DeKay, Tim (Carnivale)
At the beginning of the first season, Carnivale‘s resident grease monkey Jonesy was an easy character to overlook – especially amidst the heavy array of sideshow freaks and supernatural hoopla. But over the course of two years all that has changed. Now a fan favorite, actor Tim DeKay’s intense performances and dedication have brought Jonesy to the forefront, creating one of the show’s most interesting and complex characters.
Andrew Kasch: Well, thanks for taking the time out to do an interview with us.
Tim DeKay: No problem. My pleasure.
AK: So I hear your first big convention is coming up. Chiller Theatre!
TDK: It is!
AK: You excited?
TDK:
AK: Just out of curiosity, how did you first get into acting?
TDK: Y’know, I’ve always enjoyed pretending and acting ever since I was a little kid, and then I did a couple of plays in high school and then I went on to do some plays in college. And it wasn’t until after college and I had a job in the business field that I realized I was still doing community plays, and I thought, “Well, acting is my life. Maybe I should try and make it my livelihood.” Then someone said, “You should get your Masters in Fine Arts.” They named a couple of schools, one of which was Rutgers, and that’s where I ended up going.
AK: How did you initially get involved with Daniel Knauf and the Carnivale folk?
TDK: I did a pilot with Dan Knauf about a year before he approached me with Carnivale. It was a pilot with Jenny McCarthy, and it was a single-camera half-hour comedy. It was a fun, campy kind of “cool chick/private eye” 1960s show. It couldn’t have been more different from Carnivale.
AK: Does this have any relation to the show he’s currently working on for Showtime?
TDK: I don’t think so, no. I think he’s currently working on something else. This was something different for ABC.
AK: Did he eventually approach you for the character in pre-production?
TDK: During the audition process he approached me with this script and said “Y’know, I’d really like you to come in and meet the director for the role of Jonesy and meet some other executives as well.” And I read the script, and I just thought, “This man is so talented” because it was so different from the other script. And as soon as I read it, I thought what all actors sometimes feel when they read a script or character: I felt I was made to play this role.
AK: The creators have gone on record as saying that they had plotted out sort of a six-season story arc from the beginning…
TDK: Right…
AK: How much did they tell you going into this?
TDK: I think they gave us big picture ideas about what the arcs of the characters would be. But in television you know that these ideas can change. So there was nothing very specific or laid out in stone as to what each of the characters would be doing. But they did have an overall idea, or at least Dan Knauf did, of what those six years would be. Dan would always say, “No less than three, no more than six.” I hope he adheres to that.
AK: What initially attracted you to the character?
TDK: That he was a bit rough around the edges, yet he had a heart of gold. Other people had said that he’s a classic hero that falls every so often. Y’know, he is also an “everyman” that has his problems but tries to do the right thing every day. And being an ex-baseball player, I loved the fact that he was as well.
AK: What are the major differences that you see as far as the character arc that Jonesy takes between Season One and Season Two?
TDK: It was a big surprise for me that Jonesy and Libby ended up together. A big surprise. I never imagined that at all. I was apprehensive of it at first, but now I have to say that I’m so glad they did that. I love the relationship that Jonesy and Libby have.
AK: Did you originally do any research into the Depression Era?
TDK: Sure. I read the “Grapes of Wrath” again. And what’s great is the wardrobe department and the props department, in pre-production, they had all these incredible photos of people during the times; photos that you haven’t seen until you dig deep into research. And you get a great sense of what the world was like from these photos. I tried to dig up some old family photos as well.
AK: It seems every time we find the carnies on the road in the series, they’re usually setting up or breaking down camp in the middle of the desert…
TDK: Yeah.
AK: What are those shooting conditions like?
TDK: Well, we are in the middle of the desert quite often. We’ve got this one huge plot of land that we’re leasing outside of L.A. that allows us to move the carnival from place to place. We usually keep it in one specific area. It’s just more helpful for the production and for the crew to keep the camera trucks stationary. But the conditions can be brutal. It can get extremely hot out there. And then when you start shooting at night, it gets quite cold. But none of us have complained about it because when you’re out there and Jonesy is working on the Ferris wheel and it’s August and it’s roasting, you kind of think, “Well, this is great…cause it’s probably roasting for Jonesy in August.”
Y’know, I might have a different opinion on this if I had to be outside in a buttoned-up shirt with a tie and a wool suit and not be able to sweat. But I just love it; I just soak it up because it becomes part of the carny world.
AK: I’m sure it doesn’t help with a leg brace on.
TDK: Well, it doesn’t. But it’s an interesting thing: I didn’t mind the leg brace. They actually made it quite comfortable. And once I put that leg brace on, Andrew, it was just one of those things where I was just in the role. And there where a couple of times after Jonesy was healed where the director would say “action” and I would walk across the midway or something limping, but I didn’t have my brace on.
AK: Well, while we’re on that subject, I just gotta tell you that the episode in which Jonesy is healed is probably one of the most emotional moments on the show I think for everyone who’s a fan.
TDK: Oh, thank you.
AK: A chance like that has to be a dream scene for an actor to play.
TDK: It was, and thank you for saying that. Bill Schmidt wrote that episode. It’s one of those things where, because I’d been limping around for 20 episodes prior, it was cathartic in that I was able to live out the fantasy of being healed. But for Jonesy, it wasn’t a fantasy. It was real. In a way, the writers threw down their trump card for Jonesy. I thought it was wonderful too because it was the one time you got to see everyone have a moment of pure joy. There’s not a lot of joy in Carnivale.
When you have moments that normally you’re not expecting, it makes for great storytelling. It’s also one of the few times we get to see Ben smile. I think there’s another moment, actually, prior to that where Ben is trying to coax Sophie into dancing with him. And I just thought, “Those moments become magical because they’re so far and few.”
AK: Did the writers incorporate your baseball background into the character, or was that a part of it when you initially came onboard?
TDK: No, it was something initially that Dan Knauf thought of. I just thought, “Well, this is a good match.”
Here’s something interesting: Dan Knauf put together all these newspaper clippings about Jonesy and some of the other characters, and they look like they came from different small town clippings back in the 30s and 20s. And it was amazing, because
AK: Working outside of L.A. in a small stretch of desert has to be a place where a lot of camaraderie is formed.
TDK: You’re dead on with that! That’s exactly right. We’re not overnight, we’re not on location so to speak. In other words, we don’t stay in a hotel. We do drive home at night, but we’re so far out. I drive 23 miles on a highway, I get off on an exit and drive 5 miles on a paved road and then 3 miles on a dirt road…then I’m on the set. And everybody does that. So once we’re out there, you’re right, there’s a camaraderie because we’re braving the elements together. We’re also telling this story, we’re shooting all these episodes that aren’t being aired; we also feel like we’re in on this great secret that won’t be aired until all of them have been shot. Yeah, man…it’s like grown-up camp out there!
Y’know, the best thing about acting is, somebody tells you, “I’ll pay you to go pretend and on top of that, I’ll feed you.”
AK: Do you have any other good anecdotes from the set?
TDK: Well, out in this desert, we had this wrangler. He’s in charge of making sure that nobody gets bit by rattlesnakes. In three weeks time he had caught 23 rattlesnakes.
AK: Oh, man…
TDK: Yeah. It’s pretty amazing. And they gave us a big warning about it at the beginning. And, y’know, you take that warning, but then you think, “Yeah, but there’s never gonna be a rattlesnake around here because we’re so loud and there are trucks and everything. We’re gonna scare ‘em away.” No, there’s a rattlesnake right by the craft service truck, there’s a rattlesnake by the make-up truck. Pretty wild.
So you have that, and at night there would be these beautiful owls that would be flying around. The production sets up these huge lights to kind of give it an effect of a full moon, and there was this one particular white owl that would come out every night. And you’re just watching him fly around and you’ve got the whole spookiness of the story as well. This white owl just comes out and flies around just on the outskirts of the carnival that we’ve set up. And one time there was this scene where Michael Anderson and I, we’re driving the lead truck. We’re packing up and “shaking dust” and we drive through a field and it’s quite dark through this field. All we have are the headlights. And for about 50 yards this white owl just flew right beside the car. And it stayed with us for a while. It was wild!
AK: That’s amazing.
TDK: Yea. It’s one of those magical moments when you realize, “I’m so fortunate and happy to be doing this work” because moments like that you wouldn’t get in another place.
AK: Did you guys have any contact with Clancy Brown or Amy Madigan prior to filming the last few episodes of the season?
TDK: Oh, yeah. We have read-throughs. And sometimes we’ll see them, the way the schedule is. The way it’s set up the migrant farm and Brother Justin’s house are just on the other side of this hill on the same location as the carnival. So quite often we’d have lunch with Clancy and Amy.
AK: Have you ever gone online and looked at some of the Carnivale fan communities that have been growing in the past two years?
TDK: I have! I go on every so often. My friend Heather who runs a website, she goes on quite a bit and she’ll send me some e-mails of some comments and she’ll keep me posted. And I did the “Carny Con” as well. It’s fascinating and it’s thrilling to see how devoted the fans are to this show. It’s very inspiring!
AK: There was a big fan outcry at the season’s end when Jonesy sort of …”bit the bullet.”
TDK: Yeah?
AK: Right now there’s still a huge debate raging over whether or not he’s actually dead.
TDK:
Yeah, what can I say to that?
AK: And you’ve got two healers running around out there, so that helps things.
TDK: Yeah. But there’s also a question as to where Jonesy got shot.
AK: What’s up for you outside of the Carnivale world?
TDK: I just finished shooting a Nick Nolte movie called The Peaceful Warrior based on a book by Dan Millman. I play a gymnastics coach. That should be out sometime in November or so. And I’m gonna shoot a western later on in May with Tim Hunter, who has directed a couple of episodes of Carnivale.
AK: We’ll be on the lookout for both of those. Thanks very much for your time, Tim.
Many thanks to Tim DeKay for taking the time to sit down with us.
Categorized:Interviews News
