‘30 Rock’ actor still wears many hats
Trucker hat aficionado and actor/comedian Judah Friedlander is known for his deadpan brand of comedy and unique look. If you haven’t had the opportunity to catch his stand-up routine on the New York City comedy circuit, you’d recognize him from his role as writer Frank Rossitano on 30 Rock and from films such as Meet the Parents, Along Came Polly and The Wrestler. Friedlander, who has a new book out of drawings and cartoons titled If the Raindrops United, talks about his hats and other important issues as this week’s celebrity NFL picker:
Who do you think is the best quarterback to have never won a Super Bowl? Dan Fouts or Doug Flutie, complete opposite types. Fouts an amazing passer, an amazing arm. I don’t even know if he had legs, the guy, but what an arm. Flutie was amazing. … Went to play in Canada, came back as an old man and was still amazing.
Why do you think the USA calls soccer “soccer” and the rest of the world calls it football?
The main reason is that in our country football is a massive sport, so you can’t call soccer the same thing, you have to call it something else. The other thing that’s weird is why is football called football? American football should probably be called catchball or handball or something.
“30 Rock” kind of parodies working at “Saturday Night Live.” What aspect of the NFL would you want to focus on working on a parody show?
I would actually like to do a funny but dark satire on the negative sides of the NFL. My goal if I’m doing that wouldn’t be to shame them, but it would be really to discuss big issues. Concussions, injuries, cheerleaders not getting paid. You know, that’s ridiculous. But my hope would be to get people not just laughing at things but thinking about it instead of just shaming people.
Your “30 Rock” character wore a different hat in every episode. What inspired you to switch them up so often?
On 30 Rock I made all the hats that I wore, every one. The character I played, Frank, was a wise- cracking guy, always trying to cause trouble, but also … probably kind of shy. So he would use the hats as a way to sort of be like an icebreaker conversation-starter kind of thing. Then he would also use them as a dig to Liz Lemon. A lot of my hats I wore on that show were hats that I thought Frank wanted to make a sketch but that Liz Lemon always rejected. So then he would just make them as a hat to sort of try to get back at her that way in sort of a passiveaggressive kind of annoying way. Or as in a hopeful way: “Hey, if other people thought the hat was funny, maybe it should be a sketch and you should put it on.”