John Ross Bowie is known for everything from “The Big Bang Theory,” where he played Sheldon’s nemesis Barry Kripke, to the harried dad on “Speechless,” to numerous guest roles on “The Neighborhood” and “Veep” and “Grace and Frankie” and “The Rookie.” He’s also the author of a new memoir titled “No Job for a Man,” a phrase his father often used when talking about the acting profession.
“I think he deep down harbored a wish to go into a more creative field,” said Bowie. “He spent most of life working in the paper industry, very similar to what Michael Scott (on ‘The Office’) did, and he didn’t enjoy the job at all. And at one point, he said he would rather get a laugh than a sale.”
Bowie had the same creative aspirations — and fears — as his father, which is why he spent most of his 20s trying other things. He taught at his old high school. Then he had a series of corporate jobs. Then: “A friend of mine had been riding me to try improv classes. It was the strangest nothing-left-to-lose moment: I’m incredibly depressed, let’s go into comedy.” He’s been a working actor since 1999.
As with all careers, Bowie’s has had its low points as well, including his audition for “The Daily Show.”
My worst moment …
“This was in 2005 or so. I am working in L.A. and I’m married and we are building a life and we’re talking about kids and buying a house. Both my wife (fellow actor Jamie Denbo) and I had nice little careers eking out a combination of guest roles and writing. These are nice, eclectic L.A. careers. Nobody’s getting famous or fabulously rich, but we’re making a living.
“My dad was an interesting cat because he was a conservative but he loved ‘The Daily Show.’ He watched it all the time and he would tell me how much he enjoyed the work my friends were doing on ‘The Daily Show.’ Most of the time, I would be like, ‘Oh, that’s great — I’ll pass that along.’ But he caught me on the wrong night and he said, ‘You gotta tell Rob Corddry how much I loved this piece he did on the show.’ And I snapped and said: ‘You know what? Rob has his own dad who can tell him that.’
“Rob and I had known each other for 10 years by this point. Dear, dear friend. Best man at my wedding. But my dad just wouldn’t let it go how much Rob was crushing it on ‘The Daily Show.’ So I snapped at him and he hung up on me. We cleared the air a few days later.
“And then literally the next week I got an audition for ‘The Daily Show.’
“And I got into this head space of: This could be huge. I would be on a show my dad watches and would inherently approve of. At the same time, it means moving back to New York City, working in the neighborhood where I grew up. It means either becoming bicoastal or completely upending my life. Bicoastal is expensive and this is a basic cable salary. You’re not making ‘Friends’ money if you’re working on ‘The Daily Show.’
“But at the same time, this is right after Steve Carell has become a straight-up movie star. This is a launchpad for careers, no question.
“So I have a lot of conflicting thoughts about this gig.
“I went to the audition at the Comedy Central offices in L.A. and it goes well enough that they’re going to fly me to New York to audition in the studio in front of Jon Stewart. Very exciting. Huge validation.
“So I go to New York. It’s August, so it’s a million degrees. I have to check out of my hotel at noon, but the test isn’t until 3 o’clock, so I have three hours to kill. In a suit. In the blazing New York weather. So I go to a Whole Foods and I sit there. I can’t eat, I’m a little too nervous to eat, but keep ordering iced coffees, so I’m nice and jittery.
“Finally, I step out of the Whole Foods, five blocks from the studio. You can’t take a subway, there’s no subway that goes there. But I can’t justify taking a cab over there. So I walk. And by the time I get there, I’m not great. I’m sweaty. But I hang out in the nice, cool green room and I get my bearings and I go over the stuff in my head. I’m going to do one remote piece, and then I’m going to do a desk piece, where you’re sitting next to the host where it’s sort of a scripted interview.
“We line up in the hallway. Stephen Colbert walks by. People pay their respects, kiss the ring, he’s very gracious and wishes us luck. One by one, the other guys go in. Then it’s finally my turn. Jon Stewart is in a T-shirt and jeans because it’s not his audition, he’s already got the gig. He shakes my hand and gives me a couple general pointers about the tone they’re looking for.
“So I do the bit. I get laughs and I feel like I land everything the way I want to land it. I feel a sense of accomplishment. And Jon Stewart says: ‘OK, I want you to do it again — only faster.’ And I immediately say, ‘OK!’ because I’m an actor who is eager to please.
“Then I start hearing laughter and I realize there are people on the bleachers who are probably writers and producers. And then I realize that Jon’s probably making fun of me for talking too fast. I’m a New Yorker and we speak very quickly and I’m nervous and I’m sort of ambivalent about this job anyway. It would impress my father and possibly launch me into a different stratosphere. But at the same time, why do I want to impress my father so much? And is it worth it to move back to New York? I got a lot of stuff going on in my head! And on top of that, someone I really admire has, for all intents and purposes, has just mocked me.
“I get it, ha-ha. I can slow down.
“So I do it again and I slow down. But I also start flop sweating. In the film ‘Broadcast News’ there is a moment where Albert Brooks’ character is given the opportunity to anchor the evening news and he starts to flop sweat. And now I’m sitting there sweating and this is what I’m thinking: ‘Oh god, it’s like that scene in “Broadcast News.” Oh god, that scene in “Broadcast News” is a death knell for that character. This is awful. Why can’t I stop sweating? Do I have any mind-over-matter power at all? Oh my god, I am sweating so much.’
“I finished the piece and turn toward the exit and a stagehand says, ‘No, you still have the desk piece.’ And I go, ‘Oh, that’s right. Is it possible for you to kill me instead?’ (Laughs)
“I go up to the desk and it goes worse. I can feel the sweat on my nose and at one point I have to wipe a drop of sweat off the end of my nose. Even if you’re doing a parody of the news, that’s not a good look.
“When it’s done, I thank Jon and offer him my sweaty palm (laughs) and then I go back to the green room, where they’ve asked us to wait. Rob Corddry sticks his head in: ‘How’d it go?’ And I said, ‘Honestly, I kind of (crapped) the bed.’ And he goes, ‘Really?’ And I said, ‘Yeah, I got flop-sweaty.’ And he goes, ‘Oh. “Broadcast News”?’ And I go, ‘Yeah. “Broadcast News.’” And then he says: ‘It wasn’t so bad.”
“And my heart sinks because I think: Oh no, Rob was sitting in the bleachers watching me. This compounds my embarrassment. One does not want to embarrass themselves in front of an old friend — especially not an old friend who already has the job for which one is auditioning.
So I said, ‘Were you in the bleachers?’ And he said, ‘No, no, no, no. They broadcast the auditions on a feed throughout the building.’ Somehow this is worse. Everyone in the building saw it: Support staff, whatever NYU intern was there that day, they all could see this.
“After that, I get in a cab and go to the airport. Even though I was blocks from where my mom lived and maybe a mile from where my dad lived, I never told either of them that I came that close to getting ‘The Daily Show.’ I just got in a cab, went to the airport, got on a plane and drank until they stopped serving me (laughs).
“And also: I stopped watching the show until Trevor Noah took over (laughs). Because once you’ve auditioned in that studio and it’s gone poorly? That’s a tough show to watch and not feel the immediate cringe and the flashback of like, oh yeah, that’s where I was standing when I melted.”
Why didn’t Bowie tell his dad about the audition?
“(Pause) This was the man that got me interested in TV and film and theater. He introduced me to so much great comedy. And I think he would have been disappointed on a number of fronts had I told him how close I came to that gig.
“I just feel like it would have validated his concern about this as a career and I also think he would have been bummed that his son couldn’t make the cut on that show. But I also didn’t want to give him the satisfaction that: You’re right, this business is hard and I blew this opportunity.
“I had a million emotions coming out of that audition. I gave it way too much weight.
“They obviously do very good work at ‘The Daily Show’ and I still admire Jon Stewart immensely, which is why it stung so much when he made fun of me for talking too quickly (laughs) — I’m not dragging him for making fun of one nervous actor, that’s not what’s happening here. It just wasn’t meant to be.”
The takeaway …
“You can’t stake your entire career and raison d’etre on what is going to be about four minutes in a studio on 11th Avenue. You just can’t give anything that much weight. It’s not healthy. You need to go in there, do the best you possibly can and then just let it go. You can’t let a single audition or a single job interview frame the rest of your life.
“When I got back to L.A., the next thing I booked would have probably been one of those perfectly respectable TV jobs where I come in and, for about 15 minutes of the hour, they think I might be the killer and then they realize I’m way too much of an idiot to be the killer. Or I played the goofy guy on a sitcom who the hero has to fire but doesn’t want to fire because he feels bad for me.
“It was a few years before I booked ‘The Big Bang Theory.’ But in that time I had a little girl and we watched her blossom. There were a lot of very solid, respectable, placeholder gigs that came between me tanking ‘The Daily Show’ and me going on to do ‘Big Bang Theory.’
“You know, there are people who do ‘The Daily Show’ and they are not able to parlay it into other kinds of work. Or they just move back to L.A. and continue the grind elsewhere. And there are people who use it to become stand-up stars. There are just no guarantees. There’s no magic bullet. It’s not like the end of ‘The Muppet Movie’ where Orson Welles hands you the standard rich and famous contract.
“There is no one single path for success, and we forget that at our peril.”
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