Free Maybe We'll Have You Back: The Life of a Perennial TV Guest Star by Fred Stoller, Ray Romano Page B

for lunch.”
    “Why don’t you want to eat here with us? Are you too good for us?”
    “I’m allowed to eat lunch with you here?”
    “Of course! What are you talking about?”
    “Well, I just did this show called Lenny and during the week, only regular cast members got free lunches. Guests had to go out.”
    That was true. During the week, production assistants came by and took the lunch orders for just the regulars, who would leisurely select a choice meal, while I stood by trying to not glance at the tasty treasures on the menu that were forbidden to me.
    She put her arm around me and guided me to the lunch line. “Honey, this ain’t no Lenny ! This ain’t no Lenny here.”
    Her invitation started a tradition with my friend Joel in Brooklyn that would not go away. Joel has been my best friend since we were seventeen. We bonded instantly in the neighborhood when we realized we both were overwhelmed underachievers from dysfunctional families who still wanted something better than what we saw around us. I call Joel “The Fugitive” because, like the TV character, he’s a bright guy who goes from terrible job to terrible job where his coworkers can never understand why he’s working there. He’s been bald since age twenty-three, wears big round glasses, and surprisingly is only twenty pounds overweight for someone that probably spends 86 percent of his waking life thinking about and craving food.
    Some shows serve the guests free lunches during the week and some don’t. But all shows serve a free meal on tape night at least. So from there on in, whatever show I was on, Joel had to know what free food I got. It was like I was eating vicariously for him. He cared about that much more than my tales of showbiz.
    After a while, Joel’s wife grew a little resentful of me. During dinner, he’d be on the phone moaning in ecstasy, hearing my description of his favorite baby back ribs, while she was serving him frozen fish sticks. Years later, if I ever mentioned a show I’d been on, he’d joyfully reminisce about the scrumptious meal they had offered, as if it were he who had eaten it.
    “Joel, can you believe the enormous contracts the guys from Friends got?”
    “ Friends : Salmon baked well with hard crunchy edges and Oreo ice-cream cookies melted with hot fudge for dessert!”
    I ran into trouble on Amen on the night of taping, not because of my acting but because of my physique. The makeup guy had a tantrum because my arm was too thin for him to put on a fake tattoo. Frustrated, he tried different ones, but most were too large, so he cursed and kicked a chair. He then claimed he wasn’t mad at me, just at the assholes that cast me.
    But the taping went well. From what I’ve seen, when a stand-up comedian does his material in the context of a show, it always looks rather fake, like a show within a show. I felt that way about my part, but the crowd ate it up. When I ordered my big brother, Cashmere, to cause major bodily harm to the heroes of Amen , the Deacon stood up to Cashmere and punched him in the stomach as the crowd went wild. Then Jester Hairston, who played Rolly, the wise ninety-year-old church board member, raised his fist to me, and I ran out screaming for dear life.
    The cast and producers thanked me for my week on the show and a producer suggested to Don Gibb and me that it would be “a kick to get the two of you back.” I knew that would be a stretch but I didn’t even have time to imagine ways that my biker brother and I could return, because shortly after our appearance, Amen, having made its requisite number of episodes for syndication, meandered into the TV graveyard. I was back on the audition circuit.

10
    MURPHY BROWN
    I n 1991, I hadn’t actually seen an episode of Murphy Brown, but I knew it was a critically acclaimed top-rated show. And from the overheard discussions of the competing actors in the crowded casting session I was on, I learned it was one of a few shows that was not