Photo: Gregory Kramer
Jeff Hiller Hits Provincetown on Book Tour
by Steve Desroches
As an actor Jeff Hiller knew the profession could be a grind with no guarantee of a big payoff, but he still wanted to pursue it anyway. He did get work, quite frequently actually. He was cast in plays way the hell off-Broadway like Bright Colors, Bold Patterns and the satirical rock musical Bloody, Bloody Andrew Jackson, Silence!, which did get him to Broadway. He skipped around to regional theaters like the Bucks County Playhouse and the Goodspeed Opera House. He performed frequently with the improv comedy group the Upright Citizen’s Brigade in New York and Los Angeles and became a darling of the downtown New York performance scene with his solo shows. And there were small roles on television shows…lots of them. Spots on Law and Order: Criminal Intent, Ugly Betty, Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, and 30 Rock, in which over the course of the show he played two completely different characters. But when he reached 40 years old, he looked around and just thought his life would be different. He wasn’t sure how, but just imagined he’d be in a different spot, career-wise. But then he got the script for Somebody Somewhere, and everything changed…eventually.
Hiller knew the show was something special, but that doesn’t guarantee much of anything. When the show, starring Bridget Everett, premiered on HBO in January of 2022 its success was a slow and steady burn, with Hiller receiving rave reviews for his portrayal as Joel, taking what can be the cliché gay best friend and making it anything but. And three months later Hiller was walking down the street in New York when someone stopped him to say how much they loved him and the show, a first for Hiller. As he approaches 50, Hiller reexamines his life and career in his new book Actress of a Certain Age: My Twenty Year Trail to Overnight Success in an event as part of the Provincetown International Film Festival.
Is it turning 50 that made it seem like a good time to reflect? “As far as the right time, it was just that they would let me,” laughs Hiller. “Let’s just call it out. I was on a TV show, it was a hit, and they let me.”
Hiller lets out a sigh and his distinctive giggle when he thinks about his life these past few years. Actress of a Certain Age, which is a series of autobiographical essays, tells the truth, comedically about the real peaks and valleys of life as an actor and comedian. Hiller thinks that’s important, as success can so often be portrayed as something that comes out of thin air, with little attention paid to what it actually takes: the good, the bad, the ugly, and the hilarious.
The popularity of Somebody Somewhere, a show about a woman in her 40s who goes home to her small Kansas hometown to care for her dying sister and in the process examines her life and her identity with the help of her family and chosen family of queer friends, is frequently credited to the show’s independent spirit and the uniqueness of its healthy message of committing to self-worth no matter what the world at large may say. The energy throughout the three seasons of filming had a definitive buzz of glee, as all the principal actors on the show had been in the trenches for years, and here they were in a hit show, together. It allowed Everett to quit her waitressing gig after 25 years while co-stars like Broadway stage actor Mary Catherine Garrison, legendary drag king Murray Hill, and character actors Mike Hagerty and Tim Bagley all stepped into the spotlight. This shared narrative became tightly woven into the characters they portrayed, who all were on a precipice of sorts themselves in the show.
“It’s true,” says Hiller. “All of us were experiencing the same thing at the same time. It created this atmosphere of gratitude on the set. I couldn’t believe that we all got to experience it together. It definitely worked its way into the show. The show is all about not giving up on yourself.”
That’s just what Hiller did. He didn’t give up on himself and his talent. And now his future is blowing wide open. Living in New York with his husband Neil Goldberg, an artist, and their cat Beverly and dog Yvonne DeCarlo, the trajectory of his life that brought him to Somebody Somewhere looks different now than it did before the show, though there are still mysteries, even to Hiller. How did he go from being a social worker in Denver, Colorado, working in HIV prevention among homeless youth to being on a critically-acclaimed, groundbreaking show? Who the hell knows, he laughs. But both Hiller’s performance and the show in general struck a chord in our deeply divided nation as no one in the Kansas town in Somebody Somewhere was presented as a knuckle-dragging hick nor were gay men who went to church presented as self-loathing, and no woman dealing with insecurity was a basket case who just needed a man. Cynicism was replaced with empathy and kindness along with a lot of nuance and human complexity.
“What I really loved is that it wasn’t patronizing to anyone,” says Hiller. “It didn’t go the other way either and say that people from New York are stupid. It treated everyone with dignity. I loved that.”
Jeff Hiller will be in conversation at the Crown & Anchor, 247 Commercial St. as part of the Provincetown International Film Festival on Sunday, June 15 at 12 p.m. Tickets ($20) are available at the film festival box office at 229 Commercial St. and online at provincetownfilm.org. For more information call 508.487.3456. A book signing will follow at the Provincetown Bookshop, 229 Commercial St.
