Desmin Borges has always been a character actor. Known for his successful run on the underrated You’re the Worst, he’s popped up in every TV procedural and show you could think of, including the most recently concluded season of Only Murders in the Building. “I love broken, human, real sort of people,” he told me while discussing Hangdog, his latest project. He plays Walt, a man driven by anxiety who just moved to Portland, Maine for his partner, Wendy (Kelly O’Sullivan). When she goes out of town, Walt loses her dog leading to a whole stress-filled comedic adventure.
Borges told me he had a visceral reaction to his character when he read the script that stopped him in his tracks “I thought ‘That doesn’t always happen. Let me read it again.'” But the feeling remained and Borges eventually spent a few weeks running around Portland, Maine.
Joining him in Hangdog is indie darling Kelly O’Sullivan, who you may remember from Ghostlight, which she wrote and co-directed. Turns out, she and Borges ran in the same Chicago theater and film circles for years. “I saw her name and my face lit up.”
We also talked about the similarities Walt shares with Edgar, Borges’ character on You’re the Worst. “When you talk about [show creator] Stephen Falk and certain things that he and our fantastic writer’s room were writing and what [Hangdog writer] Jen Cordery did here, is that they wrote real, real lines that all of us think and probably have said. When you get the opportunity to deliver those, there’s no sugarcoating it. You’re either gonna give it or it’s gonna come off really false.”
Only Murders in the Building did come up in our conversation and it was revealed that his “Westie” neighbor on the show, Richard Kind, was in the first commercial Borges ever did. His career has come a long way since.
Watch my interview with Desmin below.
