#SIMON HELBERG TV#

He had to ask Sorkin to be released from Studio 60, which was a bit of a gamble. When he was a cast member on Aaron Sorkin’s Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, he auditioned and won the role (a nerd, natch) on the pilot for The Big Bang Theory. But it will be harder for me to play a love interest or a normal human.” “I’m very happy to get work and play all kinds of odd, alien-type people. “It’s like golden handcuffs,” he admitted. “I can see it more objectively.” ‘Golden handcuffs’Īnother pitfall is typecasting. “It’s nice not to be so close to the Trekkie or science worlds,” he said. But Helberg prefers not to have an insider’s knowledge of nerdom. They assume he can pull coins out of ears, speak Klingon and know trivial details of sci-fi.

#SIMON HELBERG TV#

One pitfall of playing so many nerds, he said, is that TV and film writers sometimes confuse the actor with the character. “You can’t chain the stallion to the stable!”

“I want to show off the hunkiness!” he deadpanned. “I’ve played so many nerds in my life,” he lamented.

It was literally “pay to play,” but it was a way to keep working.Ĭasting directors began booking him to play socially inept characters. What kept him going was writing and performing sketch comedy and plays in small theaters he would rent for a night. I was doing great in these auditions and not getting the parts.”Įven though he did start getting work on commercials and television, he estimated that he was unsuccessful in 950 of those 1,000 auditions. He was honest about how discouraging that was. So Helberg worked at a restaurant and went on “1,000 auditions.” Painfully, neither job materialized, although Judd Apatow, the writer-director of one of the projects, did write a small role for him in a film. The truth of his dropping out of college, he said, was that he was so sure he was going to book one of two high-profile auditions (“they’ll fight over me,” he fantasized) that he secured an agent and left school. His stern drama instructor there who brooked no comedy was suddenly replaced by Bridel, an internationally known expert on clowning, who taught the class “pratfalls and lazzis.” Helberg’s response, he joked, was to say to himself, “There’s a clown college? Why am I at NYU?” and immediately quit school.

(USC Photo/Gus Ruelas)Īs the program began, the 35-year-old actor recalled that he had met Bridel when Helberg was a college student in New York. Students enjoyed a Q&A with Simon Helberg at the USC School of Dramatic Arts.

Simon helberg