I didn't intend to follow today's interviewee's TV career, but he just happened to play a substantial role in three shows that I watched and enjoyed over the last several years. First, he appeared in the underrated TBS comedy My Boys, about a sports writer and her guy friends in Chicago. Next, he played a near-saintly cancer doc in The Big C, which I reviewed for the AV Club. But I've had the most fun watching him play Dan Egan, the desperate, machiavellian director of communications to Julia Louis-Dreyfus' Selina Meyer in VEEP, which is my favorite comedy that's on right now and I know is also a favorite of many a politico. Sadly, the most recent season, which was awesome, has ended, but you still can catch it on on-demand. As Reid waits to start shooting the new season of the show, he'll be anticipating the release of some movie projects like The Veil with Jessica Alba, I'll See You in My Dreams, opposite Rhea Perelman and Blythe Danner, and Bad Boys Crazy Girls with Adam Pally and Sarah Burns. And this summer he'll be getting married, too!

In setting up your character during this season, the most poignant part has to be the breakdown that Dan has. How did you learn about that, and when did you discover you had to grow a beard and how long?
[Laughs] It's a bizarre little story actually. First of all, the way that we work is pretty unique. We get together months in advance and we rehearse a lot of the material that's coming up over the season. Armando Ianucci, our creator, in a great move on his part, lets us know what our characters have in store. He also asks, "What do you want to see your character do?" And he'll implement the stuff he liked best. So we had talked in the off season and I said I'd love to see Dan rise and fall. And he had the same thing in mind. He said "Look, at one point, we'll have you become campaign manger," and then we said, almost in unison, "Of course he has to get fired. I loved the idea--I didn't know how he was going to get me there, but I knew it was coming. And then we got together for some rehearsals here in LA, before we even said one word he looks at me and starts laughing. I said "What?" and he said, "Well, I was going to ask you later but I'll just ask you now: How do you feel about gaining 50 pounds?" I said, "I love it, I love it--for what?" "For Dan, because I think he's going to have a nervous breakdown and then come back and be 50 pounds overweight." I said, "Oh I love that idea, that's so great, OK." Then as we started getting into production in the coming weeks, it crossed my mind: When do you want me to gain the 50 pounds? He said, "Oh, we should have plenty of time. We'll do the breakdown episode in London, and then we'll have a solid three weeks for Christmas break." I just looked at him like, there is no way I can do that in three weeks. So then we hemmed and hawed about it, and went so far as to get me fitted for a fat suit. And then in the end I was like, how about I just go with a crazy, scraggly beard? So the beard took... eh, three and a half weeks, four weeks. I'd been sort of prepping for the breakdown, I knew that was coming for a while, and that was sort of a challenge--to spread little seeds from the beginning of episode one; episode two, when they get on the boat, you start to see the crack in the facade of Dan. Little bits here and there. Then the desperation comes in over episodes three and four--you learn the fact that he killed a dog.  By the time we got to the London episode, not only were we exhausted from this crazy shoot schedule we planned, plus shooting in London, but they worked Dan to a fever pitch--it was rather easy to go there.

I know you guys do a little bit of light improve towards the end it sounds like--is that correct?
I think it's more than lightly improvised. We're certainly working off of a script. But again, our process is such that, they'll write scripts and then we get together as a cast and we literally improvise the whole script--to see what works and what doesn't. And then they'll sort of rewrite the scripts, incorporating the improv we've done. So by the time we're actually shooting it, we shoot pretty much from the page. But one of the special things about the show is the cast really has a large hand in terms of shaping where it goes, and that is done through improvisation.

The language on the show is so amazing. Was it hard to master the language on it, or was it ever uncomfortable to do onscreen, toward your fellow actors, or even have your parents watch it? 
My family is fairly liberal linguistically. So this was nothing really shocking to them. It wasn't too difficult because the things we tried to capture--our profanity gets pretty creative--to have these people speak the way they do in high pressure situations and make it sound really natural. Obviously we have our funny sort of alliterative quips here and there. It was fairly easy to slip into that because it felt so right in the moment. We did a lot of research, and when you see the pressure cooker the people working in this world exist in, it's like the military, like the expression "Swears like a sailor." It's rapid fire. At first though, I remember the first week or so of work they had some really creative epithets that we were slinging back and forth. Then they would yell "cut," and you'd see everyone in the cast apologize, say, "You're not really a snaggle-toothed hairless ape." They really encouraged us to be kind of mean, and that was a little uncomfortable. But we learned in those first weeks how wonderful all the actors are and how great they are as people and we knew this is just a game, it's just for fun, so everyone got very thick skin. 


Have you ever had any fans ask you to curse them out?
Oh yeah some guy on Twitter last week was begging me to insult him as Dan and I thought, "Is this some weird fetish? I feel bad taking part in this." But I said, "OK, how about this, get bent, thimble-dick," or something like that. He was so happy! I thought that's the weirdest thing I've ever done to make someone's day.

Is there anyone in the cast you have a particularly hard time doing scenes with because they make you laugh?
Oh man, we're always breaking in every scene. No one's been immune. This season Dan and Jonah have so much great stuff together--I've become close with everyone, but Tim and I have this great odd couple thing going on. We laugh a lot and we've had a blast doing it. Matt Walsh to me is such a comedic genius. While he's always doing something slappy and hammy, he's also incredibly subtle. Sometimes the look on his face or the way he drops an iPad, it just kills me. I love watching that guy.

You posted on Twitter that gif of you shoving the burrito in Jonah's face, and he must be a little taller than you, so it's funny to see you beating up on him when he out-sizes you a little bit. But your guys' relationship is like a really bad version of Bert and Ernie.
That's funny. I think someone else made that correlation at one point too. It's hilarious. I feel like these two guys hate each other so much that if you took one away from each other, they'd miss the other. They spur each other on. It's like Batman and Bane, although I don't think either one is that cool. 


I've read that your family is involved in politics--what do they do?
My dad is involved in politics in some manner of speaking since I can remember in upstate New York in Saratoga County. My uncle's been involved likewise in Warren County. Mostly on the local level. During the 80s my dad worked in Albany, was close with the Cuomo administration. It's always been, not necessarily a family trade, but it's certainly always been talk around the dinner table. 


When do you guys start shooting again for the new season?
We haven't gotten a start time yet but it should be around Labor Day.

Do you know anything about what they're expecting for the next season either in terms of specifics, or like you said about sketching out what might happen for a character, ups and downs.
Nothing yet. Actually I think myself and the rest of the cast are sort of waiting with baited breath for Armando to poke his head up from vacation and see what he's got in store for us. That should be coming any day now.

What do you consider to be your first major break?
It actually came in the form of a pilot. I did a pilot in 2002 called With You In Spirit. It didn't get picked up to air, but was the brainchild of Steve Levitan of Modern Family fame. And it was a really far out there, really bizarre but really funny multi-cam comedy--a classic fish-out-of-water story about a young guy coming from the big market of Chicago to try and break into broadcast news who takes a job in the fictional town of Spirit, New Mexico. Essentially I was playing a young Steve Levitan because that was largely his story coming up. He really big-brothered me. He got me a shot. It was an amazing ride because he already had a lot of success with Just Shoot Me and other shows. He was a big deal even then. He taught me a lot. He literally taught me how to hit a mark. I was that green. I didn't know where to stand, I didn't know how to work with the cameras. I had only done little bits here and there, so this was the first time I was the lead in anything. He took a chance on me and it's still to this day one of the best experiences I've ever had. It got my foot in the door and work sort of came rolling in after that. I've stayed in contact with Steve over the years. He was a great mentor. 


What as an actor has been the easiest money you've made?
Oh man. Well, it's certainly not from the voiceover world--that's a lot of fun, but I don't think it's necessarily easy. There's always those weird gigs where you just show up and wave. Or, wear this and come to this restaurant opening or something like that. Those gigs, which are few and far between for me, I mean, that's just ridiculous. The fact that someone will fly me someplace and pay me a chunk of money just to eat dinner. In terms of actual acting work, I don't know--I don't think any of it has been easy. It's certainly fun, so like they say, if you love what you do, everything is easy, I guess. I don't think I'm in that echelon where I've got those easy gigs like walk through a movie for a million dollars.

I have a friend who is a commercial actress and she did a 15-second commercial for Kmart, but the work that went into it, as she described it, was unbelievable.
Oh yeah. I did a Diet Coke commercial years ago that literally consisted of me sitting in this movie theater taking a sip of Coke and then dancing in the aisles with this young lady. It took like three days and they spent like 13 million dollars on this thing and I was just like, OMG. It was intimating because all I had to do was sit there and blink, sip, dance. That's all I had to do.

How does it feel to be the 390th person interviewed for Zulkey.com?
It's amazing. It feels a little bit better than the 397th, but not quite as good as the 389th.