No Bull: Point Park grad secures CBS role
John Siciliano gives ‘kudos’ for hiring amputee to play amputee
As entrances go, this was pretty great.
In the closing moments of a recent episode of “Bull,” the hit show on CBS about a group of legal trial experts, one of the team lets herself into a New York City apartment. The camera takes in bottles of prescription pills, beer empties, a photograph of a woman named Danny and a man, smiling, in their FBI uniforms.
Then, it rests on a framed newspaper headline: “FBI Agent Takes Three Bullets Saving Partner In Drug Shoot Out.”
Danny looks around, unpacks a box of household sundries and calls out to whomever lives there. Silence.
Then, the man in the photo steps out of the bedroom. He’s wearing shorts, a T-shirt and a prosthetic right leg. He taps his smart phone and salsa music begins to play. They dance.
Just like that, John Siciliano was back on television.
“Kudos to CBS, hiring an amputee to play an amputee,” Mr. Siciliano said recently. “I can’t say how important that is.” He is a member of SAG/AFTRA’s Affirmative Action & Diversity committee.
Mr. Siciliano, 46, grew up in Springdale, where sports was a big part of life. But he also wanted to be an actor, and at what was then Point Park College (“It was just three buildings then!”), he studied theater and journalism and was captain of the soccer team.
A car accident in 1993 changed his life. Riding in a Jeep with friends in Squirrel Hill near the end of his freshman year, his car was hit by a drunken driver. Doctors took his leg above the knee.
“I was an athlete. I thought I would never run again,” said Mr. Siciliano, who would go on to compete in the 1996 international Paralympic Games in Atlanta.
It started with a brochure. The cover featured a sprinter named Todd Schaffhauser. “That inspired me beyond belief,” said Mr. Siciliano, who said his focus on athletics helped him avoid some of the pitfalls — addiction, depression — faced by Harrison, his recurring character on “Bull.”
Mr. Siciliano said he’s not at liberty to detail Harrison’s relationship with Danny, played by Jaime Lee Kirchner, beyond “she feels like she has to take care of me, and Harrison doesn’t really want taken care of at this moment in the plot.”
His salsa moment came in the Oct. 2 episode, and Tuesday’s show at 9 p.m. teases more detail. “Bull” is part of CBS’ ratings juggernaut on Tuesday nights, picking up more than 14 million viewers over seven days.
Mr. Siciliano said he returned to Pittsburgh this year — most of his belongings are in storage in Los Angeles — when his father, Michael, was hospitalized with heart problems. He and his girlfriend, Kiki Lucas, a dancer and jazz professor at Point Park University, live on Mount Washington. He has been working as a fitness trainer at Club One and Tuesday begins teaching a class on acting in front of the camera at Point Park.
In addition, Mr. Siciliano will be at the University of Pittsburgh (Room 324) on Oct. 26 for a Steeltown Entertainment Spotlight diversity initiative event. The program is from 6:30-8:30 p.m. and tickets are pay what you wish.
In between work in Pittsburgh, Mr. Siciliano has been flying to New York to shoot “Bull.” It’s not his first network gig; he began playing a one-legged homeless man on “ER” and has had other roles on “NCIS,” “Blue Bloods,” “NCIS: Los Angeles,” “Grey’s Anatomy” “LAX,” “Scrubs” and “The Young and the Restless.”
Life has been a challenge on many levels for Mr. Siciliano to reach his goals as an athlete, and an actor. After his initial rehabilitation, he talked his way into meeting Mr. Schaffhauser, “the guy on the brochure.” Through him, he met two other important men in his life: physical therapist David
Balsey and prosthetist Mike Joyce.
They got him running again, although the journey wasn’t without its potholes. Twice in big meets, his leg came loose (Mr. Siciliano explained that prosthetics have come a long way since then) and, in Atlanta, he actually lost his leg, and fell.
But he picked it and finished the race.
His training led to more than competing internationally. Mr. Siciliano became an advocate and trainer for others learning to literally get back onto their feet again.
He has worked with soldiers who lost limbs, one of whom was an Army sergeant who would one day go running with President George W. Bush. He helped train athletes who, like he, were adjusting to specially made sports prosthetics.
After returning to Point Park (in his first student production back, he was Wilbur the pig in “Charlotte’s Web”), and graduation in 1997, he learned of a program, “Swim With Mike,” that grants scholarships to formerly able-bodied athletes. The program was in Los Angeles, at the University of Southern California.
Could there be a better place for an aspiring actor? He would earn his MFA at USC while writing a play echoing elements of his life, which debuted on stage in New York City.
“Not everyone can identify with losing a leg, but everyone can identify with loss,” he said.
Upon graduation, Mr. Siciliano was featured in numerous national platforms: People magazine, USA Today, in a segment broadcast on CBS. Yet he struggled to find an agent. Eventually, he would find representation with KMR Talent’s Gail Williamson.
Mr. Siciliano earned his SAG card when he was sent to audition for the role on “ER.” “I said ‘What am I going to be, a doctor? A paramedic?’ They said ‘Oh no, John, you’re going to audition for the crazy, onelegged homeless guy.’ ”
“But you know what? I’m an actor. Act. I did my homework.”
That’s something he plans to emphasize to his students at Point Park: “Walk into that [audition] room prepared. Preparation is everything.”
That goes for diversity opportunities as well, he added: “I’m a big fan that if the character is written with a disability, give a crack to that actor with a disability. But also, that the actor with a disability does not deserve anything but an opportunity.
“You have to do your homework.”
Maria Sciullo: msciullo@post-gazette.com or @MariaSciulloPG.