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Billy Gardell from Dancer and the Dame.
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Patricia Sheridan's Breakfast With ... Billy Gardell

©Kimberly Whitfield

Patricia Sheridan's Breakfast With ... Billy Gardell

He began is career as a stand-up comic, but for Billy Gardell that really was just the beginning. He stars with Melissa McCarthy on the hit sitcom “Mike and Molly.” The 45-year-old hosts television’s “Monopoly Millionaires’ Club” and is in a new movie, “Dancer and the Dame,” available on DVD now. He and his wife, Patty, have one son and live in southern California. 

You have so much going on. I’m presuming you are making enough that you don’t have to work so hard.

That’s the Pittsburgher in me. You've got to work like you don’t have a job. You keep working while you can work.

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That’s interesting. I know you started out working hard labor.

I was in a warehouse for Zayre. It was a precursor to Target. We were unloading trucks and sorting stuff and putting it on pallets and getting it ready to ship out onto the floor.

You were just a teenager. Did you drop out of school to do that?

No, I was working about 40 hours a week after school. I’d go in and work 4 to midnight, you know, help take care of the family. I was actually doing it down in Florida. My parents had gotten divorced, and my mom had moved us to Florida. We did the school year in Orlando and then me, my brother and sister would get on a bus and we would go back up to Pittsburgh for the summer. That was the way we got to see my dad. We’d sit around in the one room that had that window air conditioner all summer long.

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At what point did you know you were funny enough to go on stage?

You know, my humor comes from that Pittsburgh mentality that is just don’t take yourself too seriously. The other thing that I always saw in Pittsburgh with my dad and his buddies was we are an industry town — or we were — but we’re still a hard-working town. To get through a hard day’s work, a little levity helps. I think Pittsburgh is great at that. [laughing] 

Did you ever have an incident during stand-up or at another point in your career where you thought this is not going work?

Usually you live and die as a stand-up by your last show. I had to spend many an hour re-evaluating what it exactly it was I was doing with my life. [laughing] It’s usually after you bomb terribly. On the good nights, you think, “Oh, I will do this for the rest of my life.”

What happens is, once you have been doing it for 15 years, you realize you don’t have a choice. This is your gig because what are you going to put on a resume? I’ve been making funny noises and telling jokes for 15 years. You are in too far. 

You have really taken off. Did you find the transition pretty easy into acting?

I have been very lucky, very blessed. Yeah, you know I have a great cast, and I learned a lot from them. I got to do some stuff early on in my career that kind of built up to that. I would say working with [executive producer] Jimmy Burrows during the first two years of “Mike and Molly” was a huge help. He really, really took me under his wing. 

I don’t know if this is true, but it is said that Melissa McCarthy was told, “Don’t lose weight. It’s your char­ac­ter.” Have you ever been told any­thing like that?

I don’t think any of that is true. No, no, no, no. I ha­ven’t been told any of that. They said, “Take care of your­self. We want to do this a long time. If you do [lose weight], good, we will write that into the show. If you don’t, good, we will write that into the show. We will make it real.” That is what has con­nected our au­di­ence to us, I think.

How did your par­ents ad­just to your fame?

They’ve been good. My dad said, “Never give up on your dream,” and my mom said what a mom should say, “Keep your job at the ware­house for the in­sur­ance ben­e­fits.” [laugh­ing] You know? They’ve been great, though. I’ve got­ten to take them to do some bucket list things, and it’s been a treat.

Billy, a lot of co­me­di­ans talk about a dark side. Is there a deep dark­ness or is it all joy?

I think at one point there was. Yeah, man, I came from a bro­ken home. My mom was di­vorced a cou­ple times, so we had to go through a cou­ple step­fathers and be sep­a­rated from my dad. I don’t think any life doesn’t have a lit­tle bit of rain. We cer­tainly had ours, and it af­fected my com­edy early on.

In your early 20s, you don’t know why you are mad but you think you are sup­posed to be mad. As life kind of un­folds, then you you see where you’re at and things are OK. I started to come to a kind of a grat­i­tude that I had a wife and a child, and I’ve been able to do this for a liv­ing my whole life.

I was headed back to Pitts­burgh — I’ve told this story a mil­lion times — but be­fore “Mike and Molly” hit, I was go­ing to jump on the ra­dio on WDVE be­cause I just wanted to come home and have a job where I could see my fam­ily. I was away on the road when “Mike and Molly” hit. Through all that I’ve been grate­ful for a good por­tion of time now.

You do not have a su­per strong Pitts­burgh ac­cent.

Well, I have to tone it down a lit­tle bit be­cause of TV. Some­times I’ll say some­thing real Pitts­bur­ghese and they will say, “Can you please say that clearer?” [laugh­ing]. It takes me about two days when I’m home. The closer I get to Swiss­vale, the worse it gets. By Fri­day, I’m say­ing, “Hey, where yinz goin’? You gon’ aut? [laugh­ing].” I mean it comes right back. On Steeler Sun­days out here. I have my Pitts­burgh friends over and we get around each other and it be­comes fun and in­fec­tious.

What’s in­ter­est­ing is when other peo­ple try to do the ac­cent.

Oh, they are ter­ri­ble! They don’t get our ac­cent right. I think you have to be from there. There is noth­ing worse than an ac­tor try­ing to do a Pitts­burgh ac­cent. I hate it.

Be­cause you are do­ing “Mo­nop­oly Mil­lion­aires’ Club” and have guest-hosted talk shows, I was won­der­ing if you would ever want to do a talk show?

That is one thing that I would love to do. I got to guest host “The Late, Late Show.” I re­ally en­joyed it. It fit like a glove. If that were ever to pres­ent it­self, I would ab­so­lutely do it. I think for stand-ups that is a pretty easy tran­si­tion.

To hear more of this in­ter­view, go to post-ga­zette.com.

Pa­tri­cia She­ri­dan: pshe­ri­dan@post-ga­zette.com, 412-263-2613, Twit­ter: @pash­e­ri­dan.

First Published: June 15, 2015, 4:00 a.m.

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Billy Gardell from Dancer and the Dame.  (©Kimberly Whitfield)
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