Larkin Campbell: A view from the middle

Larkin Campbell calls himself an unknown actor. Now the Washington State University alum takes us behind the scenes of a life in Hollywood, not as a celebrity but as someone who loves the industry even if only a few recognize him.

In this episode, Larkin talks about his WSU memories, getting into the acting business, and playing Coach Shane in the 125th episode of The Office, as husband of the girlfriend of main character Michael Scott.

Read about Larkin’s hilarious memoir, A View from the Middle: How an Unknown Actor Managed to Stay That Way, in the Summer 2022 issue of Washington State Magazine.

Transcript

Larkin Campbell:

My character dies in the show and they make a prosthetic of my body and we'd sit at the monitor together and look at my dead body together.

Larry Clark:

What's it like to be a self-identified Z list actor? Let's find out.

[music] 

Welcome to Viewscapes, stories from Washington State Magazine, connecting you to WSU state and the world. In this episode, actor, author, and WSU alum Larkin Campbell talks with magazine Associate Editor Adriana Janovich about good times in Hollywood, WSU memories, and playing Coach Shane on The Office.

[music]

Campbell:

Hi, everybody, my name is Larkin Campbell, proud Wazzu graduate of 1991, pounding the pavement in the United States of America promoting my book. It's called A View From the Middle: How an unknown actor managed to stay that way. And it's a book about my journey from moving to Los Angeles upon graduating from Wazzu, and all the adventures and fun things I ran into in my 30 years down here.

Adriana Janovich:

And what led you to write it? 

Campbell:

I finished it during the pandemic, but my idea was rolling long before that. And most of my friends, down here are actors and directors and people that have dabbled in the business. We were sitting around telling stories one night, and I told I guess, one really good one, or maybe I was funny that night, I don't know what happened. But my friend who is a published author, he said, “Dude, you got so many good stories, you got them, write them down. They're inspirational. They're funny, your book could be like a how to book, a motivational book, and an inspiration, all that stuff.” And I think his words kind of stuck with me. And since then, diving into the book world, I'm just so glad I wrote it. Because I really just think that a book like this would have helped me. When I first moved down here, it was completely clueless.

Janovich:

Who is your target audience? And what are you hoping that they take from it?

Campbell:

Honestly, my target audience is someone that isn't sure if this is for them, or if they're good enough to try it. Or if it's too big for them to even wrap their head around about trying to get a hand in the movie and TV business. When I moved down here, there used to be these “how-to” books, but they weren't weren't helpful at all. They said, here's what you do when you have an agent, here's what you do when you get an audition. And I didn't have any of that I really wanted to tell people that are just fascinated by this business that, and that really would like to know, what is it really like year after year, week after week, month after month, birthday after birthday? Keep at this business and not let the enormity of it intimidate you?

Janovich:

What did you gain from the experience of writing it and reflecting back on your life?

Campbell:

My teachers. My drama teachers made us keep these journals. And you had to write about your feelings about these exercises we were doing and actor stuff, but something that clicked with me. I've kept a journal ever since then, since 1989. When I moved down here, and I started to see like, ‘Man, this is going to be a big thing,’ and I started writing down my goals. And then I look back a year in my journal say, hey, you know, I've come a long way in a year. Where can I go next year? I just always felt good about what I was doing down here. And then when I decided to sit down and write the book about it, I was encouraged by my emotions that I just happen to capture in that journal. And you know, this is what I felt the first day I got my first job. It was exciting. And I was over the moon and you know, if I wouldn't have written all that down, I'd have just a vague remembrance of these great things that happened to me. Writing this book, without a doubt was wildly therapeutic for me.

Janovich:

How did you become passionate about it? Or how did you decide that that's what you're going to do?

Campbell:

The amazing radio broadcast journalism training that I got in Washington state from Glenn Johnson and Neil Robinson and the cast of characters that made up that department is fantastic. And I was also intertwined with the drama department, with the misfit toys that were down in that department. In high school, I thought I was the funniest guy in the room all the time, and I was the most clever guy. And then you get to Wazzu, and there's all these awesome creative people and they flat out like fine-tuned me and just made me better. This internship thing came up and my options were like, you know, go to Boise and work on a radio station, or I had a friend who lived in Los Angeles, a good high school friend. And he reappears throughout the book. And you know, long story short, he said, “Dude, I have an internship at Entertainment Tonight in Hollywood, you won't believe the stuff I get to do. You won't even believe it. Come down here.” So I went down there on spring break. And I saw what he did. I was flabbergasted. And you get a walk onto the Paramount lot every day, and you get to meet celebrities weekly. That was pretty much like a kid in the candy store. It took me four years to get my first acting job. There's still something magical about movies, and there's still a mystery and a romance that people have with actors, and the art of acting in the art of making movie making. My whole life has been that and my wife is in the business too. And that's all we do. Sometimes it seems a little shallow. Like if you work on a movie for nine months, and it comes out and nobody sees it. Nobody cares. But it doesn't matter because you still say the word California and Los Angeles and it still has that kind of twinkle. But if you live here, it's not all sparkle and shine. I still think it's about as good a business as the human race has produced.

Janovich:

From your book, it just sounds like you've had a ton of fun in Pullman and WSU.

Campbell:

I learn about from Neil Robinson the learning about the spectrum and where all the waves go. And then then Glen Johnson just being a taskmaster, but an entertaining guy. The people I met there between the drama teachers, and the broadcasting people, which they really didn't mesh too well. I think everybody thought the theater guys were a bunch of freaks. And we were but we were studying, like every week we had to be creative. We are creative together. And all it did was train me to want to be a filmmaker my whole life, that great group of creative people that I was there with, combined with the great teachers, if I could still be it was who I was. Once that kind of just got into the grind of working, I was a production assistant for many years getting coffee for directors and making copies. But once I started getting into it, getting on set, and it was never like a celebrity type thing. You know, there are the celebrities in our world. But if you and I sat down right now, and I'm in this business, we could start making a list of people and like 50-75 people, and we'd be done. Like, there's just not that many people that are just actors and celebrities. There's the big boys. There's a ton of people, thousands and thousands and thousands, in the middle of working actors, you might know their name, or seen him three or four times. And then there's even the thousands beneath them that have worked quite a bit like me. I've been on Grey's Anatomy and The Office and a ton of shows. But there were years I didn't work you get the high of all. I just worked with Clint Eastwood and had two days. It was magical, I can't believe it. And then the phone doesn't ring for four months. And you'd be like, what happened. I'm ready. It was never about wanting to any kind of celebrity. You can't chase it. For that reason, I was always chasing like the next great experience I could have. If I got four lines, I was over the moon. If it was two, I'm happy too. If it was six or eight or two scenes, oh my God. That's more than I could wish for. 

Janovich:

So what do you do in the in between times?

Campbell:

I got two kids in college and I got a young daughter at home. So besides parenting, which I have to do, that's kind of the afternoon job. I got an audition later today. And I have two pages of dialogue to memorize. Certainly in between jobs and auditions, I've never stopped writing. I just always felt like if I wasn't somehow pushing myself, nope, nobody cares. And no one's I'm in this category of average looking white males. And there's thousands of us, you know, and I know about a quarter of them. And I've auditioned against most of them. If I didn't spend time hustling my own work, you know, they were never going to come knock on my door and you know, ask me to do it because I always felt like if someone else was hustling, I gotta outwork that guy. You know what I mean?

Janovich:

How do you deal with that rejection and not internalize it?

Campbell:

I had eight auditions in one week, a couple years ago. That's two a day. One day was three of them. And I'm racing all around town, I'm changing in Starbucks, and I'm shaving and then I don't get one call back and like, what am I doing? I should be working at the grocery store. What's happening? And then what's next? I've been rejected 512 times. People said I wasn't the right guy or I was too average looking or that I wasn't funny enough or whatever. But the 47 or 48 times that I got the job. The highest were so good booking a job on The Office. My next 20 auditions, I didn't care if I got it, because I'm so thrilled with the one that I got.

Janovich:

Do you think Coach Shane is your most recognizable character?

Campbell:

Yeah, I think so. Probably just because that show is just never small. I've gotten recognized a few times. You know, there's 10 amazing characters on that show. And I've run into one of them. I ran into one in Santa Barbara: Toby. I ran into him. But I didn't have a scene with Toby. But I went right up to him. I said, “Hey, I was Coach Shane in this.” And he remembered it that handful of times I've gotten recognized from that show. It's more of like, oh, dude, you were in The Office and then people will see it and then they'll tell me more so than I just get recognized. It was a giant part to get. There's so many characters. There's very few people get on that show that aren't series regulars. I was a little bummed. I'll be honest. When I when I got the part, they said I wouldn't ever get to the office. My scenes were all outside with Steve Carell and Ed Helms. Like, oh, man, I just I just loved the walk in the doors one time.

Janovich:

 What are a few of your favorite roles that you've done?

Campbell:

I got a part in a movie years ago called Mystery Men and it had this amazing cast of, you know, Ben Stiller, Hank Azaria, Janine Garoppolo, and I was kind of a wannabe superhero. My name was Superman. They were auditioning amateur superheroes. That was the greatest, you know. I got to do it for two days. I had a homemade mask and a cage. So I got to act across from Ben Stiller and Paul Rubens, who's Pee Wee Herman, at the time this is I've landed in Shangri La. My whole scene got cut out of that movie. So buy the book and read that chapter and hopefully you cry at the end like I did. A lot of times with my size of part. You know, you're there for a day. If you're lucky, you're going to do a scene with the main character like Kiefer Sutherland or somebody like that. The glorious one’s The Office clearly. It was me and Ed Helms and Steve Carell at a college baseball field. And we took all day and I got to eat with those guys. We’re in the van together, and they didn't really have a choice. I wasn't going to let them not hang out with me. I was going to hang with those guys all day. So that was glorious. 

The other really good one that I really, really loved was CSI New York, because I was on for five days, and I got to hang out with Gary Sinise all the time. He's just, you know, one of the greatest American actors. There is such a sweetheart of a guy. My character dies in the show, and they make a prosthetic of my body. And we'd sit at the monitor together and look at my dead body together. And those days was so nice on set were about as good as anything like an actor is ever going to wish for. 

If my book does its job, and the message is clear, it's a book of hope. My story is trying to tell you there is no road to it. I would never tell anyone to take the path that I took. But I can sure as heck tell you in detail what worked for me. And the main thing that worked for me is I didn't care how hard it was. This book was such a great reflection on the fun ride that I had literally as I was doing it. I wonder, is it over? Literally in the course of writing the book like draft after draft? I'm like, No, you know, it's not over. It was the right time to sit down and get it all down. So that was great. 

But and then right before the end of last year, an old friend of mine from a long time ago, “Hey Larkin, I'm working on this new Steven Spielberg movie. It's called The Fabelmans, about his own life. It's going to be out sometime next year, get a babysitter, got you two days work on the Spielberg movie. And I got you a bunch of lines, that type of job that takes years of connections and years of auditioning and callbacks, blah, blah, blah.” Well, I got this from a friend who just said, Larkin come down, you're working Monday and Tuesday, I get a job just from a friend without an audition without a callback without the sweat and tears of that. And then next thing I know, I'm on set with Spielberg for two days. And I got to Tony Kushner, who wrote Angels in America and has five Tony Awards. He's given me a bunch of lines to say, and this light opened up. I'm like, God, God, I love doing this. There was a resurgence in my energy and a resurgence in my career from this great credit that was just handed to me, like a lot of jobs over the years. 

I'm still in the hustle. I'm going to keep trying to sell this screenplay. I'm working on another book with my daughter. We're writing a children's book. I just want her to be able to have a book in her hand that we did together. That's a fun little project but now coaching my daughter's softball team, very active in my community. I’m the PA announcer for all the home sporting events for my son's high school. So that's fun. I get an open mic and try and be entertaining a couple of nights a month.

Getting handed a role in a Spielberg movie from my 30-year relationship with these old guys like that, that's the payoff. You know, that was it. So it's too much fun to stop. So I stay very busy here.

Janovich:

Gosh, just like Coach Shane, you’re Coach Larkin. And Glenn Johnson announcing WSU games, here you’re announcing games. I see all these parallels and it's kind of fun.

Campbell:

I told him that. He was darn proud of me.

[music]

Clark:

Read more about Larkin’s book in the fall 2022 issue of Washington State magazine. 

Many thanks to Greg Yasinitsky for the Viewscapes music. 

You can read all stories and magazine.wsu.edu 

Thanks for listening