Ken Marino On Playing Characters with Resilient Hearts for ‘The Other Two’ and ‘Party Down’

Ken Marino plays desperate men better than anyone. Or that’s what I used to think. When I look at the actions of the characters that Marino tears into, the word “pathetic” comes to mind, and that’s unkind and unfair. After watching the third seasons of Max’s The Other Two and Starz’s Party Down, I realized how wrong I was. Ken Marino plays characters with huge hearts better than anyone on television. How has this man never won an Emmy?

Marino gravitates towards these characters naturally. There is a moment in Party Down when Jane Lynch discovers a sick, naked Marino sitting on a toilet with white makeup smeared across his face, and you can’t help but laugh at his misfortune. You always root for these men, because he always allows goodness to accompany their questionable choices.

“I get cast as them a lot, so maybe this town is telling me something,” Marino says with a chuckle. “In the last ten or fifteen years—ever since Veronica Mars—I started enjoying playing these guys because I had good takes on the asshole or the pathetic guy. In things like Role Models or Wanderlust, I like playing jerks. I like that you don’t have to be apologetic in your performance. You can be some version of a very flawed human being because you are so in service of the story in a way that you don’t have to be the person driving everything. There’s such freedom to that. I always try to make the character likable or relatable and give him some depth. I never want to be two-dimensional.”

Streeter is someone who, as cutthroat and gross as he is with the industry, loves the Dubeks, and he wants to be a father figure as much as he can. He also loves Pat with all his heart—that’s very genuine. With Ron, he is somebody who is in desperate need of friendship, and he wants to be loved for his passion for life and for his work ethic. He wants to be recognized for succeeding, and he has such a big heart—he just makes some really piss-poor decisions.”

Ever since season one of The Other Two, Heléne Yorke’s Brooke has given Streeter grief. She has had quite a few contemptuous words for him, but in the second episode of this season, the two share a cross-country road trip to, of course, drive a picture of her little brother’s armpit to a magazine. It’s a different vibe that the actors get to explore, and it’s a highlight of the earlier episodes of this current season.

“On a personal level, getting to do anything with Heléne, I feel like I won the lottery,” he says. “She’s so warm and funny, and her talent, both comedically and the ability to tap into the dramatic, is truly unparalleled. I love watching her perform. I think fondly of that road trip episode of driving an armpit across the country. We get a slightly different dynamic, and that’s why he’s more heartbroken at the end when she tells him that everything that they do is bullshit. Streeter had a good time! It was an experience. That folds into the episode where Brooke breaks up with Lance, so I was happy that Chris [Kelly] and Sarah [Schneider] wrote the scene with him making a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. It’s sweet, and you get to see how he cares about her and that family. To get to do that with her is special.”

Maybe Brooke can influence Street on a similar quest to do good? That might not be the most present thing on Streeter’s mind…

“Streeter’s personal life is on that track,” he says. “He is seasoned enough and wise enough to know what it takes to succeed in the business that he’s in. It’s not always pretty—it’s rather gross, actually. But he is happy to roll around in that pigpen when need be. He can separate work and personal life, and he’s a better human being.”

People have been trying to take Ron down since the beginning of Party Down, but he will always get back up. He hilariously reveals in season three that he has (so far) contracted COVID four times, but he will always return to clock in to work his shift. If you think about the darkness Ron has overcome, it makes you admire him even more. Hopefully, Ron’s ambitions won’t be the death of him.

“Ron thinks he needs to climb the corporate ladder and also move up in class,” Marino says. “He dreams about that, but I think he has unrealistic expectations for him. Will that be the death of him? Probably. He’s come close to killing himself a number of times, but I don’t think he will give up since he doesn’t have that check valve on him. Rob always thinks the grass is greener on the more expensive side of the fence, but he doesn’t realize that these experiences that these people are having is the meaning of life. He thinks becoming successful will answer all of his problems. Ron has never stopped believing in the singular goal where if you work hard you can achieve anything. As we all know, that’s not always a happy ending, but for me, the beauty of Ron is pure in his wants and needs. He sometimes doesn’t have the tools to get there, but he’s pure of heart. Streeter is a bit more rotten on the inside professionally.”

I was delighted to learn that Marino directed my favorite episode of Party Down this season. Episode four, “KSGY-95 Prizewinner’s Luau,” has the gang working an event where everyone takes mushrooms and has a different reaction. This is Party Down. This is Party Down on drugs. Marino controls the chaos beautifully.

“When I read it, I thought, ‘Great! Everyone is on mushrooms…that’ll be a lot of fun,’ he says. “But as a director, the first thing that I told people was to make sure they knew what kind of trip they were on or think about how much experience you have on this drug, so you can modulate how high different people are. It’s a testament to the writers in terms of writing text that already points you in that direction. It was important to me to try and create a real mushroom feeling for everybody and then play with the volume with that.”

The Other Two is streaming now on Max and concludes its third season on June 29. Party Down is available now on Starz.