The fictional writer's room of 30 Rock is a dormitory of misfits, droll freaks, and the occasionally sane scribe. Comedian Scott Adsit's character Pete Hornberger manages to be all three: a neurotic, convulsing everyman who can still put Jenna Maroney (Jane Krakowski) in her place or spring Kenneth (Jack McBrayer) from a fight in the basement. For Adsit, a veteran of Chicago's Second City improv troupe, the show has become its own kind of beast, wavering between Laugh In-style absurdity and stark reality. Movieline spoke with the 44-year-old actor about Pete Hornberger's journey on 30 Rock, Second City nostalgia, and performing with a very nervous comic legend.
Your character Pete's had a subtle arc on 30 Rock. He's less insane than he used to be.
I think we get little windows into him. He's like an advent calendar. Every once in awhile you get to open it up and see something bizarre in his psyche. You get little windows. Not necessary big stories, but it makes him a little more intriguing that you have to build the story in your own mind.
What would be the big Christmas Eve reveal on the advent calendar of Pete Hornberger?
He kills everyone at NBC. Or, the bones of his children.
30 Rock itself has evolved -- it's gotten sillier and smarter in many ways. How did you first perceive the show when you first read the script, and how does that differ from the show now?
My first impression upon reading it is that it would be like a Larry Sanders Show, where it was kind of real-ish but not hyper-real, more stepping towards three dimensions than we're used to seeing on TV. What eventually happened was it turned into a new kind of animal that somehow walked up both sides of that river, that's pretty real in some of its devotions, and then on the other side it's ridiculous, sketch-level comedy that somehow still rings true. And it's like really smart-silly, a really great form of comedy that I think Monty Python does, where it's just intelligent and as silly as you can be. The great thing is, I think the writers are all devastatingly intelligent, and they assume that the audience is just as smart as they are too. They're never writing "down," they're always writing "to" exactly what they would laugh at, and respecting the audience as being as smart them. [They're] writing "up" to them.
Pete's relationship with Jack Donaghy (Alec Baldwin) is one of the subtler treats of the show. Perhaps there's a latent understanding between them, even though Pete can be afraid of Jack.
It's funny, because it's been a slow process for Pete. He's no longer afraid of Jack, and I don't know if we've even touched on that yet. Alec and I have always maintained that Pete should be the one guy who might even be ahead of Alec. Not in business or anything like that, but maybe he's not afraid of Jack at all and is ready to make fun of Jack in a sly way. We keep fighting for it, because that's what we want the relationship to be -- that Jack takes Pete a little more seriously. And he can be a little afraid of Pete, for whatever reason. Alec really wants to push that. But playing with Alec is really easy, because he finds the tone of the scene immediately. You can just follow his lead.
30 Rock's been picked up for a fifth season. Where's the show going to go next? They've covered good ground so far.
It's going to be all Pete, all Pete the time.
Ha!
The unexplored territory! I don't know. The writers are off in their own cloistered world that never sees the light of day. I just hope that I'm in their thoughts. As far as the show goes, I think it's going to get funnier. After season three, I was thinking the same thing you just said. But then season four, I think, was the funniest one so far.
Furthermore, where did the name "Pete Hornberger" come from? It sounds like a writer sat on that name for 25 years and waited for the perfect character to give it to.
[Laughs.] I don't know! That was handed to me. There was a line in a script we shot, and I don't think it made the final cut. But at some point Kenneth points out that I'm Jewish, makes this big deal about being Jewish, and then I say, "You know, I'm not Jewish." He looks at me slyly, shakes his head, and walks away. He assumes that Hornberger must be a Jewish name, and I'm not even Jewish. But Hornberger? I don't know. It sounds really dirty. It could've been someone that [30 Rock producer] Robert Carlock went to school with.
You're an improv veteran, so I'm sure you've seen plenty of insane characters in real life -- does the show pick up on that showbiz insanity realistically?
Everybody gets their insane moments of course, but when you talk about life choice and Tracy and Jenna, they're more crazy because they're a victim of their choices. You know what you're going to get from them, but then they'll trick you and show some heart and intelligence that you don't expect.
Have you ever performed with a seriously insane comedian?
I see my share of loons. I just performed with someone who had a meltdown on stage. He needed focus, and he was "stealing it," and just being crazy and selfish and childish and having a great time doing it, to the detriment of everybody else. So there are certain people out there. I personally have not had a lot of experience with people who are certifiably insane. I've been lucky. I've gotten very, very lucky. Maybe the people who hire me just turn out to be very intelligent and thoughtful people, but Tina, of course, has worked with the full spectrum of people. She had people coming in and out of SNL for -- whatever that was -- 10 years, where you get the most lovely people and then just crazy, nutjob, insane people to host the show or to be regulars on the show. So from personal experience, I don't have much experience with clinically insane people, but I read the SNL book a few years ago about invisible robots on your shoulder and stuff like that, and I'm sure that kind of behavior is what Tina and the writers use.
Yikes, that improv experience with the selfish performer sounds terrible.
I shouldn't say names, but it was somebody falling into a focus war. This person wanted all the attention, and all the other people lost their moments, didn't get their laughs because one person was stepping on everyone else. It was just insane behavior. It would make sense to an actor, not sure it would make sense to someone who wouldn't be up there. But it was crazy.
You're a Chicago native and vet of Second City. That's like the most ideal way an improvisational actor can begin a career.
I've been doing improv since high school, and I've been getting paid for it since I was 20.
Can you define a nightmare improv scenario and a perfect one?
A nightmare would be when somebody is trying to be funnier than everyone else. And you've got a group scene or two-person scene, and one person decides, "I'm the funny in this," and bulldozes everyone else, and they make sure they're the reason everyone loves the scene. Then what happens is the audience doesn't end up liking the scene because there's no balance to it. A great improv scene is when the only thing you're doing is trying to make your partner or partners look good, and kind of supporting them. This is kind of a boring answer, but the better they look, the better you look. The best scenario is, you're just feeding them what they need to be funny and they're doing the same to you. It's a support-fest.
Do you have a favorite person to perform with?
Wow, that's tough. I've been with really great people. There's a guy who you may not know named David Pasquesi -- he was in Angels and Demons with Tom Hanks. He was my hero at Second City coming up, he was just a few years ahead of me. I would point at him and say, "That's what I want to be." Eventually we somehow hooked up at a festival or something, and we ended up doing a run called Adsit-Pasquesi for awhile. Anytime we're in the same town, we still do it. David just has a focus and a commitment and he's just a fantastic actor. So that was thrilling. I got to do a scene with Pe
ter Boyle once. That was interesting because he was more nervous than I was, because it had been awhile. I ended up supporting him because he was panicky. It eventually worked out, but it was kind of thrilling to be nursing a great actor into the part he was playing.
Wow, Peter Boyle. What's it like meeting and working with legends?
It's really strange. I've been doing shows around town here and ending up performing with people like Martin Short and Andrea Martin, people I've admired -- forgive me -- since I was a kid. What I found out is they're just part of the fraternity. They've had similar experiences, and they've gone much higher and farther than I have, but the things I ended up experiencing are essentially the things they had experienced by the time I was a fan of theirs. That's a complicated phrase. And I guess I realized they were people -- it's a cliche -- I just realized they were so nervous, so excited to perform. That was really encouraging. I have hopefully a long career ahead of me, and I would hate to say to myself, "Oh. Another show." I don't look forward to that. They're not that way, so that's really exciting.
Do you miss Second City at all? Seems like there's a halo of nostalgia around it for most who worked there.
I do miss it. I felt like I was in my niche there. That was really exciting to go into work every day because I was saying whatever I wanted, performing my own ideas, helping people with theirs, and building something together every night in front of 300 people. It was different every night. So there were these amazing things we created that were like paintings or etchings in the sand, because they're just gone. We made these sometimes pristine scenes that could -- if someone was there to record it, or we'd written them down -- they could live forever. But they're gone, and that's really exciting. I miss creating in that way. I still improvise, but there's something about having that audience and that reputation -- the audience walks in trusting you. The hardest part about improv is getting the audience to relax and enjoy themselves because most improv is not very good, and the audience is nervous for the performers the whole time. Not that they don't even like the show, but they feel bad for the performers. [Laughs.] And they don't enjoy the show. So it was nice to go into Second City where people expect a good show, and they get one. Generally, they were the best improvisers in the world. I miss that relationship with that particular audience.
Your work in animation (Moral Orel, the upcoming Mary Shelley's Frankenhole) is awesome. What's it like producing and voice-acting in that format?
I grew up with animation, and it was a huge part of my life coming up. So that's thrilling because I get to see how it works and also watch some amazing artists take what I scribble and make it into something artful. And then the greatest thing is getting to work with my friend Dino Stamatopolous who is the creator of these shows. He did Moral Orel and Frankenhole. We're partners and he is a great friend of mine -- we are nothing alike. We get along really well. That's the best part. It's a much smaller world, because Adult Swim is such an off-in-the-corner network. They're very lenient with us, so pretty much anything we like they'll let us do -- and if we can afford to build it, because all our animation is three-dimensional and stop-motion. It's great to be in charge of something like that. I'm a producer there, and I write and direct and do voices, so it's great to be kind of like a mom-and-pop television show, which is what that feels like.
Finally: 30 Rock ranks in the pantheon of best shows ever. What are your favorite TV shows of all time?
Well, Dick Van Dyke Show. And Monty Python. And I'll say Larry Sanders. [Long Pause.] And Six Feet Under. I think they're are all fine examples of how good TV can be.