Memories From The Set: Michael Cudlitz

BEVERLY HILLS, 90210 (cont'd.)

Cudlitz wound up appearing in 9 more episodes, including one where his character, Tony, accompanied Shannen Doherty's Brenda Walsh to the senior prom. "The kicker to the entire thing is," he notes, "is that 20-something years later, I'm doing The Kids Are Alright, and we are shooting in the same production facility I built for Beverly Hills, 90210!"

BEVERLY HILLS, 90210

You may not know this, but Cudlitz built the popular '90s teen drama with his own two hands... literally. Though he's always been an actor, he used the construction and carpentry skills his father taught him to pay his way through college at California Institute of the Arts and later parlayed those talents into the role of construction coordinator on the original 90210. And he recalls that after he appeared in the 1992 film A River Runs Through It, the show's casting department realized what an untapped resource it had working in its woodshop. His first episode was Season 2's steroid-heavy "A Competitive Edge." "They were having trouble finding young guys who were big in size," Cudlitz says, chuckling. "Not necessarily crazy muscular, but just big, intimidating guys that looked young... compared with our guys, who were not necessarily in high school."

BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER

Playing an undead character named Bob in Season 3's Xander-centric episode "was my first foray into being a zombie. And I had Abraham hair," Cudlitz says, referencing the large, red 'do his Walking Dead character later sported, "so you do the math on that." Fun fact: Todd McIntosh, who is makeup department head on Cudlitz's current series The Kids Are Alright also was makeup supervisor on Buffy, and therefore involved in Cudlitz's Sunnydale zombie lewk, though it took the pair a while to figure out where they'd worked together before.

ER

"There [was] an energy" present on the set of the incredibly popular medical drama, Cudlitz recalls, and he felt it from the moment he showed up to play a wounded first responder in a Season 2 episode. "You feel it the moment you step on set. It is intense. It is focused on the work. It is about getting it done. There is no downtime," he remembers. "It makes you raise your game, because they're going to get it with you or without you." ER also marked the first time Cudlitz worked with producer John Wells, "who, obviously, through my career has had major, major impacts," he says. (Among them: NBC/TNT's Southland.)

GROWING PAINS

Cudlitz played high school football player Chucksteak in two episodes of the ABC sitcom's final season, including one where Kirk Cameron's Mike whisks girlfriend Chelsea away for what he thinks will be a romantic weekend at a ski chalet... then a bunch of his classmates show up. "I think I kick open the door and I scream, 'Let's get stupid!' and 15 or 20 other kids come streaming behind me," Cudlitz recalls, laughing. Some little-known, future-Oscar-winner-tinged trivia about the episode? "The person that I throw over my shoulder," he notes, "happens to be Hilary Swank."

LOST

The ABC mindbender "was a show I watched and loved," Cudlitz says, so he was stoked to nab the part of "Big Mike" Walton, Ana Lucia's partner in the Los Angeles Police Department. "There was a possibility I was going to do a bunch more early on, and then stuff changed with the storyline, and I wasn't on the show anymore," he recalls, adding that Hawaii was gorgeous — but he felt intense island fever and really missed his family, who wasn't with him during shooting. "But then [the show] brought me back at the very, very end, with a flash-forward with Hurley, and I was very flattered by that. They went out of their way to keep me connected to the show."

NYPD BLUE

During his appearance as an Army vet hiding a big secret, "I had this wonderful scene with Jimmy [Smits], where I was mouthing off to him," Cudlitz says. The script called for Smits' Det. Simone to get physical with Cudlitz's character, causing him to tip his chair over and hit the floor. And when they couldn't nail the shot, Cudlitz recalls Smits worrying that it was going to cause his scene partner real damage. But Cudlitz happily convinced Smits to press on. "So we go through the next take, and he winds up, and he smacked the s—t out of me!" he says, laughing. "He damn near took my head off — and it looked amazing."

SOUTHLAND

Everything Cudlitz could've wanted to know about Officer John Cooper, his character on the critically acclaimed cop drama, was right there in the pilot, he recalls. "The damaged guy, the pain pills, the way he was on the force, the fact that he happened to be gay, which is very briefly touched on in the very, very last scene." Cudlitz adds that executive producer Chris Chulack cut a much longer version of the pilot — "that's amazing and had so much wonderful silence and pacing" — but it never saw the light of day and had to be trimmed to the network-standard 42 minutes. Regarding an eventual revival? "We loved it, the fans loved it, and we would all go back to do one-offs or a limited run series of that show in a heartbeat," Cudlitz says.

THE KIDS ARE ALRIGHT

Cudlitz's own children are adults now, so he says sometimes he has to laugh at how his character, 1970s-era dad Mike, parents his unruly brood on the ABC comedy. "There's stuff I do on the show all the time that... I'm thinking, 'That would never work!'" he says. "Telling them what to do or threatening them in a certain way, to withhold goods and services or take stuff away." He chuckles. "This stuff, it just doesn't work!" To wit: This week's episode features Ken Jeong (Community), a co-worker Mike invites home to help squeeze a confession out of one of the guilty Cleary kids.

MICHAEL CUDLITZ, MARY MCCORMACK

THE WALKING DEAD

Fans of AMC's long-running horror drama "are insane and incredible," Cudlitz says, noting that when he's clean-shaven and sporting his natural hair color, he's less likely to get stopped by those wanting to discuss intricacies like Abraham Ford's eloquent last words. But when he was actually shooting the series, forget about it. "You get a 6-foot-2 guy walking around with red hair, I don't care if he's on TV or not, everybody's going to turn around and look," he notes. "And then you put those handlebar mustaches on and the whole deal? It makes you very easily identifiable."