Random Reminiscing: Looking Back at My Many Random Roles Interviews (Part 30 of 30)

Featuring anecdotes from Timothy Omundson, Hector Elizondo, Colm Feore, BD Wong, John Astin, and Christine Lahti

Back in 2021, when I celebrated the 10th anniversary of my first Random Roles, I was feeling a tad nostalgic, so I decided that I wanted to start looking back at my contributions to this A.V. Club feature, since it’s the portion of my freelance career of which I’m most proud…and now, as of today, my first Random Roles in two years made its debut on the AVC! As such, it seemed like a perfect day to wrap up this feature, so I held onto this final installment until I could include today’s RR interview - with Christine Lahti! - as the closer.

If you accidentally missed the previous part of this reminiscing, you can check it out by clicking right here…and if you missed the part before that, well, each installment has a link to the previous installment in the intro, so just keep on clicking back until you’ve read ‘em all!

If you’re all up to date, though, then for heaven’s sake, why are you wasting time with this intro? Just dive right in!

Timothy Omundson:

Seinfeld (1992)—“Ricky”

How did you find your way into acting in the first place? What led you down that path?

Timothy Omundson: This sounds ridiculous, but… our class wrote a play in fifth grade, and I was the butler that did it. It was a very sophisticated work. [Laughs.] But that started it. And then in junior high I signed up for a great drama class, and my world sort of exploded. Acting was kind of the only thing I was good at. I wasn’t an athlete. I wasn’t a great student. Drama class just sort of became the outlet for me, where I could kind of shine. And when I was around 12, I started studying outside of school and started taking classes at the Seattle Children’s Theater, and I just kept kind of going from there into bigger places. The summer before my senior year of high school, I went to New York and studied at the American Academy Of Dramatic Arts. And that was it. It was off to the races!

Did your family support you in your endeavor?

I was really lucky, yeah. They were totally behind me. I think my dad had dreams of being a big band singer that he never really pursued that far. I remember telling him one day, “I think I’m gonna be an actor,” and he was, like, “Okay, because if you have a talent and you don’t use it, then you don’t get to say you have the talent.” So, yeah, they were really great and supported me. They paid for classes at the Children’s Theater, even though I was doing work study there. And they paid for me to go to New York and the Academy. After high school, I went to drama school at USC, and they still supported me all the way through there. So I was very, very lucky that they stayed behind me. It’s just one of the many ways that I’ve been lucky.

Speaking of good luck, it appears that your first on-camera acting job was an episode of Seinfeld, which is not a bad first gig.

That was my SAG card job, yeah! And it was quite the learning-curve experience. [Laughs.] I’d never even been on a sound stage before. I was working at Johnny Rockets on Melrose at the time, serving hamburgers and fries! So I walked onto this set with no idea what I was doing. I walked straight up to Craft Service to get a cup of coffee, and I realized that the coffee machine was empty. It was an industrial coffee machine like I used at the restaurant, and when you’re out of coffee, you make coffee. So just kind on reflex, I started making coffee. And the gentleman who ran Craft Service came up to me and was, like, “What are you doing?” “Oh, I’m making coffee. You were out of coffee, so I’m making coffee.” “No, no. That’s my job.” And I was, like, “That’s awesome: somebody else gets to make the coffee for once!”

So was it just a standard audition situation that led to you getting the role?

Yeah, I went in to audition, like anything else. I’d been out of school for… somewhere between six months to a year. I think I gave myself the imaginary expiration date of “If I don’t start working by the time I’m 25, I’ll figure something else out.” And I was probably 23 by the time I got that job.

It was only three lines, so I figured, “Well, they’ll tell me what the hell’s going on in the scene beforehand.” And I can’t remember if Larry David was in the room or if it was the director and somebody else, but they said, “Do I explain the scene to him?” “Nah, just let him do it.” So whatever the hell I did, it was apparently funnier than the red-headed guy who came in after me, because I got the job. [Laughs.] And then I figured, “Well, they’ll tell me what’s going on once I get to the set,” but I was quickly terrified to realize that they didn’t have time to talk to the kid with three lines and tell him what’s going on.

I remember Jason [Alexander] was particularly nice to me. But they all were, actually. My scene was with Jason, Jerry, and Grace Zabriskie and Warren Frost were playing my parents. So I kind of cobbled together a character out of these three lines I had. Warren Frost, his character was kind of a jerk, so I was, like, “Okay, well, I’ll be a jerk, too. I’ll just be cranky.” And then halfway through rehearsal… You know, they always change the lines, but they changed one of the lines that I’d based my entire character on. [Laughs.] I went, “Oh, no, what am I gonna do now?!” So I was really thrown into the deep end. But I decided to keep going. And I didn’t get fired on that first day, so whatever I was doing, it kept working.

After I did the run-through, I went outside, and Jerry Seinfeld was sitting on the ground against the wall, eating an apple. And I said something about it being my first job, and he said [Doing a solid Seinfeld impression.] “Oh, it’s your first job? Congratulations! That’s great! You’re great!” It was very sweet.

A few months later, I ran into Jason Alexander in the parking lot of Cantor’s Deli, and I happened to be with my dad. So I said, “Hey, Jason!” and I introduced him to my dad. And Jason said something that will always make him number one in my book. He said, “Oh, you’ve got a very talented son here!” He couldn’t have been kinder. It was exactly what a young actor wants to hear a famous actor say to his dad. I’ve run into him a couple of times since then at charity stuff, and I’ve reminded him of that story. He’s still as sweet as can be every time I see him.

Hector Elizondo:

All In The Family (1972)—“Carlos Mendoza”

You appeared in a very memorable episode of All In The Family in the show’s second season. Archie Bunker gets stuck in an elevator with a Black businessman, a secretary, and you as a Puerto Rican janitor, and your pregnant wife, who goes into labor in the elevator. 

Hector Elizondo: That was a turning-point episode. That episode saved the show; they were about to cancel it. Again, who knew? I didn’t! [Laughs.] I knew nothing about it until I read that story in Norman Lear’s autobiography [Even This I Get To Experience], where he gave all the details. When you read his memoir, he talks about it, and how there was a big to-do over this episode. I was blissfully ignorant of that. For me, it was just a job. I was hired in New York City, where I was doing stage work, of course, and in between plays. I came to the west coast—not for the first time—and I used to love those jaunts, those trips for a week or two. I’d do a job and go back home.

I knew nothing—or very little—about television or the world of producers, directors, how it was formed, especially situation comedies. But I knew that All In The Family attracted a great deal of attention because it seemed to be right on the mark on time, which is something that television had never done before. It was a step or two behind the times. Norman Lear’s shows seemed to be right on time when it came to the subject matter and the topics, particularly the taboo topics. And he made you laugh! I said, “How the hell are they pulling this off?” Well, suddenly, there I was doing a show! But it was decades later when I read Norman’s book and discovered that this was a seminal episode: Not only did Carroll O’Connor win an Emmy, but the show was renewed and ran for however many more seasons after that.

But it was quite something to realize that there was drama going on behind the scenes. The only way that Carroll—who, by the way, was a wonderful fellow and a terrific writer—could create this seminal character was because he understood the character and never made fun of the character. He wasn’t a caricature. He was a character! How do you pull off something like that in a volatile time like that, with the Vietnam War and everything, and somehow become beloved? That’s the trick: to become beloved. Quite different from what we have now. [Laughs.] I mean, people loved Carroll! Now, [Archie Bunker] may have been ignorant about these social issues, and he had some absolutist ideas, but he was a good person and a good man who would never have thought for an instant of attacking the Capitol! He would’ve absolutely been in the front lines of people stopping that! But anyway, how they did that [with Archie Bunker] was really magical and quite artful.

While I was at rehearsals… Well, first of all, I realized that these were all theater people! In those days, that’s where your pool of talent came from: the theater. From Broadway, off-Broadway, repertory theaters… all these theater folk. And most of them were writers, so it was a very comfortable place to be in terms of their level of experience and commitment to the show. I realized how important it was for them to do a good show. I mean, at one point, you were getting 50 million eyes on an episode! It’s stunning. Fifty million people were watching that show at one time… and that’s why it was discussed around what they called the water cooler, right? In the offices, everyone was talking about All In The Family. And this episode was right on time. [Whispering.] “Did you hear what he said?” And yet they were laughing. These taboo subjects—which should not have been taboo—were being discussed and being laughed at!

But I understand that Carroll did not want to do [the episode]. He didn’t want to be stuck in an elevator. He didn’t think that would be successful, and he didn’t think it would make for a good show. He had to be convinced. In fact, it got so serious that, from what I can remember, there was some kind of litigation going on behind the scenes. He wanted to leave, and they had to convince him not to leave. Of course, that last scene, if you remember, when the camera pushed in on his face as he heard that baby cry, the baby that was born in the elevator… It made you cry. Carroll O’Connor made you cry just by a look and by something he said: “You got a little boy, huh?” It was incredible. Just stunning. It was an artful piece of work.

But as I say, it was interesting to read about it after the fact, because I was just doing my job! [Laughs.] I didn’t know anything at all about the real drama going on behind the scenes! Knowing that, though, makes it a richer experience for me. I didn’t know I was going to be part of TV history.

Colm Feore:

Iron Eagle II (1988)—“Yuri”

Colm Feore: [Laughs.] Mind you, it got me a trip to Israel and to Egypt briefly, at the end of the shoot. And it was fantastic. Sidney Furie directed that, a Canadian director who’d achieved a considerable amount of success in L.A.; he’d done really super cool films with people like Michael Caine, like The Ipcress File, one of those wonderful spy-drama things. Super groovy. And so it was a lot of fun.

But I remember the audition, and I thought, “How am I going to do this?” They said, “Okay, well, he’s gotta be Russian.” I thought, “Russian… Who do I know that’s Russian?” And one of my favorite movies at the time was a thing with Peter Riegert and Burt Lancaster called Local Hero, a small Scottish film by Bill Forsyth—one of his trilogy with Comfort And Joy and Gregory’s Girl—and it’s a brilliant movie. Very charming, very funny. But in it, there’s a Russian actor, Christopher Rozycki, and I’ve always liked him. [Begins drifting into Russian accent.] And, you know, he’s a fisherman, and he’s been buying some fish at the village… So whatever Russian accent he had, I tried to steal, right? [Laughs.] So I stole it for the audition, and I thought, “I can fix it on the plane if I get the job, and off we’ll go.”

The trouble with the internet, if one is ever foolish enough to Google one’s self just out of sentimentality and things like Iron Eagle II pop up… [Starts to laugh.] I read somewhere, “Oh, yes, Iron Eagle II: the second in a series with Uncle Lou Gossett…” A delightful man, by the way, but I had taken it because David Suchet, a very respected Royal Shakespeare actor, was in the first one. I thought, “If it’s good enough for David Suchet, it’s good enough for me!” And we were surrounded by great classical actors: Neil Munro, Alan Scarfe, Gary Reineke, Clark Johnson, Maury Chaykin… Wonderful people and just a lot of delightful actors to be stuck in the deserts of Israel with. And foolishly, years later, I’m looking at this post... “And then there’s Colm Feore, with a ridiculous Russian accent…” And I just thought, “I’m not reading any farther. Point taken. I’m going to try and get better at this.” [Laughs.]

I remember that we got into these Israeli jets, and… I was too tall! So I get in, and the canopy comes down and bashes me on the head and squishes me down into thing. I didn’t look very cool.

Also, Lou Gossett nearly got us all killed! There we were, on my last day. Keep in mind that I’m in Israel, in the desert, somewhere between the Gaza Strip and Israel proper. We’ve taken over a great chunk of desert, and we’ve made it look like a firing range. So there’s a lot of weapons, a lot of targets, and there’s a lot of people standing around in army uniforms with guns… only I’m dressed as a Russian.

So Lou’s got a facing-off scene with all of us Israelis and Russians and a couple of Americans—actually, Canadians masquerading as Americans—not getting along, and he’s got to tell us what for and to behave like a team. And in order to get our attention, he takes the Uzis from Uri Gavriel—brilliant, the Clint Eastwood of Israel—and Mark Ivanir, another great Israeli actor, and Lou fires the weapons and fires about 30 rounds of ammunition from each of them into the air.

So Lou wants to practice this. “Let’s do a little rehearsal.” I’m, like, “Oh, geez... Okay, it’s my last day. Please don’t get me killed.” Well, he turns around and blasts straight into the sky two fully-loaded semi-automatic Uzis… just as a Cobra gunship helicopter filled with a lot of very confused Israeli soldiers who’ve just come on a refueling mission from their trip over to Gaza comes across the dune to see what the eff is going on! This Cobra gunship sees a rifle range, guys with guns, Russians… and it drops out of the sky and comes FWOOM! hovering down over us. Guys start leaning out of the window with their weapons, going, “What’s going on here?” I’m now crapping my trousers, because I’m dressed as a Russian.

Now, I thought the fact that we had some cinema klieg lights out would’ve tipped people off that there was a guy with a camera crew over there somewhere, that it wasn’t just a documentary, that we were probably pretending. But the Cobra gunship is hanging down, the guys are out of the windows… Sidney Furie, God love him... [Starts to laugh.] He turns to the first A.D. and says, “Go talk to them! We’ve got a permit! We’ve got a permit!” So the first A.D., with a radio and a piece of paper, starts walking toward the helicopter gunship full of Israeli soldiers, who are confused, and tries to explain, “We’re just makin’ a movie!” I thought, “This is the end of my career.” And, indeed, Iron Eagle II very nearly was!

BD Wong:

Mulan (1998) / Mulan II (2004)—“Shang”

BD Wong: Mulan occurred at a time when it was a big deal for Asian American actors to voice Asian roles. At the time, it was a very ’50s/’60s post-war kind of feeling. “Well, it doesn’t matter. You can’t see them, so what does it matter?” And this was absolutely true in a lot of other places, and here there was an instance where the studio actually, and to its credit, made a different choice and gave us—for the most part—the parts that we played, and we were Asian voices.

It’s the precursor to the definition of what became the discussion about appropriation. Appropriation is kind of taking on a different culture or character or another marginalized group when it’s not your group and portraying them or wearing their culture like a costume. And I didn’t realize at the time how important that was. It was noted at the time, and they got points for it, and we pointed it out. But now I go, “Wow, in the timeline of history, there was something that was shifting at that time that continued to shift.” And now here we are today doing something like Awkwafina Is Nora From Queens, where these questions are less of a big discussion.

Now, I will say that your singing voice—it’s the darnedest thing, but it sounds just like Donny Osmond. 

Uh huh. [Laughs.]

Seriously, though, how did you feel about that situation at the time?

Now, are you saying that because you heard what I said about it before?

Actually, no. I mean, I’m sure you’ve had plenty to say, but I haven’t read any of it.

Well, you’re not going to believe it, but this was actually the excuse that was given to me for the hiring of Donny Osmond: “Well, this is very hard to explain, but: His singing voice sounds more like your speaking voice than your singing voice does.”

That’s… something.

Yeah, I… I couldn’t argue with that. [Laughs.] “Okay, that’s great. Thanks!” And, you know, there’s lots of reasons for that. The thing that producers feared at the time was that Asian American stars weren’t needed because Asian American stars couldn’t carry the box office load. And it’s true that there weren’t a lot of Asian American stars. But how much it mattered and whether they should’ve given other Asian American actors a chance to be stars—that’s a whole other discussion.

John Astin:

Candy (1968)—”T.M. Christian” / “Jack Christian”

How was the experience of doing Candy?

John Astin: Oh, well... [Starts to laugh.] The director was a lot of fun to work with. He was a resistance hero. In fact, I believe Marlon [Brando] named one of his kids for Christian Marquand. Sometimes we would do two shots a day, because I think he enjoyed those funny cigarettes. [Laughs.]

For the longest time, the predominant thing I knew about the film was that it was based on a novel co-written by Terry Southern. It was years before I actually saw it.

Right! Did you read the book?

No, I’m aware that it was a book, but I’ve never read it.

Yeah, Mason Hoffenberg was Terry’s co-author of the book. He did an outline for the film, but it wasn’t shootable. You couldn’t really use it to make a movie. With straight prose, Terry Southern was a lot of fun to read, but it would’ve been very difficult to shoot what he offered, so they brought Buck Henry in to write the screenplay.

So what do I remember of Candy? I just remember that it was a lot of fun. I had a good time in many ways. Part of it was off-camera. And it turned out during that time, one day on the Via Veneto, John Cassavetes stopped me, and he said, “Hey, man, Fellini wants you to be in a movie!” And I said, “Right.” [Laughs.] And I made some smart-ass remark. But he said, “No, no, I’m serious! I was at the studio, and he was asking to see film on you!” So eventually I had a meeting with Fellini.

The night before, I dreamt about it. I mean, Fellini was my hero! I’d studied his movies, so it was a big thrill to meet him, but I was embarrassed as hell. At first he wanted to do the interview in Italian, and...I had been learning the language, and for the time I’d spent, I was, I think, pretty good with it. But I wanted to have this interview in English if I could possibly manage it, so finally I prevailed, and we spoke English. And Fellini’s English was pretty good, and he told me about the film. It was The Journey Of G. Mastorna, and he wanted to have some humor in it. So we started talking about the film, and I got to know him, and also to tell him that I was putting together a short film that I hoped would be successful.

One day he called me in and said, “I’ve got bad news for you: I think my film is now out of date, and I’ve spent two million dollars of Dino De Laurentiis’ money, and I’m not going to do the film.” Interestingly, though, he said, “Why don’t you come over? I’m going to screen a film I just did, an adaptation of an Edgar Allen Poe story.” And I, clinging to the relationship a little bit, said, “Certainly! I’ll be there!” And I saw it, and we had a drink afterwards, and...by this time, with Candy, we were going back to the States. And we did return, at which time I connected with Fellini and told him I would let him know how the film turned out that I was going to do. So when I came back, I was doing another film at the Italian studios—Viva Max!—and we didn’t have access to the interior of the Alamo, so they built one in Italy.

As one does.

It was beautifully done, actually!

Oh, I’m sure it was. It’s just the idea of building the Alamo in Italy.

[Laughs.] “Let’s build the Alamo!” So I was working on that, and I tried to reach Fellini. I had a print of my short film—I had to find him!—but it was really tough, because nobody would tell me where he was. This happened at Cinecittà, where he was doing Satyricon at that time. And one day I heard this voice: “John! Where you been?” [Laughs.] And it was Fellini! And I had left for him an ad or something with a bunch of reviews for the film. So we arranged a screening when he was looking at dailies, and we screened the short film that I had done. It was a half-hour film. And Fellini and I and his editor, Ruggero Mastrianni, Marcello’s brother, we watched the film, and Fellini really liked it.

In fact, he started showing it. He showed it to the Ingmar Bergman people, who were in town doing something, Max von Sydow and Bibi Andersson. So I found myself among that group, and Max von Sydow said, “Can we get together? I want to ask you some questions about how you managed to do this.” So he and I had a long dinner together, and we really had a good time. And I learned a lot about Bergman from him and how they worked, and I gave him what information he needed, I hoped. But he said, “I want to do something like that. It’s terrific that you did that!”

So I had a couple more meetings with Fellini, and he said he had some thoughts about putting a couple of things with it. He said, “If you do this, you’ll have suceso grande!” You know, a great hit. So we talked about moviemaking and all that. I went through a lot of things with him and what I learned by watching his films, and he said, “This is my private phone number, this is my private address. I want to be your friend.” And I never followed it up. Freud would say I was wrecked by success!

Christine Lahti:

Law & Order: Special Victims Unit (2009-2011)—“Sonya Paxton”

Christine Lahti: Ah, yes! Wow, well, that was quite a journey. Mariska [Hargitay] was extraordinary. The whole cast was incredibly welcoming and open and generous. By that time, they already done it, I guess, 10 or 12 years. Now they’re on season 25 or something! But even back then they’d already done it for quite awhile. And I do remember... I don’t think I’ve ever been on a show that was that popular. So the day after they aired that scene where I slap Chris Meloni in the face, I went to Starbucks, and all these people were looking at me. And this one woman looked at me and said, “You bitch.” And I thought, “They think I’m that character... and they’re mad because I slapped their hero on the face!” And I just say, “Okay, get a life. That’s not me. I didn’t really slap him. It was a fake slap.” [Laughs.] But I thought, “This is really bizarre, being that identified with a character...” I had not experienced that before.

I will say that you gave a drunk scene for the ages during one of your episodes.

Oh, thank you. And that’s an interesting story. I had read... Who was it? Some actor had written that, because he had become sober, he couldn’t drink for a drunk scene. I want to say maybe it was Dennis Hopper or somebody like that. Anyway, his trick was to spin around in circles to get that sort of loss of equilibrium. And I wasn’t going to drink for a drunk scene anyway. You’ve got to find a different way. So I tried that spinning, and I was spinning and spinning and spinning...and then the director says, “Action! Oh, wait, hold the camera. Can you readjust that light?” And I’m still spinning, I’m spinning... “Okay, can you reset the camera?” And I’m still spinning, spinning, spinning... By the time we did the scene, I was so dizzy. And then my job, of course, which is what you do in real life if you’re drunk, is to try and appear sober. So I tried to walk in a straight line. That’s my objective. But my obstacle is that I’m so dizzy... [Laughs.] It worked great for the scene. But cut to two weeks later, I’m still dizzy. It actually fucked up my equilibrium, my inner ear. I had to take this medication for people who get seasickness. I finally got it back, but that was scary! I didn’t realize you could really upset your inner-ear equilibrium that way.