Behind the big forehead, hairy face Cavemen

[Brian Damage]

Actor Bill English hopes that viewers will get to see more of his work from the show Cavemen - but odds are they won’t recognize him anyhow.

English, a 27-year old graduate of the N.C. School of the Arts, is one of the stars of Cavemen, a sitcom that is currently off ABC’s schedule. A spokesman at ABC said that the network has not yet announced when it will return.

“My favorite episodes are the ones yet to come,” English said. Those include an episode about a Caveman holiday, and an episode in which viewers get their first look at a Cavekid.

“Hopefully, we’ll get on soon so people can see the work that we’ve done up to this point.”

His role - that of a hairy caveman living in modern-day San Diego - requires about 31/2 hours of makeup before the day’s shooting can even start, meaning that he often has to show up on the set between 3:30 and 5:30 a.m. If an episode requires the characters to wear short-sleeved shirts - or worse, shorts - the makeup takes even longer.

“From the pure acting point of view, to be able to transform yourself into something where your own mother doesn’t recognize you till you start speaking is a great opportunity,” he said.

English plays Joel, a level-headed caveman who works in a furniture store and is dating a human woman, much to the chagrin of his roommate Nick (played by comedian Nick Kroll).

“He’s really got a lot of heart,” English said of his character, “and a lot of optimism for the fate of the caveman in society, while trying not to lose sight of who he is. Within the show, too, the writers have been able to draw on our strengths as actors.”

English isn’t the only person on the Cavemen production team with a Winston-Salem connection; one of the show’s producers and writers, Joe Lawson - who created the Geico commercials that spawned this particular breed of cavemen - is a 1990 graduate of Wake Forest University.

English is originally from Honeoye Falls, a town near Rochester, N.Y. He came to NCSA after hearing about the school from a theater director he worked with in high school. “I talked with a lot of people and professors outside the school in different theater programs,” he said. He was impressed with what the school had to offer, and moved to North Carolina when he graduated from high school in 1998.

He graduated from NCSA in 2002 and promptly moved to New York, where he got work on stage, including a role in the Broadway play 20th Century starring Anne Heche and Alec Baldwin. But perhaps his most familiar roles to date have been in television commercials, some of which still run.

In commercials for T-Mobile, he plays a man who, in the most recent commercial, is upset that his roommate has asked his cousin out on a date. in Kellogg’s Raisin Bran Crunch commercials, he plays Johnson, an office worker whose boss tries to fire him, but is unable to because Johnson can’t hear him over the sound of the crunchy cereal.

Cavemen is English’s first television series role. “I feel like I’ve been thrown into it with every possible hurdle I can manage,” he said. “I’ve dealt with the prosthetics, the long hours, the hype…. I feel like anything after this will be a piece of cake.”

Beyond Cavemen, English has a leading role in the movie The Beach Party at the Threshold of Hell, a dark comedy directed by Kevin Wheatley, another NCSA graduate.

It has been picked up for distribution by National Lampoon and will be released on DVD in January.

ABC has aired six of the 13 Cavemen episodes that were produced before the show’s midseason break. The show was pre-empted several times for Charlie Brown holiday specials, and is now being replaced by reruns of America’s Funniest Home Videos.

The series started on a strong note, coming in first in its time slot in its debut with more than 9 million viewers. But subsequent episodes have slipped in the ratings, with only 4.6 million viewers tuning in to the most recent episode, on Nov. 13.

The show suffered from scathing reviews when it debuted, with some of the vitriol based on the very concept of a sitcom based on a commercial. “They hear about the premise of the show, and don’t think it’s going to work without giving it a shot,” English said.

With the writer’s strike, there’s no word yet when - or if - ABC will order more episodes, or even show the remaining episodes that have been produced. English is optimistic that the show will continue.

“There’s a lot more to come,” English said. “I just hope people get to see it.”

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