Michael Kelly, Unscripted
Although Michael Kelly may be best known for playing the villainous and unsettling Doug Stamper in Netflix’s premier and wildly successful series House of Cards - which landed him four Emmy Nominations, in real life he’s a good guy, who insists that he’s a working actor and not a moviestar, and who shows-up and participates in and for the local community.
…And, pressed to reveal which of the many characters Michael has played he feels is actually closest in personality to his own, Michael says it’s the role of CIA Agent Mike November in the popular Jack Ryan Prime Video series - which Michael plays alongside his real-life buddies John Krasinski, who plays Jack Ryan, and Wendell Pierce. In their latest reprise, they take up the action in the Tom Clancy thriller Jack Ryan: Ghost War. The film is a fascinating, suspenseful, and action-packed rendition of the Jack Ryan franchise, and has already won the approval of the large Jack Ryan fanbase and the acclaim of new audiences. “It’s still work, but I feel like I understand Mike November, that we have a similar sense of humor, and getting to do it with friends is like icing on the cake!”
On any sunny day Michael bombs around town with the top down in the white with red trim and red upholstried 1965 Mercury Comet Caliente Convertible that was passed down from his wife’s uncle back in 2018. When he parked it at the Bedford Post for this interview, and someone who Michael did not know but who recognized Michael’s bodacious wheels ran into the restaurant declaring ‘Michael, isn’t that your convertible? It’s pouring outside!’, he took it all in stride and with good humor. And when he opened the top and discovered a mouse that had just given birth to a half-dozen pups that had nested in a collection of fibers it had wrested from the convertible top, Michael just smiled, caringly moved the mouse and pups on a piece of cardboard into the woods, and commented, plainly, “I guess I can’t remember the last time I put the top up!”
Michael grew up in a suburb of Atlanta called Lawrenceville, where his family moved in the summer before Michael started fifth grade. He went to public school, and admits to having been the class clown… But he also had a job starting when he was 14, working for a builder who was a family-friend and neighbor, helping to define the work-ethic he says he carries though life today. I was the oldest of four, and my eight-year-younger brother, Andrew, is still my best friend. The four of us have always been super tight. I went to Coastal Carolina University and, to put it bluntly, I was not an academic. I had a hard time with courses in accounting and business management, and didn’t really get interested academically until I started to study philosophy and explore other ways of thinking. That led me to take some political science classes, which I found fascinating. And then to believe I wanted to go on to law school - and to major in Politcal Science as a means to that end. …An advisor suggested I’d scheduled too many required courses in one semester and suggested an acting class, saying if I wanted to be a lawyer it would be good for me. So I did. and we were assigned to pick a scene partner, given two weeks to learn the part, and then required to perform in class. I raised my hand volunteering to go first…and as soon as I started performing, I knew I wanted to be an actor. I loved the feeling of performing! And then, to seal the deal, the professor asked me to stay after the class and told me that I had ‘something special’. I stayed a fifth year at college to take more acting classes and was the first person to graduate with a Performing Arts degree from Coastal Carolina. …To be a good actor you have to be willing to make a total ass of yourself, and be willing to fail,” Michael proclaims, “I was good at both of those things.”
“When I graduated I took a full-time gig with a children’s theater tour group, and travelled around with four colleagues jammed in a van, mostly in the Carolinas, doing the prescribed routine day-after-day. After a year they offered me tour manager with the troupe, which basically just meant you were the driver, and I turned them down. I knew I wanted more. …My mom got me a call through a friend of a friend of a friend with some Hollywood producer who was willing to take a call, but when I got the guy on the phone, ready to take notes and everything, all he had to say was that if I wanted to be an actor I had to move to Los Angeles or New York. That was it!. …So, in 1993 or ‘94, after a fi nal summer of carpentry, with about $300 in my pocket, I did move to New York. Or actually my aunt’s house in Upper Montclair, and then with a friend from high school into an apartment in Hoboken, and then to an apartment in Manhattan with a roommate from college… and I roomed with those guys, in various apartments, for the next dozen or so years - until I moved-in with Karyn, who is now my wife.”
“ …I was the proverbial starving actor, but I was an actor! I played guitar in a Southern Rock band, with two friends from Georgia, called the Home Grown Lopes, and later helped form the band Leroy Justice. We got all kinds of gigs, and once even played CBGBs for New Years! I worked as a waiter and in a catering business, did construction, spent a good chunk of time as a bike messenger, and then I took a job in a consignment shop in Chelsea because the owner would let me run out to auditions whenever I could get one. I did absolutely everything I could, and I believe my work ethic is the biggest factor in why I’ve succeeded. I was relentless in my pursuit of work. I sent headshots everywhere. I worked on more independent films than I can remember. And I volunteered at the Actor’s Studio, where filmmaker and theatrical director Arthur Penn took me under his wing. Arthur was doing a play and invited me to come understudy all the male parts and be the stage manager while doing so. When the guy who was going to play the Sheriff’s Crony couldn’t do it, I got the part - although Arthur said I’d still have to stage manage as well. …As a result, in my late twenties, I became one of the youngest ‘members’ of the Actors Studio, and that prestigious credential proved to be incredibly helpful in my pursuit of work..”
“I started getting TV commercials and voiceover work. Then, in 2000, I landed my first significant role on TV playing an FBI Agent in a special unit dealing with cyberthreats on a Paramount show called Level 9, but, rest assured, I didn’t quit my job at the consignment shop until a few years later, when my agent told me I had to!”
“I don’t really think of myself as an artist - and I’m tremendously impressed with people who can paint or compose music. I’m a working actor who repeats words that others have written - and, sure, I’m going to play the character in my own way and bring whatever I can to the role, but somehow that seems like a different thing to me than actually creating the art. …And I don’t think of myself as a TV or movie star, either. I feel entirely lucky that I get to do what I love - what I need to do - and make a living at it! I feel like I get to go to work rather than have to go to work, and I love every second of it! It completes me, and I’m totally grateful!” Michael pronounces. “A lot of folks who approach me are like ‘I know you’, but can’t exactly place me as an actor. And while most of those who do know me as an actor say something like ‘hey, you’re the guy from House of Cards’, I don’t believe I’ve been typecast as a villainous character. I do think I’ve been good at selecting roles I can play well, and I feel incredibly lucky to be getting a wide array of parts to play in all different kinds of productions. Sure I have dreams of playing a major role in a film directed by Spielberg, Christopher Nolan, or David Fincher. But I mean it when I say I’m thrilled to be a working actor, and I’m very proud of the myriad characters I’ve played.”
“Getting to work with Morgan Freeman on Lioness still stands out as one of my highlights. We got to really know each other during the second season of filming down in Fort Worth, and used to read lines together and just hang- out when we had down time. Morgan is very funny, has an unbelievable memory about everything, and brings an exemplary work ethic and skill-set to the craft. …And you gotta know that I spent every minute of every day getting prepared for my part and working extra-hard to feel qualified to be on the same set as Morgan. He’s one of the all-time greats!”
“My method is not that different now from the first play I read in college at Coastal Carolina,” Michael elucidates. “I spend an inordinate amount of time memorizing the part, recording lines, hearing them played back, and running the lines over and over again. I often work on character development by thinking about a person I’ve met along the way who fits the same bill, and trying to consider what that person, or a given type of person, would do or say in the given situation. I never read with my wife and almost never practice with any other person, and I’m not solely a method actor even though I was heavily influenced by my time at the Actors Studio. And I never really feel I’m going to be able to pull a part off until the exact moment that shooting starts. We shot House of Cards in Baltimore and I used to spend the entire trip for the seven years that series ran, all alone in the car on my trips back and forth from New York, just running lines over and over again.”
“…That, and listen to baseball games on the radio,” Michael smiles. “I’m a die-hard Atlanta Braves fan. Have been since I was a kid growing up in Atlanta. …My dad, who I was incredibly close with, died about two years ago, but I’m very happy to be able to get down to Atlanta pretty often to see my 78-year old mom and to pitch-in whenever I can with the charity she started and runs, called the Thanks Mom & Dad Fund - which is aimed at helping older Americans, including efforts to assist seniors in staying in their homes as long as they’re able to do so. I make all sorts of appearances to support Thanks Mom & Dad, and I’ve even gone to Washington to lobby on behalf of The Older Americans Act and Thanks Mom & Dad. …I’m proud to think we’ve actually made a difference, and that I’ve played some small part!”
“We moved to Bedford about four years ago, after I’d lived in the City for over twenty years. We absolutely love it here. The acting industry has changed so much, and particularly since Covid, that I can be home for almost all the facets of being an actor - except shooting the actual production. I can Zoom with a director or showrunner for consideration on most jobs. …I’ve made lots of friends in the community of fellow actors and folks like songwriter Sam Hollander, Renaissance man Jonny Cournoyer - who shot this spread, the dynamic duo who run oHHo, Nicola and James Stephenson, Jenn Streicher at Duchess, the great folks at The Playhouse and Bedford 234, and Jon Ruti and Katie Boiano who run Rivay. I even wore Rivay’s clothing on the Jack Ryan press tour and in a couple of other movies because I like the clothing and Jon and Katie so much. Jon said to me once he thinks of RIvay as “CIA chic” and I thought wait a minute?! It’s inspiring to be surrounded by it all. And I’m truly impressed with all the important charities and organizations that are based here - like Endeavor and Bedford 2030 - and I try to show-up at as many charitable functions as I can to help support all the great work people are doing and to contribute to the community and the ethos of the town. …I always want to do everything I can to make everything and everyone around me a little better - and I’m motivated by the thought that I can always do more! …And I feel like Bedford just gets better and better every day! I’m really delighted to live here!”
As proud as I am to have accomplished many of the goals I’ve set for myself in my career, the roles that define me and that I’m most proud of are being husband to my wonderful wife Karyn and father to the two most amazing kids ever. Like my folks did for me, I constantly stress to my children to follow their dreams.”
