The following Saturday, at 6:05 a.m., Slemmer woke up, showered and ironed his tuxedo shirt at the Sheraton in Salt Lake City. He went out into the cold, blustery day, admired the gorgeous mountains, and, along with pageant director Jen Klem and photographer Tyler Ross, loaded photo equipment and pageant paraphernalia—programs, certificates, ribbons—into the car. After grabbing coffee, they went to the “theater”—a high school where the bathrooms have old-school cloth towels on a circuit, and where the auditorium curtains stop four inches from the floor. The stage had an extra lip that extended out into the audience; this meant he could put the girls’ masking tape “marks” there, essentially directing the contestants to do their spins in the middle of the audience.

After the stage setup and a tech run-through, the doors opened and 107 contestants and their families took their seats. Slemmer led them through everything they’d need to know for the day: where to go and when, how they would move on stage, how the top ten round (for finalists) works, and more.

With such a small group—the pageants sometimes have two hundred girls—Slemmer is able to develop a rapport with each contestant. After the competition, a pair of contestants thanked him for helping them feel “comfortable and relaxed.” He was touched. “The truth is that I enjoy having fun with them, and I want them to know that if they trip on stage—no, that’s too cliché—if they don’t do the full turn on the third X in their modeling routine, they can be embarrassed if they want to, but we don’t care. It’s lovely, because it’s them. There’s nothing to be embarrassed about, ashamed about, frustrated about, regretful about.”

Younger contestants often ask Slemmer how old he is and if he’s married. That day in Salt Lake City, one of youngest girls asked him, “Zak, if you had to date any of the girls here, who would it be?” (She, of course, was referring to the older girls, such as the 18- or 19-year-olds.) When I asked him if he is ever attracted to any of the contestants, he said, “I think professionally, I have to say no. But I was in a relationship for a couple years, a pretty serious one, and it ended not the way I would have chosen. I’m still not 100% back to where I need to be, but I’m getting there, and I’m looking for the right girl. My cousin said, ‘Zak, you’re an attractive guy. You can meet an attractive girl,’ and I thought, ‘I stand next to beautiful women for my job. Why not in my personal life?’”

Though Slemmer tries to keep his hosting as smooth as possible (and succeeds at it by pretty much all accounts), one thing can make him stumble: exotic names. A Salt Lake City contestant had one of the most difficult names he’s ever had to say in a pageant. “As soon as we registered her yesterday, Jen turned to me and said, ‘She’s going to make it all the way through, and you’re just going to have to keep saying her name over and over and over.’ And she won the division,” he said, “and I had to keep saying her name over and over and over—in the casual wear, the top ten pageant, the awards.”

When I asked him what her name was, he paused for four seconds, and finally said, “It’s the Hawaiian/Fijian name.” Which was? He paused for seven seconds, and then uttered, “Mehrae…Mereaore,” he said finally, like there was a big ice cube in his mouth. “Mereaore,” he repeated, still practicing. “If I said, ‘Mereaore,’ to her, she’d say, ‘Eh, that’s close.’” He laughed. “She said to me after the top ten round”—here he affected a girlish voice—“‘You had to keep saying my name all night!’ And I was thinking, ‘Well, I’ll have to say your name one more time, and you don’t know it.’ So I said her name one more time. And when she was getting her trophy and crown and banner, I said it again, just for fun, and she looked at me as if to say, ‘You don’t have to keep saying my name! You like my name! You said it again! You said it right!’”

Before I go to interview Slemmer at his East Harlem apartment, he warns me it is crammed full of furniture—leftovers from a cousin who just unloaded his storage locker. When I arrive, stuff is overflowing out into the hall, and Slemmer asks me if I’d like a dining table or a desk. Inside, all the furniture turns the apartment’s empty spaces into a human Tetris-like obstacle course stocked with corners, legs and edges to avoid. The bed is covered with laundry, and dirty dishes rest in the sink. In the window sit three potted plants. At one point, he mentions that one of them is called a clivia, “which,” he gamely admits, “makes me uncomfortable to say.”

A Cincinnati native, Slemmer was born to an actress and a stockbroker who divorced when he was mere months old. As a child, he did commercials and voiceovers with his mother, and he also studied theater at Miami University of Ohio and in Seoul. But his transition to adult actor was hardly seamless. During high school, he was nearly expelled and his mother and stepfather asked him to live elsewhere. “I never hurt anybody, and I never necessarily broke the law, but I had my moments. I would skip class. I basically had an issue with authority,” he says. (He is now very close to the same assistant principal who disciplined him.)

Eight years ago, he came to New York to stay for a summer with his mother who then, as now, was living in a Zen Buddhist meditation center on the Upper West Side. “I’ve never sat and meditated with her, but she imparts lots of knowledge and philosophy to me,” he says. Zen Buddhism allows him to weather the ups and downs of an unstable career: “Nothing is special. If you get the job, soon the job is over. Then what? If you didn’t get the job, the job is over. Then what?”

On his third day in the city, he decided to find employment, and by 7 p.m. he had—at Level V, a club in the Meatpacking District. He worked there during summers while staying with his mother and full time when he moved to the city in 2007. He bussed tables, bar-backed and worked the door, but the club soon took him off door duty. “You’re supposed to create a line, but I would just let people in,” he says. He was, in his own words, “a dancing sensation,” and he jumps up to demonstrate what he could do with a drink tray, since he actually kept one as a memento. He spins it on his finger and tries spinning it on his elbow and knee—at the time, he could also do his head and foot and even the wall. Once, the actress Rose McGowan came to the club and called him a hunk. He didn’t know who she was.

One of his coworkers was in a comedy troupe called City Hall Comedy and asked Slemmer to fill in one night—and then to stick around. For three years, he did sketch comedy and improv with the six-member troupe in Montreal, Los Angeles and Chicago. At the same time, for four years, he also taught a non-profit after-school drama program for kindergarteners through fifth graders. He also spent a few months as a pantry stock boy in an office building. “I literally would replace the plastic forks, and there was no title for me, so I called myself the Director of Pantry Affairs,” he says, strutting around, barrel-chested.

It’s easy to see how Slemmer’s high energy, ready physicality and oddball sense of humor would make him a superb improviser and a delight to children. But adults are another matter. His three main jobs (excluding Director of Pantry Affairs) ended on sour notes. During a disagreement with the comedy group, the other members said, “We can do the show without you,” and Slemmer, opening his arms wide, said, “You got it” — and never went back, though he says he is still friends with the members. When Level V closed and reopened as Dos Caminos, the owners let go of the staff and invited them re-apply for their old positions. Slemmer thought, “You’ve got to be kidding me. I’ve worked for you for how many years?” He refused to apply for his old job, but, again, remains friends with his former bosses.

Slemmer’s temperamental side seems to stem from his idealism. When people exert power or authority in what he perceives to be a disloyal, unfair or underhanded way, he refuses to work with them, even if it means walking out the same day.

That kind of purity makes it seem improbable that Slemmer would go into diplomacy. But his experience in Korea had a strong impact on him: “I wouldn’t change it for the world. I fell in love about eight times over. I don’t want to offend you,” he says to me, “but before, Asians never did it for me. But by the time I got back, I swore I would never have a white wife.” (Then again, his last girlfriend was white.) He imagines himself working in the State Department, shaping policy on North Korea, or helping Korean immigrants assimilate, “almost like a travel show, and I’m the host. Bringing people together.”