Detroit native excited to be part of ‘American Auto’ sitcom
Detroit native Tye White left a career in business to become an actor.
“I was working at Chase Bank. I was on phone with a buddy. … We were talking, and something came up about retirement,” recalls White, 38. “I'm like, ‘Yeah, it's 44 years until we retire.' We both laughed and it was like, ‘Oh God, seriously?' We were 22, 23 and talking about retirement. … I was unhappy in my career. I was doing well — very well — but I was very unsatisfied, so I said, ‘Nope, that's it.' The next month, I quit and moved to California. That's the abbreviated version.”
An alumnus of Brother Rice High School in Bloomfield Hills and the University of Michigan, White had no prospects, no connections, no friends or family in the entertainment industry. But he went for it anyway.
“At the end of the day, I could spend my life wondering about ‘What if?'” he says. “I'd rather try it and regret it afterwards … as opposed to looking back on something and wishing I did it then. Life is fleeting, life is fast, man — I wanted to give it a shot.”
White, who lives in Los Angeles with his wife, Rania, and their baby girl, Inaayah, had an uncredited role in 2009's “The People I Slept With,” then worked in independent projects and short films, and made guest appearances on various TV shows. His first major role was 2014's “Drumline: The New Beat.” He played Jason Simpson on FX's “The People v. O.J. Simpson: American Crime Story,” which also featured Detroit Country Day School alumnus Courtney B. Vance, in 2016. From 2016-18, he was a series regular on OWN's “Greenleaf.”
Now White stars in the comedy series “American Auto,” which officially debuts on NBC Tuesday, Jan. 4, after two sneak episodes ran in mid-December. Set in Detroit, the show centers around Payne Motors, a 100-yearold automaker struggling to remain competitive. The new CEO, Katherine Hastings (Ana Gasteyer, “Mean
Girls”), comes from the pharmaceutical industry and knows next to nothing about the auto industry. White plays Jack, whom he calls the hero of the show.
“He’s the everyman, the everyday guy,” White explains. “He’s a guy who got thrust into a world he’s not familiar with at all. He’s a blue-collar guy … in a white-collar world. He’s the eyes into that world that people don’t see. A lot of times we assume the people running these Fortune 500 companies are far more intelligent and capable than us, know more about the industry than we do — that’s why they’re running these companies.
“Then you bring a blue-collar guy in there who actually knows a lot more about cars than virtually everyone except Cyrus (Michael Benjamin Washington, “Ratched”). I hope he’s the one (viewers) can align themselves with and say, ‘If I was a character in this world, I would probably be Jack looking at how everybody’s screwing up and these are the people running a Fortune 500 company.’”
White decided to audition after he learned “American Auto” was the brainchild of Justin Spitzer, creator of the workplace comedy “Superstore.” Being on the show “nailed a lot of things for me,” he says.
“I haven’t really gotten a chance to dive into comedy yet,” White explains. “It was an opportunity to delve into something I knew I would enjoy, working with people I admire — I wanted to be fulfilled and happy going to work. You work on these dramas, but you’re fulfilled in a different way. A lot of times, it’s heavy; you go into work and it’s a murder scene. … You have to get into that mindset. Here, I go into work to have fun.
“You want to obviously do a good job and make people laugh,” he adds. “Part of doing our job well is making each other laugh and enjoying each other because, at that point, our chemistry and our timing pays off in a scene.”
As the only cast member of this Detroit-based sitcom to have Detroit roots, White serves as unofficial consultant to the writers regarding Detroit.
“Trust me, I’ll fact-check ’em,” he says. “If someone says ‘soda,’ I’ll check ’em and correct ’em and tell ’em it’s ‘pop.’ If we mention chips, it’s Better Made. If we mention pop, it’s Faygo.”
His family’s very excited about “American Auto” — more than any other project White’s been in.
“Everyone was telling me what excited them about this show when they found it was from the creators of ‘Superstore,’ when they found out I was working with (Gasteyer), when they found out it was about cars, when they found out it was set in Detroit,” he says. “That’s the most exciting part of this project. If you’re from Michigan, it’s nice to see your home town represented on TV. A lot of shows are set in New York, LA, Chicago, Atlanta. Not many shows are set in Detroit. In that respect, it’s nice for people from Michigan.”