On screen couple Steve Agee (l) and Brian Posehn (r).
While some shows have their gay characters looking perfectly coiffed and appear as if they just stepped out of a fitness magazine, The Sarah Silverman Program took a more realistic path when casting Sarah’s neighbors, gay couple Brian Spukowski (Brian Posehn) and Steve Myron (Steve Agee). While Silverman’s adventures often take the main storyline of the episodes, Steve and Brian’s stories have taken on gay marriage as well as an upcoming storyline that goes against the grain of the show and is not played for laughs. I recently did a three-way with Posehn and Agee (a three-way call, that is) to talk about being gay for each other, their less-than-traditional gay fans and what happens when they’re seen out in public together.
Jim Halterman: How did you both first fall into the world of comedy?
Brian Posehn: I didn’t want to do stand-up as a kid but I did love watching sitcoms and I always loved the characters that didn’t carry the show. They weren’t Dick Van Dyke but it was the guy who would come in for one scene, be funny and walk out. I always loved those characters and I remember learning what a character actor was and thinking “I want to be the funny person who comes in, says something stupid and then gets to leave.” And that’s essentially what I get to do on Sarah’s show.
JH: Kind of like Larry (Richard Kline) on Three’s Company?
BP: I love Larry!
Steve Agee: He was always the funniest! For me, I always loved comedy and when I was in sixth grade and all my friends were buying their first music albums, I was buying comedy. My first album was George Carlin’s Occupation: Foole. I was always into comedy. My parents were doctors so I didn’t know that that was actually a career choice. I felt pressure to go into business or law and I was playing in a band in college and that’s actually what brought me to LA. After a year that fell apart and I started dating a girl who was taking classes at The Groundlings and I went to a show and thought ‘Oh, shit, man, people actually do this stuff!’ I started taking classes at Groundlings and was there for four or five years.
The cast of THE SARAH SILVERMAN PROGRAM
JH: Did you two hook up with Sarah through the whole comic world?
BP: That’s how I met Sarah, out in New York. I was already doing stand-up for a few years and a couple of my friends knew her. She was super young and doing stand-up around town and my friends were like, ‘This girl is already funny. She already knows who she is.’ We kind of hit it off and have been friends ever since.
SA: I met Sarah…I did a play that a friend of hers wrote and he was just in a recent episode. He played the guy who she beheads with the paint can. I met Sarah through that guy.
JH: Talking to different stand-ups, it always seems to be a really close-knit group and family. Is that true?
BP: Yeah, I’m still friends with the people I started with. Most of my closest friends I’ve known for 20 yrs and they’re all stand-ups that you know – Patton Oswalt, David Cross…most of us have stayed close over the years.
SA: I didn’t know Brian super well but everyone in the cast basically knew each other before the show was written or conceived.
BP: You and I met playing video games over at Sarah’s. I thought I was Sarah’s big goofy stoner friend and then one day I met Steve and thought ‘Wait a minute! There’s another guy?!’ I just realized [click to continue…]
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