Memories From The Set: Dan Bucatinsky

"The big win in Hollywood is when your character has a name," Bucatinsky says, remembering when he was just breaking into the business and taking roles with generic monikers, such as "Checkout Guy" in a 1996 episode of the Fox drama. "I tried to grow a moustache for the part, like a young college guy, and couldn't. I just look sort of pathetic," he says, laughing. "In hindsight, it was so much more appropriate for the character!"

"I've been a jewelry clerk twice," Bucatinsky says, "once on Weeds, and once on Frasier, not many years apart. So maybe I could have built a whole career on being a jeweler?" The Frasier gig was one of the first jobs for which the actor didn't have to audition, "and I was very excited, because it was in the later seasons and it was a scene with both Niles and Frasier," he recalls — but the rest is a blank. "I was nervous as hell, and I don't remember anything else about being on that show."

Bucatinsky and Friends star Lisa Kudrow had started their production company a year before he appeared as the "obnoxious" waiter who tried to move Phoebe to a smaller table when her pals stood her up on her birthday. "Because she was in rehearsal a lot, we would often take meetings and conference calls from her dressing room," he says. "And by that point, I had become pretty friendly with the creators of the show. They were like, 'We've got to find you something fun to do in the show.'" As it turns out, Bucatinsky had plenty of experience on which to draw: He had his first experience on a waitstaff in high school, followed by stints in New York "in a chili restaurant, a bistro and in a very fancy Madison Avenue restaurant. So I was well-prepared to play a waiter on Friends."

Bucatinsky's father was very ill in New York — and Bucatinsky wasn't feeling great, himself — when it came time to shoot Larry David's highly improvised HBO comedy. "I always remember that Curb as one of the most creatively fun and exciting experiences, but privately one of the most difficult. Because I was a nervous wreck to improvise with Larry David, but I was also racing home to see my dad [afterward], and I was sick as a dog." But the scene, in which Bucatinsky plays an annoying man speaking loudly on a cell phone at a restaurant, later became his golden ticket to Seattle Grace. "When I got offered the part on Grey's Anatomy, I couldn't come in to read for [Shonda Rhimes], because I was going to be out of town. So they sent her that Curb Your Enthusiasm clip, and they hired me off of that," he says. "I saw Larry David in a restaurant recently and I said, 'You know, every single thing that's happened to me in my career in the last five years is oddly because of you,' and he was like, 'I love to hear that.'"

Pretty much every actor we've interviewed for this feature who appeared on the CBS procedural has a story about its star, David Caruso. Bucatinsky played a fashion boutique owner in an episode that centered on — we kid you not — an exploding dress. Here's his take on the man, the myth, the sunglasses. "I found him fascinating... I've never met anybody like that. I had not at that point, nor since have I... We shot in Long Beach on this giant street, and he was very committed to the scene. We had to start again many times, because he could hear traffic in the distance, and they were like, 'Look, we can only shut down traffic for so many blocks.'... But what I love about Caruso is, no matter what, you get this. [stands to demonstrate] It's a signature move... He stood there, not facing me but perpendicular to me... and his sunglasses were on, and then he sort of slowly turned up to look at me, his head moving slowly, and it was intimidating but awesome."

Bucatinsky's long friendship with Grey's producers/writers Tony Phelan and Joan Rater, as well as his knowing Sandra Oh (from when they both acted in Under the Tuscan Sun) meant that he wound up traveling in the ABC medical drama's orbit for a while before getting cast as the partner of an emotionally abusive singer. (He'd later write an episode.) "But in my attempts to get on a gurney on a television show in any way, shape, or form, still missed it that time," he says, laughing. "Damn."

Like The Comeback, Bucatinsky co-created and produced Web Therapy with Kudrow in addition to acting in it. "It is weird, wearing different hats," he says, adding that it's "very liberating to just be on set and act, and I particularly loved to act with Lisa, because we're longtime partners and such good friends." While improvising with her on Web Therapy — in which he played Jerome, Fiona's assistant — "for four years, all I tried to do was get her to crack," he remembers. "But she was really good. She's really good at staying in character and I broke more times on that show than I care to admit."

Can you imagine Bucatinsky as the ABC drama's Huck or David Rosen? Neither could the show's Powers That Be. (He auditioned for both roles). "I knew I wasn't right, but I loved the material so much," he says. Soon enough, he got a chance to play James Novak, the beleaguered — and ultimately, murdered — husband of Chief of Staff Cyrus Beene. He remembers his character's death episode — which was shot out of order — as rather trying, both from an emotional and a laundry standpoint. "I still have tank tops and underwear that are covered in blood that represent that night on Scandal," he says, laughing. Bucatinsky also had to scrub all of Dead James' carnage and dirt off him between scenes, and the only place available to do so was a mobile dressing room used by the actress who plays Sally Langston. "It bonded me to Kate Burton forever," he says. "I was like, 'I was naked in your trailer.'"

The offer for Bucatinsky to guest-star as one of Casey Wilson's character's gay dads "was a very therapeutic thing," he says, seeing as how it came just as Scandal's James was shuffling off this mortal coil. "It was such a departure from Scandal." Interesting tidbit about the short-lived NBC comedy: "Three of the seven of us were gluten-free" — including Bucatinsky — "so when we got to do the wedding-cake tasting episodes, and there were two of them, the cakes were all gluten-free and they were delicious," he says. "I've never eaten so much in my entire life."