Marshaling Their Talents
Bad Broadway Review Puts Actor
‘In Plain Sight’ on TV Series
This Time He’s
the Boss
[expletive].’ I still have that in a drawer in New
York.”
profile
It’s no fun for an actor to be on the business end of a bad review, especially from The New
After graduation, Weller pursued acting and
quickly found work. He was a regular on the
early-’90s series Missing Persons, acted in television films and also in theater — until that bad
York Times. But sometimes, that works out.
Fred Weller ’ 88 was on Broadway in a
2005 revival of Edward Albee’s Seascape,
which had killed in previews. Then New York
New York Times review drove him back to televi-
sion. For In Plain Sight, he was up against
another UNC alumnus, Reed Diamond ’ 89. But
he’s hoping his auditioning days are done.
Times’ critic Ben Brantley described Weller’s
performance (for which he wore a lizard suit
onstage) as “too cartoonish for credibility.”
“I hope I won’t have to do it anymore,
because I hope this show lasts,” he says. “It
would be nice to be on a hit show for a few
years and be in a position to just field offers. My
co-star Mary hasn’t had to audition in years.
You won’t hear Nick Searcy ’ 82 complaining about getting old. Maturity got him an
important part on the new series Justified
(which Rolling Stone magazine calls “TV’s guiltiest pleasure”), playing a chief deputy marshal
in charge of star Timothy Olyphant (Deadwood,
Damages).
“All I can tell you is that the audience
seemed to find me very amusing until that
review,” Weller says. “All of a sudden, I appar-
ently became the most boring actor in Amer-
ica. It was like the audience started responding
more to the review than to what they saw. That
was indicative of the whole power dynamic
with New York theater, where one critic’s opin-
ion controlled everything. That motivated me to
go to pilot season for the first time in 10 years,
which wound up being a good thing.”
That’s what I’d like.”
“Yeah, I get to be the boss because I’m too
old to play the sidekick anymore,” Searcy says
with a satisfied laugh. “So I’m the head of the
marshal’s unit in Lexington, Ky., and the lead
character is one of my charges. He and I have a
good relationship because we were friends
before he came to work for me. So we under-
stand each other well. But yeah, there are some
confrontations.”
“Pilot season,” the grueling annual grind of
television auditions, paid off with Weller land-
ing a plum part on In Plain Sight, a USA Net-
work series about U.S. marshals working with
the Federal Witness Protection Program and
one of two current series featuring UNC alumni
playing marshals (see accompanying story).
Searcy was a star at UNC, too, fronting a
cover band called Nick Fear (“The most terrifying name in rock ’n’ roll,” he quips). He’s had a
long and varied acting career, including
memorable star turns in Fried Green Tomatoes,
Days of Thunder and Tom Hanks’ Cast Away.
Weller plays the aptly named Marshall Mann,
partner and best friend to fellow marshal Mary
Shannon (Mary McCormack, previously on The
Justified has been renewed for another season,
and he’s been waiting to see whether some
movie possibilities come through. He won’t
talk about those for fear of jinxing them. But
one thing he will talk about is Cold Storage, a
new straight-to-DVD movie about love beyond
the grave.
West Wing). In Plain Sight is in its third season,
and the big question is whether its leading
characters will ever give in to their obvious
attraction to each other.
“It seems like the escape from Gilligan’s
Island, doesn’t it?” Weller asks with a laugh.
“So far, the show has given a little satisfaction
on that every season, at least emotionally. My
character’s been having a flirtation with
another woman, and Mary seems jealous. She
always does when my guy has a romantic interest. But I think my character
wears his jealousy on his sleeve more
than she does. He had a hard time hiding his frustration when she got
engaged to someone else.”
COUR TES Y OF NBC UNIVERSAL
“It’s not a straight-up bloodthirsty movie,”
he says. “There’s a story to it. It just happens to
have some horrific elements. But it’s a love
story — a really gross love story. It completes
my Halloween triple feature with Deadly End!
and Timber Falls, which add up to a good six-hour Halloween triple feature. That was my
goal when I began acting, and I’ve achieved it. I
also hope to make at least one appearance on
WWE wrestling. That’s my other ambition.”
— David Menconi
Unlike Andy Griffith ’ 49
when he patrolled the
streets of Mayberry,
Carolina alumni portraying law enforcment on
television these days
are often armed as they
pursue the dangerous.
COUR TESY OF FX
Acting was mostly an extracurricular
activity for Weller at UNC, where he
majored in English and German. He also
was in Chi Psi fraternity with future
directors Scott Sanders ’ 91 and Peyton
Fred Weller ’ 88, above,
plays marshal Marshall
Mann on USA
Net work’s In Plain
Reed ’ 86. But Weller’s most momentous collegiate experience was a year in
Sight, helping protect
federal witnesses. Nick
Searcy ’ 82, as Chief
Germany, bringing him into the orbit of
his cousin, actor Peter Weller, then
shooting a movie in Spain.
Deputy Marshal Art
“He brought me to Madrid and even
got me a three-line role in the movie,”
Mullen in Justified on
the FX network, oversees an office in
Weller says. “He gave me a $20 bill and
wrote on it, ‘This is the first $20 you
ever made in the motion-picture industry. If you ever spend it, you are an
Kentucky where his star
deputy warns once and
shoots soon after.
