Jonathan Kite
Jonathan Kite hit the jackpot when he grabbed a part on 2 Broke Girls has quickly become one of America’s hottest sitcoms, raking in massive ratings figures every week in the US and very successfully transferring to British screens.
We spoke to the man who plays the show’s brilliantly inappropriate cook Oleg about 2 Broke Girls’ success, Oleg’s incredible dress sense and where his amazing ability to do impressions came from.
The show’s been such an incredible success. What’s it been like from the inside?
I think you always dream about being involved in something like this. I think there’s a duality to it as well. It’s nice that it’s so popular, but it’s great that it’s something you believe in and you really look forward to reading the next episode, performing it and finding out the story of both your character and those around you.
It’s a very special and wonderful situation and the fact that it’s translated so well overseas I think is just icing on the cake.
So, any tasty clues as to what me might be able to expect from the rest of season 2?
You know, the truth is I don’t think we’re much further ahead that you are. If I’ve looked at the statement correctly, we’re only an episode or two ahead. We don’t get any of the future episodes until we do them.
I guess I would wonder that too, but they want us to focus on what’s currently happening and then that episode. When we’re done with that one, we get the next one by e-mail and we read that for the following week. I wish I did have those all the answers though.
Is that a case of keeping it fresh and interesting for you too?
The scripts are also really complicated sometimes, and I think it’s better for our little brains if we focus on what’s happening right now. There are so many changes too that go on while we’re filming the show, if something’s not clear, the audience help us out. The writers are always there come tape night and they’re constantly trying to re-work things and make the story telling clearer.
So what may have started as one story might change into something else completely by the end of the week. So, giving us future ones wouldn’t make sense as the final one that hits the air might not resemble that one exactly.
It’s clear to hear you’re not Ukrainian, so where did you develop your accent?
I grew up in Chicago and there’s a lot of Eastern Europeans living there, it has great pockets of diversity. So, a lot of my friends growing up are first generation Americans, so funnily I was actually mimicking their parents at a very young age whilst telling jokes and stories which has carried over to now.
Oleg’s a little bit, frisky shall we say on the show. How do you prepare that?
It’s interesting; I think he’s actually someone who’s just sexually free. America for the most part is not very sexually liberated , even down to our advertising, it’s all very safe. When I’ve seen ads in other countries, it’s a totally different case. Sexuality for them is much more embedded in their culture in a very casual way.
That’s the way I look at Oleg. I think that compared to the Americans around him, there’s something incredibly sexual about him, but in terms of the grand scheme of things, he’s just from a place where that’s much more socially acceptable.
How does your cooking compare to Oleg’s?
I’ve actually held the job that Oleg has when I was in college. I worked at a grill in Illinois and he’s probably a significantly better cook than I ever was. I can do what he does in the kitchen as I’ve had to do that before.
We don’t see Oleg out of the diner too much. Do you ever wonder what he gets up to after work?
You see him in a few of the upcoming episodes outside of the diner. In the first series I was outside of there a few times. When I went for the audition, I thought about a story I’d heard about John Belushi. His day was broken down into three sets of eight hour intervals and he just moved on to a different group of people every eight hours.
That’s how I envisioned Oleg. The way he dresses on the show is something similar to how I went into the audition for him. I had this idea that as soon as he’s done with work, he’s going clubbing or he had all of these other things going on. I didn’t know exactly what when I went to the audition, but I had this idea of Oleg as this guy always on the guy and had this plethora of things that people might not even know about. He was just with these rotating groups of people for each set of hours he had.
Please tell me the tiger shirt is yours.
The tiger top will be mine! They’ve let me buy it.
You’ve also become famous for your amazing impressions. Where did that ability come from?
A couple of years ago we had a writers strike and in America and it was a bad thing for a lot of people and they kept trying to pitch sketch comedy shows where the performers would write their own stuff. So, when you went in to audition, they would always say ‘Can you bring in your own ideas or characters?’
So, I went to one of these and they asked me if I could do impressions and I really couldn’t. I could do a couple of guys that were older and have probably been done by everyone. But, at this audition, they asked who I could do who was on TV right now. So, I said ‘Vince Vaughn’, even though I had no idea how hard it be to learn how to do his voice from scratch. So they wanted me to come back after the weekend to see the producers with this impression.
For 48 hours I was in front of a TV and watched his movie Fred Claus and a whole bunch of interviews on YouTube. I got no sleep that weekend. I thought that I needed to make good on this, err, stretching of the truth. I don’t do it often, but I was also representing my agents and managers so didn’t want to be a straight up liar. I really worked on it and by Monday, I could do it.
That got me thinking where else this could go and who else I could do. The thing about impressions is that they’re like magic tricks. Everyone I meet in England can do a Michael Caine, even if it’s not any good. Over here, that’s Al Pacino or Christopher Walken. But to do other people that they’ve not seen before, you see a light come on in their eyes. It’s almost like I’ve shown them fire for the first time.
You’re also doing stand-up comedy too. How does that compare?
It’s cool, it keeps you on your toes, although it really depends on the audience that you’re performing in front of. I’ve talked to my people about doing a stand-up set in England, which would be amazing, but I’d have to write a totally different set.
There are pieces that while I don’t necessarily tailor it, I can tell you that I’m playing colleges at the moment, so anything that I reference from the eighties or early nineties won’t be an immediate point of comedy for them. I think you always have to figure out who your audience is and then figure out if everything’s going to make sense to them.
That’s why I’m really interested in doing stuff overseas. The UK and the American versions of The Office are totally different. There are things that make us all laugh, which I’ve mainly found is physical stuff, but in language there’s different nuances that don’t always carry over culturally. Working out was does work internationally I think is a really interesting thing for me.
You’re also a part of the vocal talent on the Adult Swim cartoon Black Dynamite. How did you get involved on that?
Black Dynamite is kind of like The Simpsons in the way that there’s the main people who do the big voices and then there’s others like me who do a lot of voices. I know the producer from another show I’d done and he told me he was working on a show based off Black Dynamite. I love that movie, I think it that movie really got it right and hit on exactly what it was trying to do. So, I was on board straight away. That was another project that I really believe in and I’m feel so lucky to have fallen into it.
So, you’re still filming season two now, but what’s next for you after that?
I am in the middle of getting the rights to a bunch of scripts with my production company, I want to start making movies. As soon as we’ve wrapped on the show though, I’m going to take a little time off, travel around a bit and see some friends and family. That’s a big part of the summer for me. I’m going to be doing stand-up and writing, but travelling’s going to be the major thing. When we’re in town and working, we don’t move. That’s what it takes to make a successful show. So when we’re not working, I always try and make some time to go and see people I’ve not seen in a while.
Is that a case of working so hard on the show that you need to get away from it all afterwards?
Yeah, I think you need to recharge your battery mentally as well and to prepare yourself for another season you need that time off. But hey, a great film might come along and I’ll be like “Let’s do this instead”.
Doing something different like that might recharge me in a different way, if I’m doing something new, interesting and that I’m passionate about.
2 Broke Girls is on tonight at on E4.