I bet if I say the name Fred Stoller, you won’t know who I’m talking about. But if you see his picture, you can probably bring to mind a guest role of his. In fact, you can probably even hear his whiny, nasally voice — pretty much his trademark. Fred Stoller is pretty much the ultimate “Hey, It’s That Guy!” He’s had guest roles on Seinfeld, Friends, Everybody Loves Raymond, Scrubs, and many other series. But he’s never really broken out of that guest role — hoping each time that he’ll be invited back.
I love behind-the-scenes of Hollywood books, and this one brims with insider information about the life of a perpetual guest star. Stoller dishes on stars of various shows (some nice, some less so), what it’s like working with writers, acting in front of a live audience and how the whole casting experience works. In fact, he overshares at times — I did not need to know about his sex with Kathy Griffin, thank you.
Unfortunately, Stoller pretty much writes like he acts — nervously, nebbishly, and a little whiny (actually…pretty whiny). It gets old after a while, especially when he talks about his romantic life, and his issues with his mother. Still, there’s some fun information in here, if you like this sort of thing.
He has (had? I don’t know if Ive seen new episodes show up in my queue lately) a podcast that’s pretty good — he has lots of famous & funny friends, like Norm Macdonald and Fred Willard. I can’t listen to a ton of it all at once, but a little every now and then is pretty amusing.