Interview by Craig Byrne
David H. Lawrence XVII, known to the fans of Heroes as “Eric Doyle, the Puppet Master,” is also known to fandom for many other roles in addition to a large resume of voice work. In the movie Pizza Man, Lawrence plays Detective Moser, who is very much the “Commissioner Gordon” type to Frankie Muniz’s title hero.
Mr. Lawrence was kind enough to take the time to do an interview for this latest addition to KSiteTV’s Pizza Man coverage.
KSITETV: How did you get involved with Pizza Man and what attracted you to the role?
DAVID LAWRENCE: Foz [McDermott] called and said “do you want to be in this movie?” and I said “Anything for you, Foz.” Then when I got the script, I was enamored with Detective Moser’s intentions and lifestyle, and the idea of exploring him as a character was fascinating to me.
I love working with Foz. I worked with him on Heroes, and I trust him. I trust that he wouldn’t want me to be in it unless it was right up my alley or at least something fun to explore. So it was great. I didn’t come to this role the way most people come into roles where they audition and they get called back and there’s a big pow-wow. I did audition, if you’d call it an audition… I came in and met with Joe, the director, we went through the scene together, and then that was it.
KSITETV: Fans of Heroes remember you well as Eric Doyle, the Puppet Master…
LAWRENCE: Remember me? Like what, am I dead? Remember me?
KSITETV: Or they “know” you as Eric Doyle. This character of Moser seems do different from Doyle. Can you talk about playing such a very different role for these fans to discover you in?
LAWRENCE: The funny thing is, is that I never played anybody like Eric Doyle before, either. So Eric Doyle was really a different role for me. Up until then, it was mostly bouncers and cops and pedophiles. You know, goofy, autistic type older, strange characters. And Eric Doyle was the first chance I had to a) do network television, because it was my first booking on network television, and b) play such a creepy guy. The amount of time that I spent worrying that I was playing a creepy guy was about five seconds, because the writing was brilliant. The conflict the character wanting to be good but can’t help himself and be evil, was great fun to play, and so playing Detective Moser is sort of a return home for me. He’s got some twists as well. He actually turns out to like Matt, and starts to protect him, as opposed to suspecting him of being responsible for the crimes. So it’s fun, because I get to play him more like a father figure than just a grand inquisitor or a stupid cop that doesn’t have any smarts. So it’s a nice role. I love it.
KSITETV: He’s a little bit on the sarcastic side as well, isn’t he? I noticed that Marco [Mannone] wrote some great lines for Moser…
LAWRENCE: Not only did Marco write some nice stuff; he also said “hey, if you find anything that you want to throw in there that’s a little bit different, go ahead.” So far, Marco’s been dead on. I just love it. So yeah, he’s a little bit sarcastic; but most cops are, because they’re in that power differential between them and the perp or them and the public.
KSITETV: What is it like to be working with Frankie Muniz?
LAWRENCE: At this point in the production [when this interview was conducted], Frankie’s the only guy I’ve worked with at all, and it’s been completely in private other than when I walked into my office and there were some extras on set, that walked by me. He’s the only one I’ve been working with. He’s fun. He’s prepared. He doesn’t necessarily learn his lines before he does the scene; he just knows that once he’s on set, he’s going to have to bring the goods. And he always does. So that works for him. I use an iPhone app to learn my lines.
KSITETV: Can you talk about that iPhone app?
LAWRENCE: It’s called Rehearsal, and it’s free to download, and it’s free to use for a week, and then depending on what kind of load of auditions and production you have; you might choose one of three different payment plans. But it’s free to download, which means it has been downloaded over 100,000 times, and it’s only been out for a month.
I made it for myself, and the dirty little secret is, if I never sell any script, or month or year subscription, at least I have the tool to use it in my career, and that makes it priceless. I’ve used it for the last four episodes of Heroes that I was; I used it for all of the auditions that I’ve had between last November and today, in various forms, from the time that it was in beta, and the time that it was released, and we have an iPad version of it out.
The people that are in the business and “get it” and download it and use it, fall in love with it, and have all kinds of suggestions about what they’d love to see in it, and so on. It’s the kids around the world that have downloaded it because it was on the front page of the app site, because it was free, and then are like “This is stupid. I don’t like this. This is stupid.” And then delete it from the phone, and on the way off the phone, Apple says “hey, would you like to rate this?” They’re still in that “this is stupid” mode, and so they give it one star. It happens over and over and over, so if you look at our ratings on iTunes, you have this U-shaped ratings curve, where you have hundreds of five-star ratings, almost no two, three, and four star ratings, and then hundreds of one-star ratings. But for people that are in the business for rehearsing or for actually auditioning, it’s designed for auditioning as well. In fact, it came out of the fact that I had an audition that I had to be at very quickly, and I couldn’t go through my typical “go home, get the PDF file out of the e-mail with the script in it, record it, save it as an mp3, put it on iTunes and listen to it over and over until I learned the lines.” It was that I had exactly one hour, so I recorded it in voice memo on my iPhone on my way down the 101 to the audition. I’m like “There has to be a better way of doing this,” and that’s when the idea formed in my head, of how to make a tool that I could use. Then I started looking at how other actors work, and then I got a group of working actors together that were beta testers, and they really helped me out a great deal. It was an awesome process, and it’s turned out to be a very satisfying project, and hopefully one of these days, it will be something I can make my living doing as well as acting and voice work.
KSITETV: If Heroes returns for a fifth season, would you like to be a part of it?
LAWRENCE: I’d love to be a part of it. I have no idea if I will be. I would love to be a part of it, though. It’s a life changer. I was only supposed to be in one episode of the show, and it turned out that they liked what I was doing, and they rewrote the ending of that episode for me, and they kept me around for two seasons now. I think part of that is the writing is so good, and they keep giving Eric these dilemmas that he has to face. All he wants to do is entertain kids, be a Puppet Master, and so on, but then he’s pushed. And when he’s pushed… that’s when the magic happens.
KSITETV: There are many places that people can follow you online. Can you talk about that communication between yourself and those who’d like to interact with you?
LAWRENCE: I’ve always been able to be in touch with my radio audience via the nightly show. And then also e-mails and texting and voicemail and that sort of thing. Twitter and Facebook make it easy to say what’s going on. I’m one of those guys who is absolutely sure of one thing – and that is that nothing is permanent when it comes to the Internet. People don’t remember that Facebook at one time was more popular than LinkedIn or Myspace or Friendster, and then it went away, and Friendster was the new hot darling. And Myspace was the new hot darling, and all of a sudden Facebook comes roaring back. Twitter is an amazing story, and then you’ll notice things have kind of leveled off. Then come stories of how few people who sign up for Twitter actually use Twitter. And now they’re turning towards promoted tweets to start to raise money for the company. So everything is sort of a cycle. So whatever people might use, or the fans are using, that’s what I’ll use.
You can find David Lawrence at his official website at DavidS.com and on Twitter at @DHLawrenceXVII. Thanks to Mr. Lawrence for taking the time to do this interview, and you can read more about Pizza Man here soon!
