The Hollywood Reporter recently gathered Kevin Bacon, Kumail Nanjiani, Anthony Anderson, Ted Danson, Brian Tyree Henry and William H. Macy for a comedic actor's roundtable. Here is some of their conversation:
Brian's rise to fame is significantly more recent than the rest of yours. What advice do you have for him about navigating success?
ANTHONY ANDERSON (BLACK-ISH, ABC) Don't give your family money. Tell them no.
WILLIAM H. MACY (SHAMELESS, SHOWTIME) You can give my family money. (Laughs.) I've always said, "Do the good stuff, but don't do the bad stuff." That's my advice.
BRIAN TYREE HENRY (ATLANTA, FX) But what if the bad stuff is, like, lots of money?
MACY It's never enough money. The few times I've done something for money, halfway through I thought, "This isn't anywhere near the amount of money I'd need to get."
KUMAIL NANJIANI (SILICON VALLEY, HBO) But sometimes you read something, and you think it's going to be great and then it doesn't turn out good at all.
TED DANSON (THE GOOD PLACE, NBC) My experience is when I do stuff I probably shouldn't have, there was a moment when I read the script and went, "Boy, I don't know. This part here doesn't work." And then they say, "God, we'd love you for this part, Ted, and here's X money," and then you go, "It'll work. They'll fix it." And then they don't. Your instincts are usually right.
Hollywood loves to lock people into lanes. What are the roles that you find yourself getting tired of being approached for?
HENRY A thug. I am not a goddamn thug. (Laughs.) Especially now, they want to lock me into the drug dealer. I can be a lawyer!
DANSON But I think that's the part that's in your control, and you will have to say no.
HENRY It's a lot of no's. (Laughs.)
When was the last time you were mistaken for another actor?
NANJIANI Oh my God. There was one week where I got mistaken for Hasan Minhaj, who is on The Daily Show; Kunal Nayyar, who's on Big Bang Theory; and Karan Soni of Ghostbusters. This was one week. And this was, like, a month ago.
ANDERSON I get — which is crazy because it comes from my own community — Tyler Perry, Ice Cube and Ruben Studdard, which made me lose the fucking weight.
I want to flip the script on a question we typically ask women: What's the most sexist thing that's happened to you in Hollywood?
BACON I've got one. I think this qualifies as sexist. I'll let women decide that because I think that's something that women understand a lot better than men do, let's face it. I was up for a little film called Footloose. The head of the studio was a woman. And the director and the producer wanted me for the part and she said, "I don't want him. He's not fuckable."
NANJIANI First of all, so wrong. (Laughter.) Who has ever been more fuckable than Kevin Bacon?
BACON What can I tell you? I wasn't her taste.
ANDERSON Hey, were you fuckable after the movie?
BACON As it turned out … (Anderson fist-bumps Bacon.)
DANSON I don't know if this is sexism or ageism, but around the set, we all make jokes. If it's a good set and it's friends, men and women are just raunchy. It's not the sexism thing where you're offending people, they're doing it back and all that. I've noticed that what I used to be able to say and everybody would go, "Oh Ted," is now, "Eww." Age. All of a sudden, those jokes are no longer appropriate.
HENRY You became that guy, just like that.
DANSON It's like, ew, dirty old man.
BACON Do either of these qualify as sexist? I don't know.
DANSON The fact that we're having a hard time thinking of a sexist moment, that is the whole conversation. That is sexism right there.
Read the full roundtable at The Hollywood Reporter.
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