Max Casella on the Coens, Terence Winter, and growing up on stage and screen

The colloquial “actor’s actor” gets tossed around often, but few performers embody the phrase quite like Max Casella. For nearly four decades, Casella has put the work in, dating all the way back to his co-starring role in Doogie Howser, M.D., and his memorable turn as Racetrack Higgins in Disney’s Newsies. Since then, he was the original Timon in Broadway’s The Lion King, he’s left his mark on all of Terence Winter’s HBO series, and has appeared in critically adored films like Inside Llewyn Davis and Jackie. The man’s been everywhere, which is why we decided it was time to revisit our Random Roles feature with him to see what he’s been up to since we last spoke. Currently, Max Casella can be seen in two of the five one-act plays that make up Ethan Coen’s A Play Is A Poem at the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles.