Appearing on a commercial, movie or television show is something. Appearing on a hit television show with an astounding shelf life – even years after its final episode – is something else.
In the summer of 1999, I had the privilege of being cast in an episode of HBO’s Sex and the City. It was the show’s second season, during which it really got its stride as a huge hit. I was in an episode called “Games People Play” playing Miranda’s peeping-tom, towel-dropping neighbor. This was almost 13 years ago. And just today, a girl came up to me on the street and asked me: “Were you on Sex and the City?”
During my pursuit of an acting career, this was not only my “greatest hit,” but it was also my favorite experience bar none. The casting process was hilarious, with a room full of people (writer, director, producer, casting people, etc.) all in good cheer. The two shooting days were a blast, even though I was walking on a broken foot. The crew, from director Michael Spiller and costume icon Pat Field, down to the P.A. who escorted me from my trailer to the set, could not have been cooler. And the experience with my scene partner, the sublime Cynthia Nixon, was a delight in the extreme.
I have to put in a special word about the show’s executive producer, Michael Patrick King. Though Darren Star created Sex and the City and wrote several episodes, the show was really Michael’s baby from the second season all the way through both movies, which he both wrote and directed. (We can all agree that Sex/City 2 earned its Razzie Awards.) With beginnings as a stand-up comic in L.A. to being an Emmy-nominated writer for Murphy Brown and, ultimately, an award-winning writer, director and producer of Sex and the City (9 Emmy nominations, 2 wins; 4 Producers Guild nominations, 1 win; 2 Writers Guild nominations), it’s easy to see why he is one of the busiest and most respected writer/producers working in the business today.
All these years later, whenever I run into Michael on the street, he always remembers me by name and we have a nice chat. It was a privilege to work for the man responsible for a show that, after 13 years, still has strangers asking me if I was the guy outside Miranda’s window.
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