Actor Greg Tally On The Five Things You Need To Shine In The Entertainment Industry

An Interview With Edward Sylvan

At some point in your career, you’re going to do something wrong on a set, and no one will tell you what it is. You will be treated like a dog who just soiled the carpet, and hang your head in shame. Just weather that storm with grace. It will get better.

As a part of our series about pop culture’s rising stars, I had the distinct pleasure of interviewing character actor Greg Tally.

Tally specializes in playing villains and comedic roles in film and audio plays. He has been writing, acting, producing and directing movies in the Western half of the U.S. for several years. He splits his time between Los Angeles and Colorado.

Thank you so much for joining us in this interview series! Can you tell us the story of how you grew up?

Sure! I grew up in the sprawling boomtown of Houston, Texas of the 1980s. A place journalist Molly Ivins once famously described as, “L.A. sprawl with Calcutta weather.” It was usually raining there. Gulf Coast rain. The Allen Brothers in the nineteenth century had the brilliant notion of founding a settlement in the middle of a humid swamp. Millions of Houstonians have been doubling down on this idea ever since. People think it was oil or the Space Race that made Houston blossom into America’s fourth largest city. I don’t think that’s quite right. I think it was the invention of air conditioning, to keep at bay the humid air that hits you like a hot sock to the face when you step outside.

My childhood home was in in the tony neighborhood of Southgate inside the 6–10 Loop (the freeways ringing the city center). This was a neighborhood of fine old oak tree alleys arching in tunnels over the streets, and 1920s and ’30s houses. Our red brick Georgian house was across University Boulevard from Rice University, and the college baseball field. We’d have foul balls and home runs routinely smack into our roof and roll into the gutters. In our 20-plus years there, we miraculously never lost a window. Down the street was the Texas Medical Center. In the other direction was The Village, the row of shops and ice cream parlors and pizzerias serving the college. It was the 80s, man. Our moms turned us loose on our bikes to play in this urban jungle, just like the kids on “Stranger Things.” We’d bike over the oyster shell parking lots of the campus and break into Rice Stadium. We could pull the padlocked chains apart holding the gates closed, and squeeze through, Schwinn ten speeds and all. Then we’d ride up and down the ramps and generally be little terrors.

Can you share a story with us about what brought you to this specific career path?

As soon as my mom plopped me down in front of the television with my bowl of Spaghettios, I was captivated by media that celebrated the magic of making movies. The studio back lot sequences of “Singin In The Rain.” The very end of “The Muppet Movie,” when Kermit and friends get to make a film. All those old Bugs Bunny cartoons that made us Gen X kids strangely literate in caricatures of Golden Age of Hollywood celebrities. As did all the movie spoofs in MAD and Cracked Magazines. So all this pop culture soup just simmered in my adolescent brain and put stars in my eyes.

In my teens, I attended the High School for the Performing and Visual Arts, later Beyonce’s alma mater. First I was in Media studying film and writing. Then I transferred to Theater for my last three years. I was a slack-off, a cocky neurodivergent kid, with undiagnosed ADHD. They called us “hyper” back then. I was always engaged and all in, but only towards creative stuff that interested me. The school arts newspaper or my friends. My buddies and I made spoof TV commercials for our high school film festival, influenced by MAD and Saturday Night Live. My freshman year, I wrote my first play, a one-act comedy called, “The Cat.”

Then I moved to Colorado and took thirty years off to go to college, get married, raise kids, build businesses. It was a respectable suburban life, but a conformist, beige existence, with hints of vanilla. I was miserable not being true to myself. Eventually, I snapped and grew a Viking beard and threw off my corporate slacks and donned Hawaiian shirts and torn jeans. When I got back to creative outlets in 2017 with my comedy podcast The Damn Dirty Drive In, I picked right up where I left off, writing parodies and sketch comedy and spoof commercials with my high school buddies. And weirdly, that kicked in a lot of doors in Hollywood from Denver, Colorado. Celebrities started appearing in our original plays, for free. My wife and I divorced in 2019, so I took the plunge and moved to Glendale, California, about fifteen minutes from the Hollywood sign. I lived in an art deco bungalow that backed up to a cult on one side and the club of the Armenian mafia on the other. Nobody messed with us. And I started making indie movies and meeting people and leveling up.

Can you tell us the most interesting story that happened to you since you began your career?

I made a kaiju fight club movie with Coolio in a high roller's suite at a casino in Vegas. It wasn’t supposed to happen. Our director James Balsamo is a Troma films veteran, with very gonzo, grindhouse sensibilities. So it was James’s birthday and we were playing a ridiculously-oversized Raiders slot machine. He was winning, up by $400, when the DP starting slapping James’s arm and yelling, “It’s Coolio. Coolio just walked by!” James leapt up and raced across the casino to Coolio, and offered to pay him on the spot if he appeared in “It Wants Blood 2.” So thirty minutes and a release form later, we were filming in a suite with Coolio. He was playing an underworld kaiju fight arranger named Don Luscious. And we are all acting with unscripted improv. He was brilliant and hilarious. After we wrapped, Coolio told us he wanted to be a voice actor for Adult Swim. And he started meowing at us and doing cartoon cat noises. I’m not sure how many performers can claim that Coolio has meowed at them. It was living in an actor’s paradise.

It has been said that mistakes can be our greatest teachers. Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?

Movie sets are gritty construction sites in extreme weather conditions run by mental patients. And yet once you get a taste of set life, you can’t wait to get back. The thrill after you’ve been away for a time of having a call sheet hit your email in box — it’s great! I think a bad day on set is better than a great day at home. But you are frequently outdoors in the elements and must learn a certain level of general bodily deprivation. The Shaolin monks or ancient Spartans have nothing on a seasoned movie crew for stamina and disciplined body denial. You also frequently have to take what’s coded as “Ten-1” or “Ten-2” with an audience trying not to listen or see. Everyone I know in the industry has a horror story.

Here’s mine: We were filming this Western monster movie, “Night of the Tommyknockers” at a movie ranch in the Mojave Desert. It was January, and for once it wasn’t ‘hell’s heat wave’ on set and miserably hot, but a blizzard. We were all shivering in our cowboy costumes, the wind howling, and actor holding for the cast had a slatted pergola roof. So it was snowing on us. We ate our dinners in our cars with the heaters blasting. Dinner was heavy, hearty plates of beef stroganoff. But it was warm, so I went back for seconds. This is the part I had not thought through. I was dressed as an undertaker, with top hat, black frock coat, vest, suspenders — the whole shebang. They called ten minutes at the end of lunch, and I had a panicked moment inside the grimy Porta-Potty that had been in heavy rotation all day. The only way to answer the call of nature was to get completely naked, and risk dropping my costume in the potty’s blue water. So I buttoned up, reported to set and waited for us to wrap later that evening. We did, at one a.m. Seven hours later. Then the long forty-minute drive back through the Joshua Trees to my lodgings. The birth of my children may have temporarily been a secondary joy to finally making it to a bathroom and flinging off my costume to answer the call of nature. So moral of the story is: cast and crew have to learn a degree of body denial, stoicism and perseverance, and a lack of squeamishness on a working set, and to PLAN AHEAD.

What are some of the most interesting or exciting projects you are working on now?

Early next year, I’m headed to the Caribbean to scout a movie, then I immediately fly to the United Kingdom to act in a horror movie, as well as to meet a film crew to pick up B roll of London for a different project. I have a couple of shorts and possibly one feature I plan to submit to the Festival de Cannes in France. So it’s an exciting time for me for travel and movie making.

You have been blessed with success in a career path that can be challenging. Do you have any words of advice for others who may want to embark on this career path, but seem daunted by the prospect of failure?

Absolutely. You’re routinely going to hit what seems like dead ends or insurmountable odds. Learn the refined art of course correction. I realized a few years ago that navigating the industry is a labyrinth. But it’s a maze of many, many paths. If you hit one dead end, turn around and figure out an alternative way to your goal. Shrug off those failures, and the naysayers and gatekeepers who usually circle those failures like vultures around a carcass. Be strategic. When a TV deal for a reality show starring my family fell through, I regrouped and sponsored, “Mystery Science Theater 3000” instead. When the pandemic hit and the world ground to a halt, I made audio plays at home. When my benefactor who brought me to LA soured on me, I turned to indie film. I used my podcast based in Colorado to open up opportunities to Hollywood. If you are clever and resilient and analytical and work with the resources you have, trust me; there is always another path.

We are very interested in diversity in the entertainment industry. Can you share three reasons with our readers about why you think it’s important to have diversity represented in film and television? How can that potentially affect our culture?

Personally, I’ve found that diversity is not a big deal to enact, but makes such a huge impact on people’s sense of belonging, self-worth and community. If you can’t make it happen, it’s because you don’t want to. And being around people who are different than you is healthy. It expands your horizons so you learn folks is folks. My main writing partners are a bi-white man and a straight woman of color, Ryan Smith and Cicley Alexander. It wasn’t planned that way; it just happened because they were friends. Our writing is stronger for each person’s different perspectives. And it’s not always been smooth sailing, either. Growth can be painful. But both Ryan and Cicley have been with me through some very tough spots. I wouldn’t want to create or perform without them. They are good friends.

As for making a difference in someone’s life. Everyone needs stories. They are as important as water or oxygen to our species’ health and well-being. It’s programmed into us by millions of years of evolution, when we were nomads huddled around the campfire, and hungry predator eyes shone at us just on the edge of the light, ready to pounce. We made it through millions of years of cold nights telling stories against the dark. This innate ability created language and pantomime, and religion. Our storytellers became shamans, sacred people. And the storytelling roles grew with complexity as our civilizations sprang up: priest, bard, court jester, playwright, poet, busker, singer, comedian, journalist, novelist, radio star, movie star, director, editor, influencer, Tik Toker — and on and on. A million different rabbit roles for our individual Alices to disappear down and be transported to a different world. What we all did during the pandemic was to consume art, to binge watch and binge listen on an unprecedented scale. We innately knew we needed those stories against the dark. So you can’t tell me representation doesn’t matter. Like I said, it’s oxygen. We all need heroes who resemble us. And for a child to be able to say, “Mama, Look! She’s just like me” is fundamental to the human condition.

What are your “5 things I wish someone told me when I first started” and why? Please share a story or example for each.

One — Get yourself on a small set and learn set etiquette, protocols and lingo. It will help you be more seasoned when you move on to bigger, more professional productions. Student films, 48 hours film festivals, local commercials, local access channels, monitoring courses at a film school. There are books on these subjects. Find them and read them. Two — At some point in your career, you’re going to do something wrong on a set, and no one will tell you what it is. You will be treated like a dog who just soiled the carpet, and hang your head in shame. Just weather that storm with grace. It will get better. Three — Never, ever pick up a firearm regardless of if it’s real or a prop, and point it at someone in jest. I’ve seen it on indie sets a shocking number of times. This will be career-ending, and rightly so. It’s one of the few things you cannot recover from. Protocols can fail, even seasoned armorers can make mistakes. If you don’t take this seriously, Google “Brandon Lee” or “Halyna Hutchins.” Tragic, and preventable. Safety is paramount and begins with you. Four — Help people. Do not climb to the mountain top alone. It’s a cold and lonely place without your friends. The industry is often cynical, back-biting and self-serving. Folks are taken aback when you are genuine and helpful. But it generally gets reciprocated in ways big and small down the road. Karma is really a thing. Five — Be kind. It’s a hard world out there. Don’t give into bitterness. Your career will ebb and flow. But it will go so much easier if you are empathetic and authentic, and surround yourself with like-minded people.

Which tips would you recommend to your colleagues in your industry to help them to thrive and not “burn out”?

I find the best way to stay rooted is to find a touchstone outside of Hollywood. I frequently return home to Colorado, and recharge my batteries. I look at mountains and wild things, and go for walks in the woods. It’s of enormous importance to be around regular people not involved in the industry. Authentic people and non-industry spaces will keep you grounded.

You are a person of enormous influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. :-)

I think I’d like to remove the stigmas surrounding bipolar and complex trauma, or c-PTSD. I have both, and understanding the options and ways to heal are enormously important. Trauma exists outside of the military; and millions of civilians are also suffering, as frequently are the people around those suffering from PTSD. There are treatments and a toolbox of options to gain relief. Therapy and EMDR. Also treatments with ketamine and other medicines. And procedures like stellate ganglion blocking, or SGB. Look up these terms online. You are not alone. There is help, a whole toolbox of options. And you don’t have to suffer or disappear into addiction to escape.

As for bipolar, I have bipolar 2. I see folks suffering under the stigma swirling around this disability. I like to normalize it, and joke, “Welcome to Club Bee Pee. It’s a special club house, where we have our own private roller coaster and some great meds in the back. Let’s be Bee Pee Buddies. I’m Bee Pee, too!” And to watch the weight drop off of people and their sense of relief is tangible. Some will even tear up from the relief of not being treated like a freak. If we can get people to experts and treatments to deal with just these two things alone, bipolar and c-PTSD, it would rid the world of an incalculable amount of pain.

None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who you are grateful towards who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story about that?

I have what I call my “Circle of Thirty,” and these are the people I choose to surround myself, tirelessly promote, perform across from in movies, and audio plays and theater. They are all my Ride or Dies, a whole metaphorical biker’s club of them. “Greg’s Angels,” baby! My Circle of Thirty is pulled from all aspects of my life, and we are leveling up together, climbing that mountain top as a group.

There are three women I’d like to mention as my absolute backbones, special friends for their loyalty, kindness and wisdom: Amanda Woods, Cicley Alexander, and Diana Zollicoffer. Amanda is my hair and makeup lady. She is an actor whisperer who handles all the distinct looks I do to get into character. She was Maureen O’Hara’s hair and makeup artist, and did Maureen’s look for her lifetime achievement award at the Oscars. Amanda is a de facto life coach and therapist on set; I hate reporting to a project without her. Cicley and I met relatively early on in our careers through the Hollywood Winner’s Circle, a group designed to knock the green off rookie actors and help them learn to be professionals. As a writing partner and producer, Cicley is steady and calm and always a voice of reason. She calms me down and tempers my red-headed Aries hot-bloodedness with her sage advice. And producer Diana is the spirit of kindness and hospitality itself, bringing the best of the Seychelles to Hollywood. She lets me crash on her couch when I roll into town, shares her knowledge willingly, acts as a sounding board as needed. She was invaluable in helping me navigate my first year at Cannes. I am lucky to call all three my friends.

Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?

Eleanor Roosevelt once said, “Do one thing every day that scares you.” I think this is enormously important for continued growth: to step outside your complacent comfort zone to keep learning and innovating. And for living life to its fullest. Now, I’m a risk taker. I’ve jumped off buildings, and done naked karaoke at a nudist colony, and dug up Triceratops on dinosaur digs. But it doesn’t have to be that extreme. Never stop having a curious mind. I sign off on my correspondence, “Stay Curious.” And I mean it. Have an inquisitive mind, try new things, be singularly unique. At the end of your life on your death bed, you won’t be pleased you played it safe. No one’s tombstone will read, “He had a great FICO credit score,” or “She skipped time with her kids to work.” Life is NOW. Don’t put it off. Learn a new language; take that trip to Africa; risk doing that crazy dream you had. Because even if you fail, you ultimately tried.

Is there a person in the world, or in the US whom you would love to have a private breakfast or lunch with, and why? He or she might just see this, especially if we tag them. :-)

Robert Downey, Jr is an inspiration, for his perseverance and recovery and success in the face of addiction. He was washed up and his career nearly destroyed. But he pulled himself together and did the hard work and self-examination and is now adored by millions. A true role model. In my eyes, it’s Downey’s resilience, self-awareness and empathy that really make him Iron Man.

How can our readers follow you online?

Yes, I am on IMDb at https://imdb.me/gregtally and on Instagram as @TehRedMenace. You can follow my shenanigans there. See you in the funny papers, and “Stay Curious!”

This was very meaningful, thank you so much! We wish you continued success!