On the Peacock drama “Joe vs. Carole,” which is based on the “Tiger King” docuseries, Brian Van Holt plays zookeeper John Reinke. “Like everybody else on the planet, I binge-watched the docuseries,” said Van Holt. “That was my introduction to Joe Exotic and Carole Baskin and the rest of the circus. But my favorite person happened to be John Reinke, who is the most levelheaded, the most grounded, the most practical person in that world.”
After watching hours of footage of Reinke, Van Holt said he discovered something that doesn’t always come through in the docuseries: “His incredible sense of humor. So I started playing to that part of the character and he became more of a comic relief in this intense and dark world.”
Born in Waukegan, Illinois, Van Holt moved to California when he was still a baby but said he frequently returned to the Midwest throughout his childhood. As an actor, his career began with an appearance in “A Very Brady Sequel” and has spanned the gamut since, from “Black Hawk Down” to “Sons of Anarchy” to the sitcom “Cougar Town.”
When asked about a worst moment in his career, it was an audition that involved singing that came to mind. “So often actors are portrayed as perfect people and perfect careers and glam and all that stuff,” he said. “But there’s a lot of awkward and bad moments. And if you’ve been doing it as long as I have, you have so many cringey moments to choose from.”
My worst moment …
“When I was younger and first starting out in this business, I had been acting for a little bit in L.A. Or trying to. This was in the mid-’90s. I already had a couple credits, a guest role on ‘Flipper’ and then a role in ‘The Very Brady Sequel,’ and I’m not disrespecting those — I love to work and I needed to work — but ‘Flipper’ and ‘The Brady Sequel’ (laughs)? I was expecting to do these intense pieces and all that, but I wasn’t cutting it and I wasn’t vibing that well with Hollywood and the business. I was frustrated, so I decided to move to New York to study theater and work on my writing and become a real artist and a real actor.
“So I picked up and left and moved to New York. I knew one casting director there and she got me an agent and one of the first auditions I had was for a play — I forget which play or which theater company — but there was no material. I was told, ‘They want you to bring a monologue,’ which is standard. And I was like, ‘Yeah, of course, I’ve got a great one’ — and it was one I wrote myself and I couldn’t wait to perform it. I was in my 20s and I thought I was brilliant.
“I think the audition was at Carnegie Hall. There were five other dudes waiting to go in. And you could hear the audition that was going on in the other room and there was singing. And I was like, wow, that’s a cool choice: He’s singing his monologue. So he comes out, next guy goes in and he’s singing too. And I’m like, wait a minute. And I look at the other actors and I’m like, ‘We’re … we’re doing a monologue, right?’ And they go, ‘No, no, we gotta perform a song and dance.’
“Apparently the audition was for a musical.
“And if you know me, I don’t sing. I have the worst voice on the planet. I mean, I can’t even do bad karaoke. I’m awful. It’s a known fact. So I started to panic because I can’t sing and I didn’t have anything prepared.
“I think I was so desperate to be accepted into this New York theater world that I didn’t want to show fear and leave and run away. So I thought for a second: Song and dance, what the heck? I can’t sing. But I can dance! I won a dance contest in junior high school, I was a wannabe rockabilly and I did this rockabilly strut to the Stray Cats and I ended up winning the dance contest, so maybe I can use that. But what song can I sing? And I decided I was going to sing Elvis Presley’s ‘Hound Dog.’
“So it’s finally my turn to go in. And I’m freaking out. But I was like, I gotta commit to this. Just totally commit and go for it. And that’s what I did. I went in, introduced myself. There were five or six people sitting across the table — your stereotypical cliched New York audition where they’re looking at your headshot and resume and they clearly weren’t impressed with my resume. So they said, ‘Go ahead,” and there was no pianist to accompany me, so I was supposed to sing a cappella and dance.
“This was not my world. This was so new and foreign to me. I was a fish out of water. So I’m dancing like a fool, this rockabilly dance, singing Elvis. I didn’t know all the lyrics, I was making them up as I went along.
“Because I could hear the auditions when I was in the waiting room, I knew everyone out there could hear me and I was so self-conscious. I committed so hard, though, I thought maybe I didn’t do all that bad. That it was different and cool.
“But when I finished, it was dead silence. Crickets. I mean, my audition went over like a stale ham sandwich. I couldn’t get out of the room fast enough. They said, ‘Thanks for coming, there’s the door.’
“I bolted through the waiting room, couldn’t look the other actors in the eye, I was so humiliated, so embarrassed. I was thinking, Oh my God, what did I just do?
“And I almost quit the business at that point. I was like, maybe this acting thing isn’t for me.
“This was on top of the fact that I was studying at the time at a pretty popular and famous school and it just wasn’t for me; I had to do all this body movement and there were improv classes and stuff where it was like ‘Act like a tree,’ or ‘What would an apple do?’ And I was like, I don’t get this, it’s not my scene; I grew up playing sports and hunting with my dad. But I was very interested in film.
“So after that audition, I was talking to my casting director friend and I was like, ‘I don’t think this is for me.’ And she said, ‘No, no, no — you’re too good an actor. I’ve got someone who would be perfect for you, go audit his class.’ And she introduced me to a teacher and an acting coach named Wynn Handman and it changed my life.
“His style of acting was right in line with mine, all about the human condition and character work and dealing with all those wounds and emotions and the psychology of it. He was so kind and loving and made you feel safe when you were in your most vulnerable state. And the first thing he said to me when I performed something for him was, ‘You remind me of one of my best friends.’ And I said, ‘Who’s that?’ And he said, ‘Sam Shepard.’ I’m a huge Sam Shepard fan, so he couldn’t have given me a bigger compliment. And I started working as an actor shortly thereafter.
“So long story short, I was feeling really disconnected and he set me on the right path. And the whole Sam Shepard thing goes full circle because I did ‘Black Hawk Down’ with him a few years later and got to spend time with him and Jessica Lange and their kids. So I went from being so discouraged with Hollywood, and the New York theater world can bit a little prickly too, but it all came full circle because I knew I was where I was supposed to be because I was sitting with one of my idols, Sam Shepard, and his wife Jessica Lange, who are two brilliant, genius artists — and they’re both from the Midwest, by the way — and they couldn’t be more normal, couldn’t be more loving or more accepting. They made me feel at home and made me feel like family and I knew I was in the right place and doing the right thing with my life.
“And I never would have had that shift, and had that experience, if I didn’t make a fool of myself at that audition so badly that I wanted to quit.”
Did Van Holt eventually become part of the New York theater scene?
“Nope. I never was accepted into the theater scene. I had a few more auditions, but could never break in. It’s almost harder to break into the theater world out there than it is to break into Hollywood. At the time, I was booking commercials, which was enough for me to live on.
“But I did start working after studying with Wynn. I stayed in New York for a while, I did almost every TV show that filmed there and I guess people started to take notice.”
The takeaway …
“It’s simple: Sometimes your worst moments can be your greatest gifts. It’s about how you recover from those moments. I like to call it the discovery and the recovery.
“If I hadn’t felt so defeated and so embarrassed, I never would have reached out to my friend about quitting and I never would have been directed to a certain acting coach who gave me confidence and the skill set to follow through and start working.”
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