PASADENA, Calif. -- Actor Alan Tudyk literally rode to fame on a horse. He was 11. Given the assignment in speech class to recite a tall tale, Tudyk says he came up with a story about a grizzled old-timer.
“I come from Texas, so I guess this was part of it,” he says. “I wrote a tall tale that didn't exist. I think maybe that's what we had to do. And I told it in character like an old prospector: ‘Oh, ya never heerd the story of Pecos Pete? Well git ready because this will knock yer socks off and yer boots too,’ – whatever I said.
“I did cause a little bit of trouble,” he admits, “because I came into the scene with a stick horse... I brought a stick horse and rode it into the classroom. I left the class and had an entrance which was me going, ‘Yee-haw, whoopie!’ and I made my speech and when I finished, I got back on the horse and left. When I was done, the teacher said, ‘You need to leave this class and maybe find a different one.’”
He did.
Then his mother signed him up for community theater, and the next thing he knew he was playing the equally prestigious role of the hare in the fable “The Tortoise and the Hare” at the local mall.
“He was called ‘the jive-talking hare,” Tudyk remembers. “And I had a transistor radio that I held in my big ear and I talked a big game -- that I was going to win the race. And then I lost. But he was a real outsized character and all my neighborhood friends came to see it at the mall... 1983 or something, and they came to see it and they didn’t make fun of me. What I started to learn was that they were impressed; they enjoyed it. I was wide open for ridicule, and they didn’t. They kind of had some respect after that.” He was still 11.
That respect has followed Tudyk throughout his polychromatic career. People know him from TV roles in “Firefly,” “Arrested Development" and “Suburgatory,” and movies like “Knocked Up,” “Knight’s Tale” and “Rogue One: A Star Wars Story,” as well as countless voice-overs in animated films like “Frozen,” "Wreck-It Ralph,” “Young Justice."
But they’re yet to see Tudyk in his new incarnation. He plays an alien who crash lands on Earth and assumes the guise of a small-town doctor in “Resident Alien,” premiering Wednesday on the Syfy Channel. Tudyk’s comic timing infects the newcomer with hilarious gaffes as the alien tries to “fit in” to American society.
According to Tudyk, getting here has been half the fun. He attended a junior college for two years then studied at Juilliard for three, but never graduated. While there he was supporting himself and his mother would send him cans of chili, worried he wasn’t eating properly.
“And I had this chili that I never ate because that stuff looks like dog food when it comes out of the can. But I never threw it away,” he says.
He landed a job with a theater company that was waiting to rent an off-Broadway theater. But the wait lasted six months.
“I had quit my waiting table job and I was trying to just make it as an actor,” he recalls. “And while we were waiting to get a theater in New York, I lived on that chili -- chili and Fritos. I could buy Fritos and I had chili. I lost so much weight. When we finally did the play, it was, like, ‘Gosh, you've lost weight.’ I actually was losing weight 'cause I didn't have food to eat. But I didn't want to ask for any money or didn't have that option available to me.”
Realizing he couldn’t depend on acting for survival, Tudyk landed a job bartending. His girlfriend was appearing on Broadway in a play with Allison Janney (“Mom”). She brought her cast members to visit Tudyk’s bar one evening.
“I said, ‘No, no, no!’ She said, ‘We all love a dive bar.’ I said, ‘This is not a dive bar like that, this is really depressing.’
"The guy who owned it taught me how to pour bad vodka into the Absolut vodka bottle. All the olives looked like they’d suffocated themselves years before – it was the worst place. Anyway, she brings some of her cast from Broadway, and I'm serving Allison Janney not-Absolut vodka martinis at this bar, depressed that I'm in this situation... I thought if I'm ever going to write a novel, I’ll stay in this job. But the theater came through and I quit.”
Married for four years to choreographer Charissa Barton, Tudyk says even that was not part of his plans. They’d met at Juilliard and always kept in touch, reconnecting at mutual friends’ birthday parties.
“We were pals; would always get in trouble together. We both had the same idea of what was fun,” he says. When they first started dating, Tudyk says he knew “this is it.”
Now Barton mentors young dancers and teaches at Juilliard. Tudyk also teaches acting classes there.
“So we’re back full circle at Juilliard,” he says. “We’re there, in the same hallways where we met.”
THERE’S A FORD IN PFEIFFER’S FUTURE
Michelle Pfeiffer will play First Lady Betty Ford in a new anthology series being conjured by Showtime. Behind those famous men was always a famous woman, and how much influence they instilled on the presidency is still up for speculation.
But Ford was known for her candid observations, down-to-earth attitude and genuine warmth. She made headlines when she openly entered a rehab facility for alcoholism and substance abuse. In 1982 she helped establish the Betty Ford Center in Rancho Mirage, California, which still exists for addiction treatment.
The TV series, tentatively titled “The First Lady,” is being executive produced by actress Viola Davis, among others. Davis has cast herself as Michelle Obama.
Pfeiffer, who earned three Oscar nominations, most recently appeared in “French Exit,” “Maleficent: Mistress of Evil” and “Avengers: Endgame,” tells me acting was never on her bucket list.
“I had one teacher who made one comment, and it was one comment, and I think it changed the course of my life,” she says.
“It was drama class and I took it to get out of English credit. I had no interest in acting, really, and fell in love with the class and the people in the class and, one day -- she doesn’t remember saying this -- my teacher said, ‘I think you have some talent.’ That was it. And I never forgot. And I think kids go through life being unnoticed and not really being paid much attention to, and I think those kinds of comments really affect them.”
‘BOZ’ TACKLES NEW LINE
The controversial and outspoken former football player Brian “Boz” Boswell is tackling a new project. Boswell will quarterback an eight-part docu-series, “Bucket List,” premiering on the Crackle Plus streaming site next Monday. The one-time inside linebacker for the Seattle Seahawks will visit college stadiums around the nation and talk with coaches, former star players and football fans to determine why each venue should be No. 1 on any fan’s bucket list.
Boswell will huddle with the great and the near-great including Clemson head coach Dabo Swinney, former Georgia quarterback Aaron Murray, Texas’ Jamaal Charles, and current NFL stars AJ McCarron, D’Andre Swift, Tee Higgins, Christian Kirk, Dee Ford, Justin Jefferson, Sterling Shepard and many more in the 100-yard field.
Schools that have earned a place on the Boz’s lineup include his alma mater, the University of Oklahoma, reigning national champions University of Alabama, Texas A&M, University of Texas, Louisiana State University, Clemson, University of Georgia and Auburn University.
PEACOCK DISPLAYS ‘THE OFFICE’
Beginning the first of the year Peacock began streaming the super-popular workplace comedy, “The Office.” The show ran for eight years on NBC (owners of Peacock), and it enjoyed a profusion of new fans when it reran in syndication.
Some might not know it was based on a hilarious British sitcom of the same name that starred Ricky Gervais as the self-deluding boss of a nondescript paper company.
Steve Carell seized the regional manager title in the American version and – with the help of a spot-on cast -- made it equally funny.
Carell says he did meet the originator of the quirky role.
“The first time I met Ricky Gervais was -- we did a read-through of our very first episode. And the only advice he gave to me was to try to make the rest of the cast laugh during the takes, because that's what they did, and to just sort of keep it light and fun and have fun with everybody. But he gave me no advice in terms of any sense of how to play the character or ‘do it the way I did.’
“And he, honestly, has been nothing but supportive all the way through. He's a very, very kind, supportive -- a real gentleman and hysterically funny to boot.”
Anyone who’s seen Gervais hosting the Golden Globes can attest to that.
