It is inevitable that actor Greg Kinnear's name is going to come up in any discussion of actor-comedian Joel McHale. Both became widely known through the irreverent and popular E! entertainment channel TV show now known as The Soup. And both have moved beyond it.
Kinnear used the show as a launching pad to become a film star. And McHale, who appears Saturday night in a comedy concert at Baltimore's Meyerhoff Symphony Hall as he continues his winning weekly performance with The Soup, is starting to break out on screens big and small as well.
This week at its Los Angeles presentation, NBC announced that one of its new fall series, The Community, will feature McHale alongside comedy veteran Chevy Chase. While any weekly network series is enough for most performers to get excited about, even better is the fact that McHale's character looks to have some bite and more than one dimension to it. He plays an unscrupulous attorney facing disbarment unless he goes back to school and earns an authentic undergraduate degree rather than the bogus one he had been passing himself off with.
McHale will also be appearing on the big screen in October in the Steven Soderbergh dark comedy thriller The Informant, starring Matt Damon. McHale plays an FBI agent in the film alongside Scott Bakula - not bad company.
Meanwhile, he will keep appearing in concert as a stand-up comedian every weekend until August, when The Community goes into daily production in Los Angeles, where he lives.
"When the chance to do The Soup came up, I looked at the pedigree of Greg Kinnear and thought if I could [have] 5 percent of his career, I would feel like, 'OK, I'm doing all right,' " McHale said in a telephone interview this week.
McHale said he came to Los Angeles eight years ago with the goal of acting in TV or films, but The Soup came along first and has been a blessing, giving him positive TV exposure and the chance to present a smart, savvy and ironic persona steeped in pop culture.
"The great thing about The Community: I actually get to do some acting," the 37-year-old performer says. "That's why I came out here eight years ago - my goal was to do that. And The Soup was more like, 'Hey, look at this, that would be fun, and I'm not doing anything else.' At that point, I was employing myself with commercials. And I looked at what Greg Kinnear had done, and thought this could be all right."
It has been more than all right. McHale has made his role as host of The Soup into a kind of running commentary on the craziness of television. As cheesy as things can get on The Soup, at its best, the show also helps viewers see TV from points of view different from those that the people making television would want them to see it from. And much of that is due to McHale who cleverly mocks the medium in an always engaging way.
"There are times when we do stuff, and I go, 'All right, that was just silly and stupid and dirty,' " he says. "And there are other times where I go, 'Oh, my gosh, that really was brilliantly written - not by me, but by one of the writers - and I think this is really good. And I am just really glad to be part of it."
If you go
Joel McHale performs at 8 p.m. Saturday at the Meyerhoff Symphony Hall, 1212 Cathedral St. Tickets are $32.59-$39.50. Call 410-783-
8000 or go to ticketmaster.com.
