By Seth Rudetsky
24 Aug 2009

On Wednesday at my Sirius/XM Live on Broadway show, I interviewed Malcolm Gets, whom I first met in 1996 when I wrote a funny song for David Hyde Pierce's appearance on "Caroline in the City." Malcolm talked about how much his life changed from that show. Before his sitcom, he was the epitome of the struggling New York actor. I remember Judy Blazer telling me that she had to lend him money once for the subway. This was in the days of the dollar fare! He told us that when he got cast on the show, he had just graduated from the Yale Drama School and was around $75,000 in debt. After his first year on the TV show, he got a call from Yale asking if he made a mistake on the recent check he sent. The woman thought Malcolm added too many zeros because, in one year, he went from paying the bare minimum to paying the whole thing off in one check. Yowza! Speaking of which, I just got a letter from Sallie Mae and had a panic attack that I never paid off my Oberlin student loan. I tentatively opened it and found out that I had overpaid my student loan! I got a delicious check for $6. PS, what took them ten years to discover it? I'm sure they would have been very accommodating if I took ten years to remember I owed them money. Also, what's with calling themselves Sallie Mae? Why do loan companies have sweet Southern names? Is it to make us more willing to pay them because we're supposed to think of them as kindly old ladies from a small town in Georgia? "Oh, I have to make sure I pay sweet li'l Sallie Mae Wilkins her money. She's always offering me mint juleps and huckleberry pie after church." Why don't they just call themselves "Student Loan Recovery Fund" and leave the homespun names to the real housewives of Atlanta? And when did this column become my stand-up act?

Malcolm also said that while he was filming the recent "Grey Gardens" movie with Jessica Lange, Drew Barrymore stayed in character all day. Whenever they weren't filming, she still called him Gould and he had to call her Edie. I'm the same way. I make everyone involved in Seth's Broadway 101 call me Seth offstage as well. PS, has she always been like that for all of her films? And, in the early nineties, did people at the craft services table have to call her "Ivy" or the formal "Poison Ivy"?

The good news is that my agent called me about an audition for the "Sex and the City" film sequel. The bad news is, the audition was for my mother! That's right. She's become the go-to for sassy, older Jewish ladies. My mom went in and was thrilled that the audition was improv, which she thinks is one of her so-called "special skills." I then got another call from my agent telling me that she got a callback. What the-? Last time I was the one with the audition and callback for the "Sex and the City" movie (and ironically lost the role to Malcolm Gets)! How dare she trump me? I knew she became an insider when she went from saying, "The callback will be at Bernard Telsey's office" to "I met Bernie. He's very nice." It all evened out at the end because I wasn't cast in the first film and she wasn't cast in the sequel. Quite frankly, I didn't want to see my mom in a film with the word "sex" in the title.

And now, a little about Seth's Broadway 101. It's going so great that Ars Nova asked if we'd do an additional performance! So, next Sunday we're doing a show at 7:30 PM and then one at 9:30. I love the show so much I could do it every two hours every day. It would be great to extend it to Labor Day weekend, but I'm performing in Provincetown then for four nights. For tickets to 101 or my Provincetown Deconstructing, go to SethRudetsky.com. Peace out! *