Tim Bagley on Somebody Somewhere, refusing to be flamboyant on Curb, and getting fired from Friends

Welcome to Random Roles, wherein we talk to actors about the characters who defined their careers. The catch: They don’t know beforehand what roles we’ll ask them to talk about.

The actor: Tim Bagley got his start in comedy as a member of the Groundlings, but his acting career began in earnest in the mid-1990s, thanks to a flurry of small roles in films and on TV series that slowly but surely led him to become a true sitcom “that guy.” In addition to a plethora of one-off roles on just about every comedy that leaps to mind—except for Friends, but you may rest assured that he’s got a great story about why you never saw on that series—Bagley has also popped up in a number of recurring roles on the likes of Grace And Frankie, Monk, and Web Therapy. 

With appearances earlier this year in Hacks and The Perfect Couple, Bagley can also currently be seen on HBO’s Somebody Somewhere, which is in the midst of its third and final season. Along with discussing his excellent turn as Brad on that show (and how his relationship with Jeff Hiller’s Joel has progressed), Bagley also chatted about several other projects within his filmography. And let it be said that his story about prepping for his part in The Fluffer, while not necessarily safe for work, is a Random Roles anecdote for the ages. 

Somebody Somewhere (2023-)—“Brad Schraeder” 

The A.V. Club: How did you find your way onto Somebody Somewhere in the first place?

Tim Bagley: Well, I had seen the first season and loved it, and it’s absolutely my kind of taste. It’s kind, it’s thoughtful, it’s full of heart, and it’s hilariously funny. So I liked everything about it. And then I just got a call saying that they were offering me…I think originally it was three episodes. And I said to my manager, “Yes! I’ll do it for whatever. I’ll do it for a baked potato. Don’t ruin this for me.” [Laughs] So I did it, and they seemed to like what I did, and they just kept writing for my character.

AVC: You and Jeff have great chemistry together.

TB: Well, thank you. Yeah, I think I had met Jeff once at, like, a dinner or something like that. And when I saw the show, I just remember thinking, “He’s perfect for this. He’s so perfect.” And so I kind of walked into the situation already loving him, just loving who he was. And then as we got to know each other, it was very easy. And we have a lot in common. And Bridget [Everett] I knew through my friends, and she’s just very easy for me. I’ve seen her stage show a couple of times, and I just loved her. So just everybody, the whole cast, is very close, and it’s very collaborative. And we’re close with the crew, so everybody is putting their two cents in and trying to make this as good as we can possibly make it. And we want it to be a kind offering of hope moving forward.

AVC: Speaking of the closeness of the cast, Mike Hagerty’s passing must have been very difficult.

TB: He was actually a friend. One of his good friends, Danny Woodburn, is a friend of mine, so I used to go over there for Halloween, and Danny would play the piano with a headless thing, and then Mike Hagerty and I would hand out candy. So it was just a fun little thing that we did a few of those Halloweens together.

AVC: Where can we expect to see the Brad and Joel relationship going this season? 

TB: Okay, so they’re figuring out—as every couple does that moves in together—how to meld their lives together and, at the same time, be individually who they are. One of the things that I really loved about the way they wrote my character in the second season was how he just kind of goes along on his own, and he’s doing his little journey, and if he meets somebody, fine, and if not, that’s fine, too. He’s going to be doing his journey and trying to become the best that he can be. The best version of himself. Now he’s fallen in love, and they’re melding their lives together. And I just think that, especially somebody who’s been on his own for awhile, it’s awkward and difficult and complicated to move in. 

Mistress (1992)—“Mitch’s Singing Student”

Daddy Dearest (1993)—“Priest”

The Mask (1994)—“Irv”

AVC: It looks like maybe Mitch’s Singing Student in Mistress was your first role. Is that true?

TB: Well, I don’t even think of it as a role. I was an extra. And I’ve contacted IMDb several times to try and get them to take it off, but they’re, like, “Nope! Leaving it on!” But I was basically an extra that was hired to sit around a piano and be a member of a class. I didn’t have any lines or anything. But I was just sitting there around a piano. And it was my first job, but I don’t even think of it as my first job. What I think of as my first job is The Mask. That was my first movie where I had a role. And then that same year, the same casting directors, Fern Champion and Mark Paladini, cast me in Daddy Dearest. 

AVC: With Don Rickles and Richard Lewis.

TB: Yes! And what I remember about that is that I was nervous about meeting Don Rickles, and then he turned out to be this incredibly kind, wonderful man. I was a priest in a jail cell with him overnight, and he asked me if I would be kind enough to let him put his lines on a card on my chest. [Laughs] And I was, like, “No problem!” And then a few days later, when we were done with the shoot, I was in my car up on Sunset Boulevard, and there was honking on a horn, and I was, like, “Who’s honking?” And I look over, and it’s Don Rickles, waving at me like, “Hi! Hi!” And I remember thinking it meant so much to me. Because it was my first TV job, and the idea that this iconic comedian was, like, waving to me. It just made me feel like I belonged, you know?

AVC: Rickles and Lewis said the outtakes on that show were far funnier than the episodes themselves.

TB: [Laughs] Probably, yeah!

AVC: Do you have a particular story about working on The Mask?

TB: I played with Johnny Roastbeef, a.k.a. Johnny Williams, and it was really fun to play with him. And what I remember about Jim Carrey is that he was really personable, really cool, and he had all these creative ideas and things that he wanted to do, and he was just very inspired and ambitious. And I remember he described some movie to me. He just brought this whole premise that was so interesting and detailed, where he was walking through his life, and everybody else was an actor playing a role, and then years later I was watching The Truman Show, and I thought, “Oh, this is the movie he was describing to me on the set!” Let’s see, is there anything else that I remember about that? I shot that on my birthday, and I remember that the whole place smelled like dead rats and urine.

Seinfeld (1995)—“Manager”

Curb Your Enthusiasm (2000)—“Shoe Salesman”

TB: What I remember about Curb Your Enthusiasm, first of all, is that it was the second episode. So, I hadn’t seen it. I didn’t really know what it was like. But I knew it was improv, and I came from the Groundlings, which is a lot of improv. But my agent sent it to me, and it said they were looking for a flamboyant gay man, and I was, like, “I don’t want to do that. I don’t want to do that kind of stereotype.” I was in the waiting room, and I saw all these guys, and I would hear them auditioning, and it was all kind of over the top. So, I purposely tried not to do that. I was just trying to be an honest, grounded person. Oh, and I originally said I didn’t want to go in! But my agents called me back and said, “Casting says just come in and do what you want to do.” So I went in and did just kind of a person that was disappointed in [Larry] and was not going to let him get away with whatever the story was.

What I remember was that on the set I said, “You saw a lot of really great people,” and he said, “Yeah, you were the only one that wasn’t really over the top and flamboyant. You brought a real person.” My big takeaway lesson from that job was: It doesn’t matter what the casting people say; you do the part the way you want to do it. If they don’t want the part the way you do it, they’ll get somebody else. But you’re the one that’s got to do it, so figure out how you want to play that part. So, that was a very valuable lesson for me in that show.

AVC: So, there’s no connection with you doing an episode of Seinfeld and then getting an episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm.

TB: No, there was no connection. I did do a Seinfeld, and that was really great, but I never met Larry David during that time. And I don’t know, he probably saw; he probably knew or was aware of who I was from that. But, no, that never came up. Maybe from his point of view he might say, “Oh, yeah, that’s why I hired him!” [Laughs] I just don’t know that.

Knocked Up (2007) / This Is 40 (2012)—“Dr. Pellagrino”

TB: Okay, so that was another part where I auditioned, but when I showed up on set, Judd Apatow said, “Feel free to improvise a little bit.” So, we improvised some. And it’s always fun to see your lines that you’ve improvised when it makes it into the actual movie. And then years later, when he was doing This Is 40, he just called me and said, “Hey, we want to bring your doctor back.” That’s how that happened. And it’s always, for me, a joy to work with Judd, because he’s very collaborative, he’s really easy to work with, and he’s very clear about how he wants this scene to play. So he comes out and says, “This is how I want this to be.” 

The Court (2002)—“Gregg Willis”

TB: Oh! That was with Sally Field. John Levey cast me on that. And what I remember about that is that it was the first time—and then I said, “I will never do this again”—where I was working with Sally Field, and I couldn’t get over the fact that it was Sally Field. [Laughs] It was just so overwhelming. And she was nice and she was easy to work with, very professional and just great. But in my head, I felt like, “What am I doing here?” 

I remember the first scene we shot together, she was pulling a baggage cart, and I meet her—I was her assistant back in wherever we were from—and I go up with a cup of coffee. She’s pulling her baggage cart up to the Supreme Court Building, and I take the bag away from her, and I hand her the cup of coffee. And I forget what the original line was, but I said that she looked more like a flight attendant. And then I hear, “Cut!” And the director said, “She’s not a flight attendant; she’s a Supreme Court Justice!” And I said, “Of course she is.” And she said, “I must’ve looked like a flight attendant when you said that!” And I said, “No, you looked like Sally Field.” [Laughs.] 

And then we did the scene again, and I said the line correctly, and I took her bag, gave her the coffee, and we walked up. And then at the very end of the scene, after our lines, the baggage cart thing got caught on the security guard’s shoe. So, I pulled it over his feet, and then I pulled it through the door, and all the boxes came off the cart. But I got the cart through the door. And Sally and the director were laughing so hard. And then after that, I was fine! But it was just that feeling of, “I’m an imposter,” you know? “I don’t belong here.” And then once they laughed at me, I knew I was going to be okay. 

Joey (2005)—“Leonard”

Web Therapy (2008-2014)—“Richard Pratt”

The Comeback (2014)—“Frank”

Episodes (2015)—“Another Executive”

Grace And Frankie (2015-2022)—“Peter”

TB: I really love Marta Kauffman, and I had a great experience on Grace And Frankie. It was a joy to work with Martin Sheen and Sam Waterston, you can imagine. I mean, the stories that I got from them and what I learned from them. And Lily [Tomlin] and Jane [Fonda] as well!  But I think the story I would choose to say about that was…I had been on Friends years ago, and I got fired after two or three days. And I was supposed to play a love interest for Lisa Kudrow. It was supposed to be an extended role, a recurring role. He came in and graded the restaurants, a health inspector, so he’d be, like, “You get an A!” and “You get a B!” or whatever. And then I got fired, and…let’s see, how do I do this shortly?

Years later, after talking all my friends’ ears off about how horrible it was to be fired off Friends, as you can imagine, I got hired to do a role with Jennifer Coolidge on Joey, which was a spin-off. The three executive producers of Friends were Marta Kauffman, David Crane, and Kevin Bright. And Kevin Bright produced Joey. When I was on that show, I thought the whole week, “Oh, I’m gonna be fired.” And after the show, he came up to my dressing room and said to me, “I’ve been such a fan of yours, and you were so great to do our show. You were wonderful. Thank you for doing it.” And I said, “Well, that means so much to me, coming from you, in light of our history.” And he was, like, “What history?” And I said, “Well, I’m talking about what happened on Friends.” And he said, “What happened on Friends?” And I said, “I was fired.” He said, “Who fired you?” I said, “You did!” And he said, “Why?” And I said, “You said that they were trying to fit a square peg into a round hole!” Then he said, “Well, we fired people all the time. What was the role?” And I told him, and he said, “I remember that role! It was supposed to recur, but it wasn’t written well, so we ended up cutting it and cutting it, and it ended up being a one-time co-star with just a few lines, and we never brought it back. And we tried three different actors in that role!” So, then I felt good about it.

And then the next one was David Crane. He created Episodes. So I went and did one of the episodes of that, and he kept looking at me, and I kept saying to myself, “No matter what, Tim, don’t bring up Friends. Just don’t tell him about it. It’ll come to him or it won’t.” Then he said, “I keep wondering where we met, and I can’t figure out where we met!” And I just looked at him. And he goes, “Maybe through Lisa Kudrow?” And I said, “Yes, I think it was probably through Lisa.” Because Lisa and I had been in the Groundlings together. So I left it alone, and I didn’t say anything.

And then when I went to do Grace And Frankie—and that was a straight offer; I didn’t have to audition—Marta came down on that first day, and she shook my hand, and she’s like, “I’ve been such a fan of yours over the years; it’s such a pleasure to meet you!” And I said, “The pleasure is all mine!” And I never brought up Friends or said anything about it. I just thought, “Things happen.” They don’t remember. None of them remembered firing me. It was not important to them. Even though my friends at some point literally banned me from talking about Friends anymore. [Laughs] They were like, “You’ve said too much; you can’t talk about it anymore.” So it was big to me, but it meant nothing to them. And I just…I don’t know, it was such a good lesson for me, in that I felt like, “You can’t hold onto these old things. You just have to move forward and know that change is imminent.”  

AVC: You ended up working with Lisa Kudrow, both on Web Therapy and The Comeback.

TB: Yeah, that’s right! As I said, Lisa and I were in the Groundlings together, so we were younger together and did a lot of those sketches together and everything, so we’ve been pals all these years. 

The Fluffer (2001)—“Alan Dieser”

TB: Oh! Okay, the late, great Richard Glatzer—he did Still Alice. And this was one of his films with Wash Westmoreland, his partner. They offered it to me, and I played a director for a porn company. A porn director. So they asked me if I’d ever been on a porn set before. [Laughs] And I said, “No.” So they sent me to a place called Vivid to see a porn scene being shot. They said, “We’re sending you there because it’s a really classy one.” And I remember going in before I went to do the scene. I went to the bathroom, and there were a couple of—let’s see, how do I say this?—like used tampons on the ground. I remember thinking, “Well, this isn’t very classy…” 

Anyway, how it informed me for my work was, they would say things like, “Hey, Bob, you did a nice job of shaving Johnny’s butthole. It looks really good.” It was all just really business-like and normal chatter…and shocking to me. And it was also where I learned during a scene….  It was a scene between a man and a woman, and the girl was on a trunk, and he was having sex with her, and it’s the first time I was aware of what queefing is. [Laughs] I was, like, “Do you take that all out in post or what?” And the director goes, “What?” And I said, “Well, she’s farting!” And he goes, “No, she’s queefing.” And I was, like, “Okay…what is that?” And he said, “Well, the air doesn’t have any place to go, so it comes out like that.” So that’s when I learned about queefing.

But anyway, the movie was actually, I thought, really good. I was a porn director, and Robert Walden was in there, and Taylor Negron. So they sent the three of us to that porn site together. So Robert Walden and Taylor Negron and I were there together, watching this scene being shot. And everybody was very serious about it. The other thing I remember is that I talked to the guy, the porn star, and I asked him why he was doing this. And he said, “I’ve got two boys, and all my porn money I put into college funds for them.” So, I hope that those boys ended up going to college!

Hacks (2024)—“Reggie”

The Perfect Couple (2024)—“Roger Pelton”

AVC: Recently you popped up in an episode of Hacks and also had a role in The Perfect Couple. 

TB: The thing about Hacks is that I loved doing it. When I read the script, it was so beautifully written, and I knew exactly how to play it. It wasn’t difficult. I auditioned for it, and I put myself on tape for that, and I was very, very happy. I remember going in there that day to shoot it, and I felt very grateful that I got to be the actor to say those words. Because I really believed everything that he was saying, and I love the show, and it was just really fun. 

And the other one, The Perfect Couple, was really interesting. The thing I loved about that was that we shot in Cape Cod for a couple of months. I was there, and I’ve always wanted to spend time in Cape Cod. I got to stay at this beautiful hotel called Chatham Bars Inn in Chatham, Massachusetts, and it was just a lovely time. And I had a good time working on that as well. We improvised a lot of the scenes in the station, when I was being interviewed, because the writers’ strike was going on, and the writer and showrunner couldn’t be on the set. The director was asking me to improvise. So, a lot of that stuff got on there, and that was fun. Visually, I thought it looked so incredible, everything from the wardrobe to the set to where they shot it. It was just visually beautiful—and, of course, magnificent to work with Nicole Kidman and Liev Schreiber and Dakota Fanning. I really liked her a lot. And Michael Beach! It was just a good time. 

Monk (2004-2009)—“Harold Krenshaw”

TB: I loved working with Tony Shalhoub on Monk. Tony Shalhoub made me feel like a million bucks. It was just a time when he made me feel like I was a really good actor. And he’s such a good actor, the way he connects with you on set and everything. We just had a good time. And that first episode, we improvised the stuff about the magazines. It just said, “They have a disagreement about the magazines.” So we improvised all that. And Tony would start laughing. [Laughs] And each time they would bring me back, there would be a scene where they would say, “You guys can just improvise here.” And my goal was always to make him laugh, because when he breaks—he’s such a good actor, and he’s so 100 percent in it—so when you can get him to break, it just feels like, “I’m taking him into the gutter with me.” [Laughs.]