Rich Sommer Talks 'Fairhaven,' 'Mad Men,' His Mancrush On Chris Messina

Well, I was shooting a movie called The Giant Mechanical Man that December, which also starred Chris Messina, and Chris and I were chatting about how he was off to do this other movie in Massachusetts, but that one of the lead guys had just been forced to drop out and just kind of said, ‘Would you read the script?’ So I read it and I not only love the story, but I also had a deep crush on Chris Messina and wanted the opportunity to work more closely with him than I did in Mechanical Man, so it was a sort of a no brainer.

Well, I mean, it affected it in many kinds of ways. Often times, the writer on a set gets sort of marginalized and pushed off to the side, especially in movies, and in this instance, obviously, the people who wrote the story for the film were two of the three actors acting most of it out. So, it was very nice to have the writers always available with any questions of line changes or, you know, what kind of freedom we had within a scene. It was entirely in their hands. We didn’t have to check with anybody. They just would go, ‘Yeah, try it’ and that was a remarkably easy way to work. We had a ball making this movie. It was awesome.

I mean as far as like scenes go, I actually have a couple, but one of my favorites is the conversation that I have with Chris about fatherhood. It’s a very honest conversation that really is more Chris and Rich than it is Sam and Dave. I also love that scene with Nataly Gold in the boat. I think that she really was perfect for that character and sort of gave everything that I wanted for Sam in that moment, which was someone who, even when Sam was in a remarkably embarrassing position, looks at him and says, ‘It’s ok. It’s really… It’s ok.’ And I thought she was just fantastic.

I mean, for me, the first time I saw him act in person—I’d seen him in movies playing many roles that I had auditioned for—when someone else gets a role, you’re like, ‘What? Why did I not get the part?’ With Messina, it happened a couple times and each and every time, it was like, ‘Oh! Of course I didn’t get the part because this guy is amazing and he’s completely doing it the way it was supposed to be done and not the way I did it in the audition.’ The first time I got to see him act in person was in The Giant Mechanical Man. It was a day where I wasn’t working, so I just went to watch what they were doing and I said to the person next to me, ‘He feels a little bit like Brando. You don’t know whether he’s going to punch you or f--k you.’ Like you’re either going to make love or you’re going to get the shit kicked out of you. This is sort of what he brings to every role and I really find that exciting.

We’re shooting episode 5 right now. Today’s the last day of shooting before the short holiday break. What can you expect for Harry? Well, I can simply say that Harry is the same man he always has been and, as he’s gotten more and more powerful as a firm, it’s given him more and more — this is referring more to last season — but it’s given him more and more opportunity to kind of embarrass himself. So nothing will ever change for Harry. He will always be the biggest jackass in the office.

Improv is sort of where I thought I would end up for some reason. I mean, if you were crazy enough to think you could make a living in acting, you may as well think you could make a living in improvising, but I really was sure that I was somehow gonna find a way to monetize improv. I did improv in the city in a comedy sports center, crazy workshops and then when I got to New York, I started immediately training with a [troupe] and went through all their levels, lived in a house for a short while and then I sort of capped out on improv. I had been doing it well and steady from 1994 to 2004. That was all I really focused on. That was all I cared about with improv and when I got to New York and started auditioning for commercials, I found that luckily the 11 years that I had put into it really, really paid off. I quickly started booking commercials and one thing led to another.