On the Verge: Mike Mitchell

Mike Mitchell loves comedy. Just look at that smiling face. That is the face of a man who likes to laugh. It’s also the face of a man who likes to make others laugh, and, as it happens, he’s quite good at it.

The Quincy, Mass. native always had a love of performing, and a post-college move to Los Angeles introduced him to the legendary Upright Citizens Brigade, where he honed his comedy touch and ability to improvise. From there, it was a natural progression to writing and performing his own work, which led to his being a part of the 2013 IFC sketch series The Birthday Boys, and then a steady stream of televised comedy work. Now, a decade later, he’s starring in Peacock’s new video game adaptation, Twisted Metal. In the post-apocalyptic action comedy, Mitchell plays Stu, a conflicted scavenger and so-called “neo-cop” who keeps trying, and often failing, to be a bad guy in a mostly lawless world. He chatted with us from his Los Angeles home before the SAG-AFTRA strike began.

I want to talk about your very funny role in Twisted Metal, but first, let’s talk about how you got here. How did you start as an actor?

To go way back, if we’re going back to the early days, I did a lot of local theater and there was a summer program I did called Raise the Curtain. I gotta give a shout-out to them. My last year in elementary school, we put on a production of Wizard of Oz. I was so excited. I wanted to be the Tin Man, and I ended up being a munchkin. I was a big kid, so I was the tallest Munchkin on stage. (Laughs) I did theater camp after that, and while it waned a little bit in high school when I got to college, I was a cinema production major at Ithaca College in upstate New York. I never even thought about acting or performing for a living, because I didn’t think a regular Quincy kid could do something like that.

How did that turn into a career?

I loved comedy. I thought maybe I could be a writer, you know, kind of be adjacent to performing and stuff. That’s where I started. After college, I moved to LA and that’s where things changed. I took classes at Upright Citizens Brigade. I was there in the early days when the LA theatre opened, and it was really great seeing so many incredible people come through there. I would do improv all the time, and put together a sketch group, The Birthday Boys. We would do a new show every month, which was great because you’re getting yourself up on stage and playing all sorts of different roles and working those muscles a lot. I fell in love with it all over again.

TWISTED METAL — “NUTHOUZ” Episode 107 — Pictured: (l-r) Mike Mitchell as Stu, Joe Seanoa as Sweet Tooth— (Photo by: Skip Bolen/Peacock/Sony TV)

What was it about UCB that appealed to you?

Well, the comedy there was about concept. You go to a Groundlings show and there are so many great performers doing a lot of character work. But with UCB, it’s about the idea of the scene. I thought that was way more interesting and fun because I have both an actor’s brain and a writer’s brain, and there were so many premises of sketches that were funny, as opposed to character-based things, which is still fun, but not as much my style. Funny to say as an actor, but it was really more about the story you’re trying to tell than the characters you’re creating.

The difference is, sometimes you’re going to get great characters fumbling through a story that doesn’t hold, rather than, say, a really funny story where the actors get to find good characters within it.

One hundred percent. That’s what UCB is like, and there were so many great performers that brought great character work to those premises, which attracted me more. It was wild and crazy stuff that I had never seen, and some stuff that probably will never happen again.

It sounds like it was a pretty spectacular place to get an education.

Yeah. When I first stepped back on stage, especially with improv, it was intimidating. I didn’t realize it, but I was seeing some of the best people in the world, and you start thinking Oh, man, I don’t know if I can do this. But that was the luxury of the place, that you could try stuff out and figure out what you’re doing. Now, I could go onstage and bomb for an hour and not care.

How did that lead to you getting work?

I met a lot of people there, including the late Harris Wittels, who was writing at Parks and Recreation. He introduced me to Mike Schur, who was a fellow Red Sox fan, and he put me on the show. I did six episodes as a guest star, at the same time as I was working with my sketch group, The Birthday Boys. Then we had a huge break. We were seen by Naomi Odenkirk, Bob Odenkirk’s wife and a manager. She thought I was funny and that she should rep us. Eventually, we sold the show to IFC, and that led to a bunch of other stuff, The Mindy Project, Brooklyn Nine-Nine, Love. I’ve done all right.

That seems like a perfect segue to talk about Twisted Metal. What I love about Stu is that he’s sort of a bad guy, but doesn’t want to be a bad guy, and sort of ends up being a bad guy despite himself.

(Laughs) I think the character is likable, but he gets swept up with the wrong group. You see him try to balance that. I don’t think he’s the brightest bulb, which is kind of fun to watch; this guy who’s not the brightest bulb in the post-apocalypse. I get asked to play a fool a lot of the time, but it works, so I don’t worry about being typecast that way. Especially because right before the pandemic, I was in this movie The Tomorrow War with Chris Pratt. I never thought of myself as an action guy, especially a guy like me. Once I did that, I thought, “I’ll never do anything like that again.” Then Twisted Metal came around, and there’s a lot of action in there. I do some of my own stunts, too. It’s a really physical job, and I hope the trend continues. It’s just so much fun.

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