Comedian Matt Walsh Interview: Casting, Collaboration and the Keys to Comedy
Matt Walsh (left) and costar Eva Longoria in Unplugging
From VEEP to Old School to Ghostbusters 2016, the seasoned comedian has been a part of some the most impressive comedic ensembles in recent television and film. He now brings that experience to his new film, Unplugging.
Even if you’re not a fan of the insanely successful HBO political comedy VEEP, or even if you’re unfamiliar with his reoccurring role as the bleak Detective Lohank on Brooklyn Nine Nine, chances are you have seen something that Primetime Emmy nominated actor/comedian Matt Walsh has been in. Despite not necessarily being a household name (yet who wants to live in that humorless household?), Walsh is an absolute comedic workhorse. FilmSpeak was fortunate enough to sit down with the journeyman to discuss how he can bring such a consistent effort to so many projects including his upcoming film Unplugging, where he not only costars with Eva Longoria, Keith David and Lea Thompson, but cowrote the film as well.
Like so many prolific comedians, Walsh came up through one of the major hubs of comedy, as he was born in one of the funniest places in America, Chicago. After studying the hilarious subject of Psychology, he studied a little further abroad, but came full circle back to Chicago and began taking improv classes. There, he became a regular performer at the Annoyance Theater and in 1991, he met comedian Matt Besser, who he eventually began performing stand-up comedy with. Along with Besser, Amy Poehler and Ian Roberts, Walsh founded the Upright Citizens Brigade comedy troupe. Those early comedic roots in Chicago eventually landed him steady work in some fairly powerful comedic circles.
“Good comedy has to have great writing. It just does. You can’t avoid it. You have to have great writing. ‘It’s a lot of work to make a comedy good, and then great.”
“I came out of Chicago and many people that I ran around with from Andy Richter to Adam McKay to Brian McCann, Tom Janis and Brian Stack, These are guys who went east to New York before [he and fellow Upright Citizens Brigade members] moved there and started writing on SNL and Conan. So when I landed there, they were kind enough to realize, we were just getting our feet and they would always be in need of like a funny improviser who could add a little something to the sketch. So it was a blessing to have those gigs to pay our rent, right when we landed.”
His connections to the NBC family lead to several appearances on Late Night with Conan O’Brien (back when the network knew what funny late night hosts were, before the time of Fallon), a few uncredited appearances on SNL, and eventually lead to him being trusted by so many of the networks’ sitcom showrunners. Dan Harmon, who created arguably one of the most perfect sitcoms ever, Community would use Walsh in several projects, and Walsh would also be no stranger to SNL alum created sitcoms like ‘Parks and Rec’ or ‘Brooklyn Nine-Nine’.
When asked if his improv roots helped him walk so seamlessly into a plethora of well-oiled and successful sitcoms, Walsh seemingly believes casting has more to do with collaboration that preparation. “If you step into a show like Community, or Brooklyn, I was already familiar with them and you usually get a table read. Then the person you're playing off of whether it's Andy Samberg or Joel McHale, they're communicating a tone. They're the anchor of the show. So you're just intuiting ‘Oh, this is the world we're living in’, and it just comes out of you. I think also, you are hired for who you are… they're not going to steer you too far away from what you do well, so your first instincts on anything, when you're reading it or delivering it, you're probably close to what they want, especially in comedy.”
Walsh puts that key to comedy to the test in his new film Unplugging, where he and Brad Morris co-wrote the script, and where Walsh, also as producer of the film has a little more creative control. Walsh elaborated on the fact that with Unplugging, he is now the aforementioned anchor; where as writer and co-lead of the film, he can now push the tone. In coming from such a collaborative background, improv, must it not be a careful balance of give and take to be successful in comedy? Otherwise it could possibly even kill the comedy all together.
“The one instance I can think of is that someone like Woody Allen when he made movies, he's such an auteur. That at times, unfortunately, makes every character talk like Woody Allen. So that's an example of the comedic voice [being] so strong, and you're so reverent to it, you might lose a little variation in something perhaps, but generally, it doesn't ruin it. I don't fear that it'll ruin collaboration or comedy, because comedy is mostly about casting, truthfully. So if I have Nicole Byer coming into play a Cop in ‘Unplugging’, she's lights out funny. An actor is more concerned about wanting to give the writers what they want. Like most actors, once they take the job, they just want to do a good job and give the writers what's on the page. So I don't I personally don't fear steamrolling someone or ruining the collaboration. I don't fear that for comedy.”
Considering Walsh has come from some of the more prolific comedic casts of this century, whether it’s the female lead Ghostbusters (2016), the pedigreed cast of Old School or the insanely successful VEEP, as much as Walsh gives credit to performers, now, once again donning his writer’s hat, it seems that the true key to comedy comes on the page first in Walsh’s opinion. “Good comedy has to have great writing. It just does. You can't avoid it. You have to have great writing. ‘Veep’ was tireless, great writing, they would never stop writing. So it's a lot of work to make a comedy good, and then great. It’s that ‘lightning in a bottle’ thing, you just don't know, but, hopefully it's good.”
Unplugging is in select theatres now, and on Digital and On Demand April 29th.
Click below for the full interview with Matt Walsh:
