Harold & Kumar’s Chris Meloni
Posted by Plotkin on April 24th, 2008
A cool, refreshing slice of (water)Meloni.
By Andrew Plotkin
He’s been packing heat on Law & Order: SVU for almost a decade. He’s also shown audiences what he’s packing in his pants, thanks to the many shower scenes in HBO’s Oz. Plain and simple: Christopher Meloni has proven himself to be one of the greatest dramatic TV actors of the 1990s and today.
But in addition to being able to display the necessary gravitas required by a cop who’s just discovered a murder/castration victim, Merloni has, with his turn as a puppet-toting pediatrician in an episode of Scrubs and his smaller roles in films like Runaway Bride and this Friday’s Harold & Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay, shown himself to possess incredibly gifted comedic timing. After his scene-stealing turn as a profoundly disturbed summer camp cook in Wet Hot American Summer, reports of sweater fondling and the general molestation of garments in the U.S went up 83%. (Statistics for refrigerator humping were not available.)
In Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle, he was unrecognizable as Freakshow, a Jesus-loving mechanic with hideous, puss-oozing boils on his face and neck. (And a hot nympho wife) Meloni was so unrecognizable in fact that some people to this day have no idea that it was him underneath the makeup. Finding out Jon Hurwitz and Hayden Schlossberg, the co-writers/co-directors of H&K, wanted him to portray a KKK Grand Wizard in the sequel, he jumped on board immediately.
When asked if he was disappointed at his role being so brief, Meloni said in a recent press stop for the flick, “Yeah. I was. Not from an ego standpoint.” He continued, “I had so much fun with Freakshow, so much fun with those guys. I just wanted to play in the sandbox a little longer.”
Nonetheless, Meloni looks quite fetching onscreen in a red hood. Speaking about his day job, Meloni calls himself the “luckiest man alive”, but he apparently has a bit of a potty mouth in him that misses playing an inmate. “I find the parameters of a network show sometimes difficult, one being the inability to curse,” he said. “Not every other word has to be an f-bomb, but when you’re in certain situations, this is how people naturally express themselves. But the rules are ‘We’re paying for the show, and that’s not how we want it done’. Whatever car company. I feel a leash around my neck, but you accept those rules. As an actor, it’s a challenge.”
It’s a challenge not to curse? Y’all should meet Momma Plot. She’s never uttered even a “Heavens to Betsy!” But I should stop talking about my mother, so here comes a quote expressing Meloni’s thoughts on the “locked-down society” that he feels our country has become, to which he partially attributes the mass appeal of the H&K films and its creators. “#1 they’re unafraid. #2 Touchy subjects? Yeah. You won’t let us bring it up in serious media, so we’ll bring it up a little subversively. To get serious issues out, whether it’s about racism in America or maybe how this is a manufactured fear society, those sorts of themes get played out in smart comedy, and I think people get that.”
Meloni’s a cool dude, and he likes playing in sandboxes, so you should go see Harold & Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay this weekend. I told Chris that I found his mustache in the film “incredible,” and seemed genuinely touched.
Sphere: Related ContentTags: Celebrity Interviews, Film and Theatre, Mustache Envy, harold, hot, immediate, kumar, meloni, mustache, plotkin, svu, thecheappop.com, tv
April 24th, 2008 at 11:06 pm
LOVED HIM in “OZ”!!