Virginia Beach native Stephon Fuller began his acting journey on September 22, 1993. Thinking outside the box has been a major factor in helping him move forward in the business. From doing frequent drop-offs of photos and postcards to donating his time as a reader in casting offices, Stephon believes in making his career happen rather than waiting for his career to happen.
In addition to working in New York and LA, Stephon has traveled to Miami, Washington DC, Spain, and Japan for bookings. He has appeared on such shows as Frasier; Good Morning, Miami; ER; The OC; CSI; Friends; and Yes, Dear. Stephon has also appeared in the feature film The Terminal and the Robey Theatre Company’s production of For the Love of Freedom: Part III Christophe.
Stephon maintains a journal on his website to share his journey with others at http://stephonfuller.blogspot.com. He thanks Louise, Avis, and Jeff for their love and support.
Originally, I wanted to get involved in music—not as a musician, but in the management side of the business. Living in Virginia Beach, Virginia, it was just difficult to find people that were really in it—although that has really changed now. It’s a bit of a hotspot now. I guess I was a little early for that. A buddy of mine had told me about a teacher there in Virginia Beach. I had kind of procrastinated on the information and I finally, one day, got the courage to call her. She was a bit intimidating. She was a Meisner teacher. I showed up in class three weeks later and I loved it. We were doing the basic repeating, mirror exercises and I just thought it was the coolest thing—a bit confusing, but quite intriguing. We talked about the business and everything and what stuck with me was, “If you have tenacity, you’ll make it.” The teacher discussed that if you have the get-up-and-go and the staying power, you can do it. I’m like, “Okay, the mirror exercise is a little confusing for me right now, but I got tenacity. I’ve got a trunkload of that! So, I’m golden. I’m good.” That was the first night in class. There was no question about whether I felt like I had “it,” or “I’m going to give it a year,” or anything like that. I still don’t set time limits and I still have never questioned it. And that was eleven years ago.
I had a buddy who I met that first night in class. He saw it in me as I saw it in him. He came to me and said, “When are you leaving? On the downlow, y’know?” I said, “I don’t know. I’m not going to put any date on it. I’m just going to bust my butt every day and it’ll happen when it’s supposed to.” Eighteen months later, he and I were on the midnight bus, leaving from Virginia Beach to Port Authority. Didn’t tell the teacher, because we knew that she would be totally against it. She would think we were not ready—and she would probably be right. But, my thinking is, “What would you tell someone that grew up in Queens? Move to Virginia?” She would also recommend that you have five thousand dollars to move. And she also recommended LA more so than New York. I was neither here nor there with that. I wanted to go to New York because I felt, if I came to LA first, I would probably not go to New York. And I wanted to go to New York not just as an actor but as a person. I’m from the suburbs and I kinda wanted that challenge of going to this place that was absolutely insane and seeing if I could last. I didn’t want to run away. I didn’t want to leave because I was scared or I got beat up. I wasn’t there a tremendous amount of time, but I was there for like four years. That’s long enough to get mail there and have an address and have a phone number. I did it. So she would say you have to have five thousand dollars to make a move. I’d say, for me and my reality, that I would never have five thousand dollars, barring robbing a bank or winning the lottery. And I didn’t play the lottery. Well, not that much. So, I had to deal in my reality. She drives a Lexus. I don’t. She’s got her reality. It’s not mine. I had to deal with what my circumstances were. I left and landed in New York with two hundred dollars. I’m at Port Authority with two hundred bucks. I did have a place to stay, but no job or anything. We were at 46th between 9th and 10th in Hell’s Kitchen, USA. That was in ’95.
I had to find a job. My partner Greg—actually William Gregory Lee—he could go into a restaurant and lie and say he had experience waiting tables. I just couldn’t do that. We went everywhere—gyms, restaurants—and just couldn’t get anywhere finding a job. We had gone to the Harley Davidson Café, 56th and 6th and we saw Scott Young, the GM. So, we tell him we’re kids from the ‘burbs—and he can tell—and we’re looking for jobs. He asks if we have experience and we say no. He says, “We really need people with experience.” I said, “Can we get applications anyway?” He kind of looked at me and then he said, “Yes.” We took the applications, filled ’em out, put down references, and went back the next day. I’m thinking I’m going to get a call. No call. On Friday, we had gone to a TGIFridays right across from Letterman and ran into some guy named Rocco. He said, “Hey, yo! Don’t worry about it. We train all our people anyway. There’s another guy named Rocco at another location. Go see him.” We were supposed to go see Rocco on Monday. Sunday night, I start to sweat. We had stopped looking. Our life was hanging in the balance based on Rocco! And of course, Rocco dissed us beyond belief: “Hey, I don’t know who sent you guys here, but hey, I don’t know nothin’ about it.” I had to laugh. I thought, “I’m going back to Scott. What else am I gonna do?”
I said, “Scott, we’ll do anything.” He’s like, “Oh, I know.” I’m like, “No! You don’t know. We’ll do anything.” He kind of sized me up and looked at me, went downstairs to talk to someone, came back up and said, “Come in tomorrow at four-thirty, wear black.” I was just ecstatic. It was bussing tables, which was the worst thing ever. We were making three dollars an hour plus tips. Theme restaurant in ’95. It was just crazy. I had already made the decision that I was not going home—I had ridden the bus home a couple of times and it was just heartache—until I could fly. I ended up working more and hustling through, and made enough money to fly home for Labor Day. But I rode the bus. The thing was, I could fly. I had the choice. I saw all that money and I had to lock my dates in to fly, but to get on the bus, I could just go to Port Authority, buy a ticket, and go. Ride overnight and I’m home. The key was that I created a choice for myself.
Scott came to me and said, “We’ve been looking at you and we think you’d be a really good server.” I had to trust this guy who was paying me three bucks an hour for the first forty hours a week and then dropping me down to server rate—like two thirty-five—after that. No overtime. And he knew I knew the deal. I was sure he was going to keep me on through the summer and then fire me because I made noise, I was a problem, I asked questions. I was skeptical, but respectfully skeptical, let’s say. I just didn’t trust him. Well, he knew I didn’t drink. He knew I’d never drank in my life and that was a concern for him, having me as a server. He said, “We want you to get going on this,” so I went and bought the Mr. Boston Guide for drinks. I didn’t even know that beer was different shades. I didn’t know the difference between a Beck’s and a Bud Light. It’s all the same to me: It’s just beer, right? He ended up promoting me early and I actually bused tables, the morning shift. At 4:45, I was a buser. At 5:05, I was a server. That first day I worked as a server, my last table gave me four Mets tickets. I took Greg and gave the other two to some kids. The worst job I’ve ever had in my life became the best job I’ve ever had, outside of acting. That job was a complete dream.
How did you get your first manager?
I did workshops. I did mailings. I did drop-offs. And, in New York, I played the freelance game. I was freelancing with a dozen commercial agencies. I was working it like a girl on the corner. I was everywhere. There were some auditions, I’d get five calls. I just worked it to the hilt.
Greg and I had been getting ready to make our transition from Virginia to New York. We started doing mailings. He was mailing mostly to New York. I was mailing mostly to LA. It was kind of a toss-up, what was going to happen. He ended up getting a call from a manager in New York and she wanted him to come up for meetings. He wanted me to go, but I couldn’t afford to just go as the cool friend. If I went, I had to go with the attitude that I was going to get seen too. I called that manager and she said, “Yeah, come on up.” So, we went up, we met her, we both did monologues which where completely horrible, and she wanted to sign both of us.
We had found out about her from the Conference of Personal Managers’ guide and she seemed like a nice manager. She wanted to sign us, she gave us contracts, we were freaked out. She wanted us to move to New York in two weeks. It took us a bit longer. I’ll never forget I was regularly going down to North Carolina to audition for the Fincannons. On the way back—on April 22nd of 1994—I was listening to Sandra Bullock in some interview. I remember her talking about her story. I just remember her saying, “So, then I moved to New York.” I answered the radio and said, “I am too.” I got home that night, I called Greg: “Dude, it’s time.” He was feeling the same thing.
As for signing with an agent, Buchwald was on my list from the very beginning. I met with Michael Raymen and they passed on me. And they should have. I was green. I didn’t know what I was doing. But I knew that that’s who I wanted to be with. Three years later, I ended up signing with Michael Raymen. I still don’t think that he knows that I was the same guy. I had dreadlocks when I first met him in New York and when I signed with him, I didn’t. And back then I was going by my given name, Bryan Fuller, but when I met with him again, I was Stephon. I had been doing the freelance game in New York and I was ready to lock it down. I didn’t want to sign with any of the people I was freelancing with because I didn’t want to compete with a hustler like me. So, I started to look at who doesn’t freelance: Buchwald. That was the one.
I knew there was a workshop where I could meet Michael. I did that workshop and I said—and I kind of hated doing this—when we all introduced ourselves in the workshop, “Can I tell you what’s going on with me in thirty seconds?” It was a really good time with a bit of stuff going on. I had the whole thing kind of rehearsed. He called the next day and I went in for a meeting. I had a mini-bio of what was going on. I had a page of all the casting directors that I had met, had callbacks for, or had booked through. I had six copies of them. I didn’t know how many agents I’d be meeting. I went in. There was this oak table. I passed out these handouts like a Fortune-500 executive. I remember what was supposed to happen when I passed out these handouts: I was supposed to hear, “Hm.” And I heard that! It worked. They called within two hours of the meeting and said, “Stephon, we want to work with you. We want to do this.” I was so happy.
What made you choose Los Angeles?
Greg and I lived with these two girls that we barely knew—there was a mutual friend that knew we were looking to move to New York—for what was supposed to be six weeks. It ended up being four months. We shared a bed in Hell’s Kitchen for four months, which was interesting. We were working with this manager, and I gave her space, but I didn’t feel hands-on enough. We were getting auditions, but I didn’t hardly ever feel like I was right for the stuff that I was going in for. Greg was coming really close on some big things and he went out to LA. In the beginning of ’98, I was in Miami doing a Wendy’s commercial when Greg booked a pilot in LA. It got picked up in May and Greg told his agent he was going back to New York to visit an old friend. She asked him if his friend acted and he told her that I did. She asked, “When’s he moving to LA? I’ll meet with him.” That got the wheels turning. A couple weeks later, I did a mailing. I got calls, I flew out, I had meetings, and I got a commercial agent. I had three meetings with theatrical agents and each offered me a second meeting when I actually moved to LA. They didn’t seem to really believe I was going to do it. I told them I would be in LA September 1st. No one believed that, including me. Let me tell you, I was in LA July 28th. I got my agents from mailings and I’m still with them six years later.
How do you do make your mailings stand out?
It starts with the outside of the envelope. The party starts there. It’s marketing. It’ll make you feel something. I could use what everyone’s using—the goldenrod colored envelope—or I could use a white one and put graphics on it: “New in town!” “From New York!” “Just booked!” Whatever. Which one are you going to open? You want to see what’s going on with this guy who’s new in town and just booked. That envelope is buzzing.
Hopefully that, and the writing of the cover letter—even when I didn’t have a lot of stuff going on—makes someone feel like, “Wow, let’s give this guy ten minutes and see what he’s all about.” I think that is really what helped me get in the door in LA. Same thing in New York. I’d walk around and drop off my pictures. I didn’t mail anything unless I had to. New York, you can cover the town easier, but it can still be done in LA. I just think there’s a lot to be said for being “out there.” You never know what you’ll run into. But y’know, I do it all. I do the mailings, I do the workshops, I do the drop-offs, I do the postcards, I do all of it. And I don’t tie results to any of it. I figure there’s no way that I can put this much out in the universe and not get what I’m after. It’ll come back in whatever form.
What is your favorite thing about being an actor?
The playing. They can dress you up and give you a gun but no one really gets hurt. When I was in Spain, I shot an AK-47. It had blanks in it, but after I shot that thing, I felt dangerous. I was freaked out by the power of it. I had never shot a gun! I like the fantasy: being drunk on stage when I’ve never been drunk, going to these sometimes dark places, doing things that I would never do or have never done in real life. That’s most of the joy for me.
I love the business. I don’t ever remember not knowing how to do the business-side of this business well. I come from a family business. I’m not close to my dad, but I guess being around that—I worked for my family for fifteen years—I learned a lot. To be honest, from my father, I learned what not to do. The challenge of finding out how to do something that seems impossible is exciting. I’ll start outside the box and I usually work with opposites. If this is the way it’s done, I’m going start at the other end and kind of strip it down and see what works. That works so well for me.
I was talking to a guy at a get-together the other night and he was shocked that I would drop off a picture. It took me like twenty minutes to convince this guy. He had asked, “What would you do if you had auditioned for this show, didn’t book, but they called you in every time after that—four additional times—straight to producers last season but you haven’t been in at all this season?” I said, “Me? I would drop a picture off to them on Monday.” He was like, “You mean, just go over there?” I said, “Yeah. Go over there,” and I said the address, and he was shocked that I knew the addresses of casting people around town. I said, “Yeah, I know. It’s kind of sick.” He couldn’t imagine going over there. Look, there’s a lot of reasons why you won’t get called in. Usually it’s not because they don’t think you can do the job. They have an infinite amount of choices and you may not be one of the first five people out of their mouth. But if they see you next week at Ralph’s, maybe they’ll stop and say, “Got a picture on you? You would be perfect for this thing!”
Now, I don’t recommend anything I do, but I make no qualms about doing it. Someone that doesn’t draw on the same things that I do—in deciding to try these things—could get themselves in trouble and do what actors aren’t supposed to do. I feel like I’m the luckiest guy in the world. It definitely hasn’t been easy, but it’s been fun. And with all the hustling I do, I always pay the agency commission for the jobs I book on my own. Of course! There’s no question. Do they come after me for reimbursement of courier fees when I bomb an audition? No. We’re a team.
I remember calling a friend and complaining about a show like Friends: “They’re in New York. How do they never have any black people or people of color on Friends? How do they do that? Two of the creators did time in New York. They were writing theatre in New York. They know the deal!” Later that day I got an audition. For Friends. It was a couple of lines and I ended up booking it. Years later, I saw that episode of Friends on-screen inside the Hollywood Video. I got so happy. I thought, “Man, I am in the right business!”
What do you wish someone had told you at the beginning of your career?
Nothing. I made it a point to not ask anyone anything. I know what I know firsthand. Hearsay can be tricky. Learning everything firsthand helped me learn what’s the setup at CBS Radford. It helped me know when to walk away without getting the job done. When I went to do my drop-off for The Terminal, there was a slot in the door. I didn’t get to hand my picture off like I wanted to. I didn’t want to walk in and have someone say, “Did you see the slot in the door, asshole?” So, I learned firsthand that this was a place where I could slip the picture in the slot. Now, I thought, “They’re gonna walk on our pictures!” Of course, I wasn’t thinking about that when I booked the job and got to work with Tom Hanks and Steven Spielberg.
Who are your favorite actors?
Denzel Washington. His work just in Malcolm X, Training Day, and Glory shows you he’s a chameleon. I like Kathy Bates. She plays with comedy like it’s a drama. She’s so serious, but it’s always funny with her. It’s that twist. Love Robert De Niro. Now, Denzel’s Denzel, but watching De Niro’s filmography, I just love what he does. Joan Allen is another great one. She’s just really good at her job.
This interview was conducted on November 8, 2004, and it originally appeared in Acting Qs: Conversations with Working Actors by Bonnie Gillespie and Blake Robbins, available at Amazon.