Speaking with Jeff Hiller, the 47-year-old actor known best as Joel, the sweet and hilarious best friend of Sam, played by Bridget Everett, on HBO Max’s Somebody Somewhere, you hope you’ll get to laugh. But it is when Hiller brings up an uncomfortably intimate scene from the upcoming season — one that viewers will find hard to forget — that dissolving into giggles becomes inevitable. “It was disconcerting because you’re sitting on a real toilet in a real house, but everyone’s around you. It did feel a little like, ‘This is a private time; why are you all here?’” Hiller describes the bathroom, uh, incident. “Also, [you’re thinking,] ‘Don’t do it. It feels like you should do it, but don’t do it.’”
From embarrassment to elation, it’s the overall candor of Somebody Somewhere — a comedic drama about a 40-something woman who returns to her hometown of Manhattan, Kansas, and discovers not just a support system but also herself — that audiences have embraced wholeheartedly. Even if Hiller is surprised that the show has found an audience (“Honestly, I didn’t know if anybody would watch it because it is such a small show, and it is such a personal show,” he says), he understands why it resonates with those who have made the discovery. “I think it’s a show about not giving up on yourself, and I feel like so many of us have thought we don’t deserve dreams,” he says. “It’s a nice reminder that ‘Wait, we do.’”
The sentiment certainly applies to his character. When we last saw Joel, he had managed to articulate what he wants in life: kids, a house, a Vitamix, a Dyson, and marriage. But the pathway to his goals promptly dissolves when he and his partner, Michael (Jon Hudson Odom), break up soon after his proclamation. “When we go into season two, even though it’s a year later, I think he’s resolved in knowing what he wants, but not in how to get it, exactly,” says Hiller. “I think he’s also got lots of questions about faith, and his own moral fiber and code, and what’s right for him. He’s in a real growth area.”
Joel’s ruminations about faith rise to the surface again when choir practice emcee Fred Rococo (Murray Hill) returns to Manhattan, announcing his engagement and asking Joel to officiate the wedding. “First of all, isn’t that just so typical, that a wedding would trigger you? As simple as ‘Oh, no, I don’t have any good shoes’ to as complicated as ‘What is this heteronormative culture that we are a part of?’” says Hiller. “For Joel, it triggers this idea of a holy ceremony and his relationship with God — a spirituality that he has felt a little disconnected from and [is] being forced to reconnect to. I think it can be a healthy thing for him, but he maybe feels a little prickly while he is walking through it, as growth often is prickly.”
Much like the show’s approach to later-in-life friendships, the way Somebody Somewhere tackles the relationship between the church and the LGBTQ+ community is outside of the usual narrative. To Hiller, as relevant as storylines about queer people being ostracized by organized religion are, Joel’s own tentative relationship with God is equally realistic. “It’s so funny. We’re deviating from the norm of storytelling, and yet this is the most truthful character I’ve ever played in my 20-year career,” he says. “I think I’m like Joel in a way.”
Raised in San Antonio, Texas, Hiller majored in theology and theater at Texas Lutheran University in Seguin before realizing the stage was his calling. In his mid-20s, he moved to New York City, where he performed and taught improv with the Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre for more than 10 years, while occasionally landing guest roles on television series like Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, and Broad City. Hiller recognizes that, had he never left for New York, his path might have looked remarkably similar to his character’s. “I went to college with people who are like Joel,” he says. “I have a lot of friends that are pastors, who are queer or members of the LGBTQ community and active members of faith communities.”
In Somebody Somewhere, Joel’s struggles are not about exclusion from the church. In fact, viewers may remember that Hiller’s character is asked to become a lay pastor but declines out of guilt for hosting “choir practice” — LGBTQ-friendly parties inside the Presbyterian church — and maybe also for turning the baptismal font into a punch bowl. “I think that Joel feels a calling, maybe, to be the leader of a church or to shepherd a flock,” he says. “I think he’s a little scared of that feeling, and I think he’s also a little ashamed of abusing his place in that church.”
His reentry into the Christian community comes through a new friend and possible love interest for Joel. Tim Bagley joins the cast in season two as Brad, an eighth-grade social studies teacher with whom a sweet flirtation develops. Again, contrary to conventional narratives, the tension on the show is not in the push and pull of will-they-won’t-they, instead focusing on the rupture that a potential romance threatens to cause between two best — and very single — friends. “The thing is that Joel is not afraid to be vulnerable as far as putting himself out there. I don’t know that Sam has that courage just yet,” says Hiller.
In a misguided effort to protect Sam, Joel attempts to hide the fact that he is seeing someone. “Sam is so afraid of outside people, and Joel had to work really hard to bring Sam to him. I think that he’s scared of anything that might jeopardize that relationship — and rightly so,” Hiller asserts. “Sam wouldn’t like the idea that he was dating. I understand why he did it.” The writers explore how the dynamics of a close friendship shift when the potential of romantic partnership enters the picture. “I can’t think of any saying that isn’t really offensive and misogynistic, but you’re supposed to put your friends before your lover,” says Hiller. “You can’t always do that. If you’re going to have a romantic partner, they do need to have a really big place in your life.”
If the friendship at the center of the show feels genuine, it’s not because Hiller and Everett are close in real life. “We weren’t friends before, and we aren’t friends now,” Hiller deadpans, before breaking into familiar laughter. The truth is that although the two were more aware of each other than close prior to the first season, living together during production of both seasons has cemented their real-life friendship. Hiller and Everett may not be Joel and Sam, but aspects of their off-screen personalities are all over these characters. “The writers, of which Bridget is one, are really good at taking things from our real life and peppering them over the characters so that it makes the characters feel so specific and authentic,” reveals Hiller.
Authenticity is a word that comes up repeatedly in discussing Somebody Somewhere — not only in terms of truthful story arcs, but also with dialogue that rings so true that dropping in can feel almost voyeuristic. “We do improvise, but it’s not taking the script and throwing it out. It’s taking the words of the script and changing them so that they sound really natural coming out of our mouth but still get across the same point,” Hiller says. “Sometimes I’m like, ‘I really love this joke, and I know exactly how to deliver it,’ and it’ll not make the final cut. It’s because it’s a sitcom-y moment. We want all the jokes to be jokes you would actually tell your friends. You say a joke, and you laugh at the joke, and you’ve got to comment on it, like, ‘Oh, my God, that’s crazy.’”
On a network known for its epic genre shows, a show about outsiders in Smalltown, USA, could have easily gone unnoticed. But those who have discovered Somebody Somewhere feel as passionately about this crew as others do about flying dragons. This thrills Hiller. “The thing about this show is that it’s real, which makes it so different from all the other shows,” he says. “Which is not to say I don’t love zombie shows or superheroes, but I think there is something nice about seeing stories you don’t see normally told that actually could happen in our world. It’s a nice little palate cleanser.”
Carita Rizzo is a Finnish-American writer whose entertainment reporting and writing can be found in InStyle, The Hollywood Reporter, New York Magazine, Variety, Playboy and more. Though no one told her she would be able to eat, travel and watch television for a living, she has built a career around her all-time favorite activities. Keep up with Carita on Twitter at @CaritaRizzo.
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