“I do know it’s a cliche to say I wasn’t anticipating it, however I used to be not anticipating it,” says Jeff Hiller of his shock Emmy nomination for his supporting position within the HBO comedy “Anyone Someplace.”
One may forgive Hiller’s low expectations. Starring Bridget Everett as Sam, a single, middle-aged lady navigating small-town life in Kansas alongside her greatest pal, Joel (Hiller), the vital darling was named one of many AFI’s greatest TV exhibits of the yr in 2023 and received a Peabody in 2024, but didn’t earn consideration from the Tv Academy. And in a crowded subject of comedian rivals — Emmy winners “Abbott Elementary,” “The Bear” and “Hacks,” plus the celeb-stuffed “Solely Murders within the Constructing” and “The Studio” — it appeared unlikely for the small-town dramedy to interrupt via in its last yr. “Nobody had mentioned, ‘I guess it’s gonna occur,’” says Hiller.
Which is why Hiller wasn’t tuned into the Emmy noms announcement final month, and even ignored the decision from his supervisor that morning. “I used to be on the telephone with my sister, and I used to be like, ‘They’ll name again.’” says Hiller. When that dialog was interrupted by one other name, this time from his agent, Hiller assumed that he was in hassle. “I [was about to] shoot a film, and I believed, ‘Oh, crap. Am I alleged to be in Boston proper now?’” As for a way he clinched the nom, Hiller’s greatest guess is the well timed publication of his comedian memoir, “Actress of a Sure Age: My Twenty-12 months Path to In a single day Success,” which hit bookstores simply two days earlier than Emmy voting opened in June.
Amongst his cohort of Emmy-nominated performers, the remainder of Hiller’s day could have been essentially the most humble of all of them: “I hung up with my agent, went to the airport to go to Boston and spent the evening alone in a Residence Inn.”
Hiller, proper, with Tim Bagley in “Anyone Someplace.”
(Sandy Morris / HBO)
However there’s one thing completely thematic a couple of no-frills Emmy nom celebration, notably for the actor enjoying “Anyone Someplace’s” candy and lovable sidekick Joel. An area of Manhattan, Kan. — the place Everett’s Sam returns following the demise of her sister and, over time, builds a selected household of misfits and weirdos — Joel is the very best pal everybody would need, somebody who’s supportive to a fault and infrequently pushes Sam to seek out pleasure within the on a regular basis.
Simply because the present introduces Joel and Sam within the pilot, Hiller was a fan of Everett’s earlier than they started their collaboration. Each actors moved to New York and established their very own chosen households round efficiency: Everett within the downtown cabaret scene, centered on Joe’s Pub on the Public Theater; Hiller at Upright Residents Brigade, the place he taught and carried out improv. Whereas Everett made a reputation for herself together with her bawdy exhibits mixing rock ballads and blue humor, Hiller appeared on and off-Broadway and steadily received bit elements in movie and TV, typically enjoying homosexual waiters, assistants and salesmen. Their worlds in New York naturally overlapped, and it was Everett who reached out to Hiller about an audition for Joel’s character in 2019.
Jeff Hiller. (The Tyler Twins / For The Occasions)
In comparison with the smaller roles that populate Hiller’s IMDb web page, Joel — one of many extra nuanced queer characters on tv lately — is extra finespun. Having grown up in a Lutheran household in San Antonio, Hiller acknowledged a number of himself in a 40-something homosexual man who attends church, even when a queer Christian could seem unfamiliar to metropolitan viewers on both coast. “I do know folks in Texas who’re homosexual and who go to church each week, and that’s the place they discovered their group — that’s the place that’s good to them,” he says. “I do know this man so nicely. I might have been this man if I hadn’t moved to New York.”
Hiller commends collection creators Hannah Bos and Paul Thureen (who, alongside Everett, earned an Emmy nomination this yr as writers of the collection finale) for Joel’s complexity and for constructing a world wherein its marginalized characters aren’t continuously burdened by what makes them totally different. “I’m positive there are small-minded folks in Manhattan, however our present simply wasn’t centered on that half,” he says. “That takes a number of work within the storytelling for a mainstream viewers. I sort of [worried] we’d by no means get picked up.”
However Joel is far more than “a homosexual man who goes to church,” as evident in his Season 3 arc, which sees him settling right into a relationship with the equally candy, if extra introverted, Brad (performed by Tim Bagley). Getting into his first actual relationship at center age is bittersweet for Joel, who at all times imagined attaining the standard milestones — together with having youngsters. “He’s grateful for the life he’s had, however he’s additionally mourning the issues he dreamed of getting that he can not have,” explains Hiller. “I discovered that to be true to me in my life. It’s scarier to painting issues which can be so bare and actual, apparent and truthful.”
Joel additionally has a cathartic reunion with a childhood bully, spun from conversations wherein Bos and Thureen requested Hiller what he would need to hear from his personal previous tormentors. “That’s for me and my therapist to debate,” he jokes. Whereas he’s nonetheless processing his Emmy nom and planning for the HBO after-party (“Do they allow you to in even in case you don’t win?”), he treasures the expertise of creating “Anyone Someplace” as its personal reward. “If I may play a job like that for six weeks every year, for the remainder of my life? I’d be greater than fulfilled.”
