, yes, but also as a person.

The sorts of things he does tend to be these — and we talk about it a little bit — but these ensemble-driven bits. To be introduced into and become a part of one of those groups, you have to be someone who plays well with others. He clearly is that because of just the sheer amount of impressive ensemble work that he’s done over the last 10 years, say.

Ron: Let’s just get a little bio information before we get into talking with Tim. He graduated from Maranacook High School, which I think is in Readfield, Maine.

Allen: Readfield, yep.

Ron: They’re the Black Bears, too.

Allen: Well, look at that.

Ron: Look at that.

Allen: Synchronicity.

Ron: Right. He graduated from UMaine in 2001. Probably his biggest claims to fame have to be the show “Veep” on HBO, where he played Jonah, the White House liaison. Sort of an obnoxious character, but that was his big break and his first role in TV. He’s a regular with Julia Louis-Dreyfus on an HBO show. That’s big.

Allen: No, that’s a big deal. It’s funny because I remember being very excited when I heard that Tim had landed that role because I had seen him in a couple of pretty prominent commercials.

I think the first big one that I remember, he played the Wingmaster in a KFC commercial. It’s just like this dude with sauce all over his face. It’s like, “Hey, I know that guy.” Then the big one for me that was everywhere for a stretch, the GEICO commercial where he played Abraham Lincoln, where what if Honest Abe was too honest?

Look it up. I’m not going to make the joke, but you should check it out because it’s very funny. Then he lands on a show like Veep, and is wonderful, and is hanging with all of these comedic heavyweights and holding his own. You watch that, and you’re like, “This dude’s going places.” As it turns out, he is. He was, is, and will be.

Ron: Nobody Wants This” is his current series on Netflix, which is doing really well, and in which he was nominated for a couple of awards for. We talked to him about his career and how he found his way where he is now.

We talked about what Hollywood is like now, the business and AI, and also what he hopes to talk to the graduates about coming up at commencement on May 9th.

Allen: He was pretty great about not giving any…We obviously want you to listen to the podcast, but no spoilers. He was pretty tight-lipped about the specifics of his speech. Made some vague allusions to the stuff that he was going to talk about. As far as specificity, you’re just going to have to go and find out.

Ron: Check it out. This is the first time we’ve had a cohost on The Maine Question.

Allen: Yeah. Here I am. Look at me.

[laughter]

Ron: We appreciate you taking part. Right now, we’re going to go to our chat with Tim Simons.

Tim, thank you so much for taking the time. We know you got a busy schedule. It’s great that you’re able to carve out a little time for us.

Tim Simons: I appreciate it. I appreciate you having me.

Ron: This is a quirky coincidence, but around the time we found out that you’re going to be speaking at commencement, I was actually in a show in the pavilion. Backstage, as both you and Allen know, when anybody is in a show, they write their name on the wall. There’s all kinds of quirky stuff up there. [laughs]

Around one of the door jams, there’s a note from you. I’m going to say the PG version of what you wrote there. Basically, something along the lines of, “If I hit my head on this door one more time, I’m going to [inaudible] myself.” [laughs] I got a kick out of that because I just saw that just as I was learning you were coming, and I had to relay that story back to you. Do you remember that?

Tim: I don’t remember writing that, although I do remember that the backstage of the pavilion was not built for people my size. I came back, or I was on campus not super long ago, and I had forgotten that we used to sign the ceiling and the wall down there.

I found a really good friend of mine, Chris Ashmore, who is a couple of years older than I was. His nickname was Diesel. I found a place where he had spelled out diesel in gaff tape. Some of it had fallen off and just left the traces of the glue. I don’t know. It was great.

Ron: Allen, you’ve performed in there, too, right?

Allen: Sure. A number of times. Tim, did you ever take any performance classes with Sandra in the Pav?

Tim: Yeah.

Allen: More of that. I think the last actual show I did was when J. Skrillex was doing his masters?

Ron: Yes.

Allen: This would have been, God, 25 years ago?

Tim: Yeah.

Ron: For those of you who don’t know, the Pavilion Theater on campus is that octagonal building behind the library. It used to be a sheep barn, and is a really cool theater space. I’m six three, and Tim, you’re taller than me, so it’s not built backstage for people like us. That’s for sure.

Tim: It’s also one of my favorite theater spaces that I’ve ever performed in. It is a really, really special theater. What you can do with it and the feeling of being in the audience there, I don’t know. It’s a really, really special place.

Ron: This is great that you’re able to come on with us here. If I had told 18-year-old Tim Simons as he came on campus that one day he would be speaking at a graduation ceremony, what do you think he would have said back?

Tim: Somebody else canceled.

[laughter]

Ron: Many people canceled, right?

Tim: Yeah. Many, many people. It is a funny thing. UMaine means a lot to me. I’m really proud of the fact that I went there, and I have a lot of nostalgia for it, and I miss it. You don’t expect that because truly, you’re also just like, “Well, they’ll just ask somebody smarter.”

[laughs]

Ron: We’d love to talk to you about your days here and some of what you’re doing now. Maybe the place to start is can you talk about earliest memories of performing or the first time you connected with an audience and made somebody laugh or made the room go silent? What’s your first memory of being a performer or an actor?

Tim: I got started at UMaine. Most of my memories of performing, or at least the early ones, are there. I acted out a lot. Growing up, was pretty disruptive in class and largely pretty unfocused. There was a certain, I think, performance aspect to that. I remember really wanting to win the lip sync contest at my elementary school. I think my sixth-grade year, I finally did.

This is such a dumb actor thing, but I think I even remember in fourth and fifth grade when they would give the award to a sixth grader, I was like, “I did way better than that guy, this whole thing.” There was no integrity. In the Readfield Elementary lip sync contest, they had no integrity.

Ron: It was cutthroat. The fix was in for sure.

Tim: You knew if you won that, good things were coming. That was going to put you on the path. The machine was going to get behind you. My earliest memories of performing and when I actually thought being an actor would be something I’d be interested in were…Do they still do the underdogs and the upper dogs, the 10-minute plays and the 30-minute plays? No, they don’t?

Allen: No. They do something the same way.

Tim: No. That’s a bummer.

Ron: It is.

Allen: One of my favorite times in there was, oh god, one of the directing students asked me to do “Krapp’s Last Tape,” the Beckett. Like you were saying, the Pav is a perfect space for that sort of thing.

Tim: I just remember there was a grad student named Claude Giroux. We were very much in that mid-90s to early 2000. Everything had to be edgy and crazy. It had to be about yelling. I think I did an Eric Bogosian upper dog that he directed.

I do remember thinking, growing up, I would go see Shakespeare, Moliere and whatever, and be like, “Yeah, I had a good time with that,” but that doesn’t speak to me personally. That’s great, but I have no interest in this. I feel like that was one of the first times that I was like I feel like this is keying into a worldview that I’m into.

I feel some of my worldview, my sense of humor, or the things that interest me or scare me represented in this. It’s the first time that I saw something that I felt like there is a version of theater. There’s a version of acting that I can connect with and it isn’t just Shakespeare, which I do love, but has never been the thing that drew me in to the point of I can’t wait to do more of that.

Ron: It’s all storytelling, but it’s just figuring out what your preferred way is to tell your story.

Tim: Yeah.

Allen: Obviously, you moved on to doing main stage stuff and all that. Are there any shows from that stretch that you have particularly fond memories of, or memorable experiences, or anything like that?

Tim: The first play that I was in was “Unidentified Human Remains and the True Nature of Love” that Claude directed. Claude was from Vancouver Island. He knew a lot of Canadian playwrights that were doing this more challenging stuff. I do remember that when that play opened, we had lines down to the library entrance for the five nights that we performed the show.

For whatever reason, people had heard about it, and it was. There was a serial killer in it. There was heroin use. There were prostitutes. I feel like I ended up being half naked in it. I also was proud of the show, and that was fun.

Claude did a one-man show called “Wild Abandon” that I was in that he directed. We used one of the spaces in the actual theater building, one of the classrooms. We retrofitted it for five or six days.

That one felt fun because we went back and forth between how can Pav, how can Pav, how can Pav. He was like, “No, there’s other spaces here. We should be doing stuff in other spaces, we have access to this. Why aren’t we doing it?” That one was memorable. “Cabaret” that Sandra directed my senior year, that was a big one.

Allen: I saw that show. You were great in that.

Tim: You did?

Allen: Yeah. I saw that one. You were in “Glengarry,” is that correct?

Tim: I was.

Allen: I saw that production as well.

Tim: I played the classic you’re a college junior playing…I was playing Shelly Levine, who’s supposed to be a 65-year-old failed salesman.

Ron: World-weary salesman. [laughs] You’re 25 years out. That’s quite something. An overnight sensation, 25 years in the making. Was there a grand plan, or did you just wing it? You said, “I’m moving to LA, and let’s see what happens?” How’d this all go?

Tim: It was all winging it, man. There is no grand plan. There were subsets of grand plans that added up to one accidentally. It was mostly responding to finding out what I wanted to do. I knew I wanted to do this. That was at the base of it. I knew that in order to do it at the level I wanted to do it, I would need to move around.

I knew that. I’ll always have to have another job if I stay in Maine. I loved growing up in Maine, but even from a young age, I always was like, “I’m going to try to go to a city.” I felt like that was a thing that I wanted. After I graduated, I thought maybe that I’d kick around from regional theater to regional theater.

I thought it would be fun to, “Oh, maybe I’ll be able to get to the point where I could do a show at the Guthrie at Minneapolis for five months and then move to another place.” Out of college, I got a job at working at the Lexington Children’s Theater in Lexington, Kentucky as an intern.

I went there and then went back to these big combined auditions that you would do. They’re the SETCs. You go and you audition for 90 theaters at once. I ended up getting a job at the theater at Monmouth, which is a rep Shakespeare theater.

Ron: Your backyard.

Tim: Yeah. It’s two towns…That’s where I would see Shakespeare and Molière growing up. I got a job at that theater at this audition in Memphis and moved back home, stayed close to the theater, but I was close to family.

It was while I was there, I had an incredible time. That was one of the best summers of my life. Also, it made me realize, I was like, “Oh, I don’t think this moving around thing is for me.”

I was like, “I want to go someplace where I can have a home base, where I start to know people, where I’m working with the same people. I’m not having to meet new ones every three months or whatever.”

Chicago, you remember my friend Diesel, who I mentioned earlier, Chris? He had moved out there for the theater scene. Chris and another woman, I think, who was in the same year as him, named Kristen, she had moved out there, and they both said incredible things about Chicago and the theater scene there.

I had always liked that idea that new plays were written and they had this incredible storefront, grimy theater scene that had a do-it-yourself ethos that I dug. I did the one-way plane ticket thing, and Kristen’s boyfriend, now husband, picked me up at the airport. I had two bags, a one-way ticket.

He picked me up at the airport. I crashed on her couch for a month and a half, on Kristen’s couch for a month and a half, until I was able to save up enough money for an apartment.

Then after a little while, same kind of thing. When I was there, I realized that I was more interested on camera work. Not that I don’t love theater and not that I still don’t want to eventually go back and do it again, I just liked the form of it. I liked the idea of being on sets.

I came up doing theater, but I was a movie and TV kid. I worked in a video store. I really enjoy the form of it, and I really enjoy the actual process of performing it. That was like, “Well, all that work’s in LA.”

My wife and I had gotten engaged, and I was like, “Well…” She always knew that I wanted to move to LA to do this when we met, and so she was like, “OK. Let’s go. We’ll get married. We’ll have a clean break.” We moved to LA in 2008.

I had never been to Los Angeles before. I was 30 years old, and I didn’t have any connections to the industry. I did this the exact way that people say, never move to LA. They say you should only move there if you have a job, if a job takes you there. You have to have a connection to an agency.

Those are things that they say. I didn’t have either of those, and I had literally never been to the city before. I was that’s where it is, and so I should go there. Then I just started making it up out here, too, and it all just snapped into place a little bit.

Ron: Talk about getting the role on Veep. Was that the big break, the “I’ve made it” moment?

Tim: It was definitely the big break. It was definitely the break. That was the first television show that I had ever performed on. I’d had a job where I was working as a session director for commercial casting companies.

If you’re going to have a Tide commercial, the casting director would call in 200 people. At the beginning of the day, we’d go over what it would look like. I would run the tech and the camera, and I would direct the actors.

Being like, “You got to come in, you pick up the Tide bottle and be like, ‘Oh, that looks like a good product.’ Then put it in your shopping cart, and you walk out.” I had had this run of actually getting cast in commercials. I became really comfortable in front of the camera by doing that and seeing what stuff worked and what stuff didn’t.

A friend of mine saw a commercial that I was in that he thought was funny, and he showed it to Allison Jones, who was the casting director. She’s a very well-known comedy casting director.

Pretty much anybody in comedy over the last 25 years or longer, she’s discovered. Pick a name. She found them. She cast “Arrested Development.” She cast “The Office.” I think she cast “Parks and Rec.” She cast Veep.

I had gone in there maybe four or five times for day player parts on The Office and never got cast in one. Then she called me in for Veep, and it was for a series regular. Like an actual this is your job job on a big show that Julia Louis-Dreyfus was in.

At the time, I just thought, “This is cool. She’s calling me in for a big part, not just for a day.” That’s like a vote of confidence.

I thought, “Well, this is good. That bodes well for the future that I’ll ultimately get cast on something, but it won’t be this.” Then it just ended up being that one. It was kind of a fluke of somebody with no credits and who had never worked for any length of time on a set. It just worked out.

It’s one of those things that you realize, and it’s a comfort when you don’t get jobs, which is that sometimes a part’s just for you. I feel like that was a good example of that, of it didn’t really matter that I didn’t have credits, so it didn’t matter.

I just did well in the audition. There was something inherent about that part that worked for me personally. The comfort in that is that when you don’t get a job, you also get to say it wasn’t for you. The person that got it was actually the right person that got it.

Ron: I don’t know if you would agree with this as a common thread, but both Veep and Nobody Wants This, the show you’re on now on, they’re on Netflix, very much an ensemble. It’s a group of actors getting together.

Allen, you’ve been in this situation before too, being part of an ensemble. Can you talk about that dynamic? The sum of the parts is greater than all the individuals are bringing to it.

Tim: It’s honestly like you’re a little bit of a spoiler for one of the things I’m going to talk about in the commencement speech, which I am in the process of writing and slowly freaking out about.

Sandra was a big believer in ensemble. That was the main thing that she taught. There’s that whole thing about love the art in yourself, not the art in yourself. No. Love the art in yourself, not yourself in the art.

That thing was a big part of her ethos, of if you are able to work together in an ensemble, if you think of things as things more than just an individual, the show will be better.

I always found a lot of comfort and support in that because I think I’ve always felt a little…maybe just because I got started late, I didn’t have…It always felt a little bit odd. It is weird to say that because I was probably 19 when I started.

There were people who had been on stage who had been doing this. They were like, “I wanted to be an actor when I was seven.” They’ve been on stage a lot. I felt a little bit new to it. There was a comfort in that idea of ensemble when you’re nervous to know that you have a group of people that have your back. That is a huge thing.

I did notice very early that…You’re absolutely right. It does apply to Veep, and it does apply to Nobody Wants This in that trust among the ensemble of actors is huge.

Especially me, first job on Veep with Tony Hale is there, Julia, Matt Walsh, who I had taken classes at Upright Citizens Brigade when I first moved to Los Angeles, and he was one of the founding people of Upright Citizens Brigade.

These are people whose work I have admired for a really long time. They also believed in that. That is also a huge part of the Chicago theater ethos that I come out of. We had a really wonderfully chaotic shooting style on Veep that required everybody in the ensemble having each other’s back.

If you dropped a line, we weren’t going to get mad. We were going to pick you up. We were going to somehow feed it to you. We’re going to make a joke and somehow get the scene back on track.

That trust in the people that you’re performing with only makes the thing you’re doing better. That unselfish but selfish thing of if you promote ensemble, the entire show will be better and you will look better.

If you make it all about you, not only is everybody going to hate you, but you might look worse. It can be a very selfish but unselfish thing.

Allen: Were you in any of these shows? Were these any improve-heavy environments, or were you bound more closely to the script?

Tim: In the case of Veep, there was a rehearsal process, almost like a script workshopping process that Armando, who is the showrunner and creator, that was very much a part of his process, where you would get together weeks before you would start shooting.

Even in the case of the first season, we had shot the pilot, and then over the summer, everybody in the cast flew to London, they had written five scripts. We would go to this conference room in a hotel, and we’d read it.

Then we put it up on its feet for the day. We’d work on scenes. We’d improv in scenes, and the writers would go away and take some of the stuff that we had found as a group and write it in. Then we’d do it again, and they’d take some of that, and they’d write it in.

I was never an improviser in Chicago. Second City was never particularly interested in sketch or improv there. I had done a little bit of it in LA going through Upright Citizen Brigade. I felt like I had learned a little bit more about it.

If I had just moved from Chicago without doing UCB and got cast on Veep, I would have been a terrible improviser. We were bound by scripts when we got to set. It was mostly scripted, and the idea is you always do it as written.

With comedies in general, there always needs to be a sense of discovery. There is always a sense of the space that you’re in can change a joke. The blocking can change jokes. There has to be a certain amount of improvisation inherent.

I think that’s both comedy and drama. Improvisation that doesn’t get to a joke is also improvisation. Then there is that part of you do it as scripted a few times, and then people have ideas. Actors have ideas. Writers have ideas. Directors have ideas.

You try that out. Then eventually, we all trust each other enough that sometimes even without telling people, you’ll throw stuff out in scenes, or instead of going up to video village and talking to the director and trying to explain a joke for three minutes, you can just be like, “Well, I’m going to throw it into the scene.” If they laugh, it works, and if they don’t laugh, then it didn’t work.

Ultimately, improvisation became a part of the process. It’s the same on Nobody Wants This. Very much a scripted show, but I think there’s a trust in the actors that if we throw stuff out, it’s coming from a good place.

Allen: It circles back to that idea of ensemble, like you were talking about. When you have that group and everybody is comfortable and everybody trusts, then you can get weird. You feel comfortable taking risks, I guess.

Tim: Yeah. Taking risks always opens up the possibility of looking stupid. If you’re in a group of people that would judge you for looking stupid, then you don’t want to take a risk.

Ron: Shifting gears just a moment, the Hollywood film and TV biz, help us make sense of what the heck is going on. I think like all of us, we struggle. It’s like, how many platforms do I have to have? Give us the inside skinny on…What does it take now for a good TV show or film to get made? Is it more complicated? Are you as perplexed as we are?

Tim: I’m probably as perplexed as you are. My understanding of the actual business of this, I would say, is still pretty thin. It’s a funny thing for all that we’ve talked about, like the benefits of risk and what that can do. It is a weirdly very risk-averse business. They don’t want to take chances on something unproven, which is why you see so much IP-based stuff.

The god’s honest answer is I don’t really know. I don’t know. It’s never quite made sense to me. As an audience member, I appreciate things that take risks, but the people in charge of making things don’t love doing that because that could lose them money. When it comes to the different platforms, there’s a good and a bad. There is an oversaturation of stuff right now.

Before the strike, I think there were something like 600 scripted television shows. One great thing about that is that means that there are 600 shows where actors, writers, and crews can be employed. That’s incredible. What makes it harder then is for stuff to break out and the actual financial success of things then becomes harder.

If you look at the numbers, shows that would get canceled in the ’90s. A television show that comes on, they’d be like, “Oh, yeah, that show got canceled because it only had 17 million people watching it every Thursday night.” If they had 17 million people watching it now, it’d be the most successful show you had ever heard of. It would be the biggest show in the country.

The audiences are a little bit more disparate. When it comes to Nobody Wants This, I always thought it would do well. Kristen Bell and Adam Brody are beloved figures. I always figured it would do pretty well.

The fact that it broke out like it did, you can’t plan for that. That was, in a way, timing or truly completely accidental that people found it. It’s somewhat impossible to plan for something to break out like that. The business, I don’t understand it. I don’t know if I ever will. I’m just trying to keep the lights on.

Ron: The next hurdle to try to figure out or the next conundrum to try to figure out is AI and what is that going to do to live actors on film and TV. Have you run across any of that?

Tim: It’s definitely a concern. Talking to a relative of mine who’s younger and understands that world maybe a little bit more, there’s the thing of use AI to find a better cancer treatment. That rules. Hell, yeah, that’s great. She put it in this way of, some AI is just good coding, and that’s what it is.

Generative AI that takes the work that humans did at one point and makes it into this slop garbage that doesn’t even really count as entertainment.

Ultimately, I am worried about it only in the way that it takes jobs from people. Also, I’m not worried about it because inherently, I don’t think audiences will give a [bleep] if they see a fully…That is inhuman.

The reason that people find their way to art is to feel more human and to see some sort of representation of themselves in it and made by other humans, with all of their problems and all of their foibles or whatever. That’s why people come to it.

It very much feels like something driven by tech psychopaths as a way of making money, forgetting that audiences will reject it. Maybe that technology improves to a point where you might not be able to tell the difference, but audiences are going to know the difference. They’re going to know.

Ron: We’re definitely not there yet.

Tim: No. We’re not there yet. Also, me personally, I’m never going to watch an AI-created…Why? Why would you watch something written by computers and performed by computers?

That’s the thing where I think inherently, even audiences that have never even considered the idea, who do not think about film and television as much as I do, if they don’t know anything about the business, inherently, they don’t even want that. They might watch it by accident.

Ron: Until they figure it out.

Tim: Until they figure it out, and they’ll just be like, “Oh, yeah. There was something off about that.” It’s like, “Yeah, because humans didn’t make it.”

Ron: The hair was just a little too perfect, or the skin was a little too perfect.

Tim: Yeah.

Ron: I was looking at your IMDb or Wikipedia, and the list of credits, I was like, “Wow. This guy has done a ton of stuff.” You have like 25 films and 30 TV shows. Do you ever just stop for a minute and go, “Wow. I’ve done some stuff”?

Tim: Short answer is yes, and the longer answer is no, I guess. I’m really proud of the stuff that I’ve been able to do. I can look at that and say, “Wow. I’ve actually been able to work with some people I’ve admired, whose work I’ve admired. I’ve done a lot of work that I’m really, really proud of that has managed to make its way to a wide audience.” All that stuff is incredible.

One thing that makes me happy is that is always where I wanted to be. I like doing this job. Being able to be not only employed but employed regularly was always the point.

Ron: You’re a working actor, right?

Tim: That’s what I wanted to be. Also, coming up in theater, there was always that part of me that was like…I wanted to be able to do a lot of different…What makes me really happy, if you look at it as a list, is that tonally and content-wise, it’s all pretty different.

There’s comedies in there, there’s dramas, there’s weird stuff, there’s big stuff, there’s small indie stuff. That makes me happy, that that was one of the goals, and being able to achieve that.

One of the reasons the longer answer is no, is there’s the Mainer part of me, which is like, “Yeah, but you got to keep working, got to keep doing it. Don’t rest on your laurels or whatever, and keep finding another challenging thing.” That work ethic underneath it is the thing that I like.

I don’t go back and look at the list too often. I try to keep my eyes trained forward because I don’t want to get like, “Oh, it all went great,” because then it puts it in the past tense.

Ron: Remember when I used to do that?

Tim: Yeah. Remember when I used to do that? I’m like, “No. I want to keep doing it.”

It does make me really happy, though, that I’ve been able to not only achieve it, but achieve that thing that I wanted to do of doing a lot of different things and not either allowing myself to be pigeonholed or having helped people see that you can’t put me in a box as a performer. That’s what I always wanted.

Allen: Is there a project that you worked on that people might be surprised that you hear about a lot from other people? I ask this question only because yesterday was round one of the NFL draft, and I figured you’re probably hearing about “Draft Day.”

Tim: Yeah. There are. The things I get recognized most for are Veep and Nobody Wants This, but Draft Day is one that…Again, Ivan Reitman. I was a huge “Ghostbusters” fan growing up, and I got to work with Ivan Reitman who directed that movie. Right there, that one was really fun.

That was, I think, the first big movie that I had ever been cast in. It was a special thing. It didn’t light the world on fire when it first came out, but it has had legs.

There are some times where if I meet somebody and they’re like, “You look familiar. I know I’ve seen you in something,” and they don’t pull up Veep or Nobody Wants This quickly, I usually say, “Is it Draft Day?” They’ll be like, “Yeah. That is it.”

That movie’s had some legs, and that is really fun. That is definitely the one that comes up the most when I think about deeper cuts of stuff that I’ve been in.

Allen: Because it does feel like it’s the thing that people who work in football seem to really like that movie, which I think is indicative of good work on everybody’s part.

Tim: Yeah.

Ron: You’re six five, right? Are you six five?

Tim: I’m six five.

Ron: You’re hard to hide. I’m sure people say, “Wow. You’re taller than I thought,” right?

Tim: Most of the time, they think I’m shorter.

Ron: Really?

Tim: Yeah. They’re like, “You’re shorter.” Basically, they’re like my height gets played up in some things. Especially compared to Kristen Bell and Julia Louis-Dreyfus, who are on the more diminutive side, I think I look so much bigger that they think they’re going to meet me, they’re going to be like…they expect somebody freakishly tall.

I feel like I’m just on the side of fitting into normal human society. When they see that, they’re like, “You don’t seem quite as tall as I thought you would be.”

Allen: You probably can fit in an airplane seat.

Tim: Yeah. I probably can. I barely do, but I can fit in one.

Ron: Were you a post player for the Maranacook Black Bears?

Tim: I was.

Ron: Back to the basket.

Tim: They were like, “Bang around inside.” I was like, “Man, I don’t want to do that.”

Ron: You want to shoot threes, right?

Tim: Yeah, I want to shoot threes, but I was bad at that, too.

[laughs]

Ron: There was a scene in Nobody Wants This where you were playing basketball. I saw it.

Tim: Yeah. I gave it up a long time ago. I played basketball all the way through high school. I grew up in a small town and I was tall. I wasn’t really given much of an option of not doing that.

It did make me though happy when I’ll get comments every once in a while. They’ll be like, “You know how to play?” I’ll be like, “Yeah, don’t worry about it.”

[laughter]

Tim: They’ll see those basketball scenes in Nobody Wants This, and they’ll be like, “Oh, OK.” I’m like, “Yeah, man.”

Ron: You talked a little bit about what you’re putting in your “speech” for commencement. Just give us a thumbnail. What’s the themes? Any messaging that you’ve formulated yet, or is that still under construction? What do you hope to share with them?

Tim: It’s definitely still under construction. We’ve actually touched on a few things already. Ensemble is a big one. Risk is going to be another one. Risk and reward is going to be another one.

It’s still in a rough draft stage, but there is that thing of trying to find a balance of saying something that you think might help as a takeaway, also understanding that their lives are all their own.

Not just to be like an old man yelling at clouds, talking to a younger generation. There can be a disconnect there. I’m going to try my best, man.

[laughs]

Ron: Weirdly, this is the thing for having a very public-facing job. This is not the thing where I feel like I…If I were to plan it out, I don’t think this is necessarily the thing that I think I’ll be most successful at. Public speaking, despite having a public-facing job, is not my strong suit.

Ron: Because it’s not you normally, right?

Tim: Exactly. I am somewhat nervous about it. I don’t know. If I’ve got an audience, I am going to try to make them laugh. I got some jokes in there.

Ron: Do a top 10 list or something.

Tim: Throw out a quick top 10 list. I’m going to try to find something that undercuts that idea of giving advice because underneath that, there’s also that thing of, ” [bleep] for you, man.”

[laughter]

Tim: You’re going to give me advice? What do you know?” I’m like, “You’re right, I’m some dumb idiot.” There is that part, too. Ensemble, risk, stuff like that. I do have one dig at AI in there, so we’ll see.

Ron: Good. Give them hell.

Tim: Yeah.

Allen: We touched on this, the idea, but is there any advice that you would offer to the students who are considering pursuing your particular path, or just in general, the idea of what comes next?

Tim: Specific to the industry, what we touched on before, it’s a very different industry than it was when I was coming up. There wasn’t a world of me staying in Maine and having a path to what I wanted to do. You had to get to New York. You had to get to Los Angeles. You had to get to Chicago. That’s where they cast things.

There is a different world there now of access, essentially, to distribution. What’s in my head when I’m saying this is a lot of the young horror directors who are now directing studio horror movies are people who started making their own horror movies and put them up on YouTube, and they found an audience, or you start making sketches.

You start filming stuff yourself. The bar for entry is a lot lower because now everybody has video cameras on their phones and editing equipment. It’s no longer having to have an editing bay that can splice film. Most people have access to most of the stuff that professionals use already. That barrier for entry is a little bit different.

My advice for the business specifically doesn’t match up with whatever path I had to take. Inherently, I do think there are things underneath it that are a little bit more universal, like the idea of you got to work for it and you have to take risks. That underneath there is something that applies now and has applied for hundreds of years.

Ron: Perseverance and resilience too, no matter what you pursue.

Tim: Being willing to hear the word no over and over again. That’s a big one. You get a lot more nos than you do yeses, and you got to keep walking forward.

Ron: Looking ahead, what’s next? Do you envision yourself directing, writing, creating your own thing, whether it’s a film or a TV show, or are you are you happy to just be a working actor and then keep doing that until they tell you no?

Tim: It’s both of them. Even during Veep, I wrote stuff then. I’ve sold shows before, none that that ever came to fruition.

In the process of developing TV shows and movies, that is a part of the business now that was different from when I was a kid, from when I was coming up, that idea of developing stuff for your…It’s a bigger part of the business debt now to try to build your own work. That is something that I’m doing. That is something that I’m interested in.

I don’t think that I’m the best writer in the world, so I find myself very much partnering with good writers. That always works a lot better for me. Yeah, that is definitely something that I’m actively doing at this point.

At the same time, there is a part of me that is…I liked that thing of directors directed, writers wrote, and actors acted. That was the world that I came up in. There is that thing of, “Yeah, hire me on something,” and that feels cool too.

Ron: This is great. We appreciate you so much. Allen, any other insightful…

Allen: There were a couple of small things. I was going to ask you, any favorite spots on campus that you remember that perhaps might be a surprise to some folks?

Tim: Good question. God. The Pav was special. I might have been the main mask president. There was a vice president maybe. I had a key to the Pav, so I could just hang out there. There was definitely one time, not a huge party, but a small party I threw in the Pav when I shouldn’t have, and that was fun.

The Penobscot stoop at Penobscot Hall, that was a big one. There is a fire escape that was a good hang. I think that might have been on Balentine Hall. I think there was a fire escape that you could get up to over there.

That little section of campus, that was where I hung out the most. Was it Gannett, Penobscot, and Balentine? That quad was great. Did a fair amount of…Back in the day, the upstairs of…Is it still there? Not the brew pub. Was it Bear Brew Pub?

Allen: It’s a Starbucks now. [laughs]

Tim: Is it?

Ron: Yeah, in the Union.

Allen: The Bear’s Den?

Tim: No. I did love the Bear’s Den. They would do hardcore or indie band shows in the Bear’s Den. That was always really fun. No. In Orono, there was the Bear Brew Pub.

Allen: Bear Brew Pub. It’s an arcade now.

Tim: It’s an arcade? Then what was that place, was it in Orono or Veazey, the place where you could buy beer in a boot?

Allen: The Oronoka.

Tim: The Oronoka. Yeah, the Oronoka. That place ruled, too.

Allen: Yeah. It burned down some time ago. I believe there’s a dermatologist’s office.

Tim: Oh, no. It burned down?

Allen: Yeah.

Ron: They don’t serve beer at the [inaudible] .

Allen: You can’t be that surprised.

Ron: Right. [laughs]

Tim: I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. That was part of its charm, the sense that it could burn down at any moment.

[laughs]

Allen: I remember you talking to Dave from our office about the first sunny day in the spring, hanging out on the mall and taking your shirt off when finally, the winter broke.

Tim: The day that the winter broke was always special because everybody would skip classes. It was like, “We are just going to be hanging out outside and enjoying this.”

[background music]

Tim: God. It’s wonderful.

Ron: Listen, thanks so much for taking the time, Tim. We’re looking forward to seeing you at commencement. Good luck with everything. We’re going to be watching.

Tim: Thank you very much. I’m excited for it. I got to get working on that draft again so I don’t collapse in front of thousands of people.

[music]