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Nostalgic
Intense
Adventurous
Choked Up
Curious
Romantic
Weird
Griffin Dunne wasn’t always supposed to play Chris’ academic, neurotic husband Sylvère on Amazon original series I Love Dick. On a December 2016 episode of the Nerdist “Love, Alexi” podcast, Community‘s Star-Burns, Dino Stamatopoulos, tells the story of how he went from starting work on the show to being dismissed by showrunner Jill Soloway.
The story, first brought to our attention by this tweet from friend of Decider Tim Donnelly, is actually tucked away on star Kathryn Hahn‘s Wikipedia page. On the podcast, Stamatopoulos recounts the events that led up to him getting cast on the show. While he initially thought his being called for an audition was a mistake and there was no way he would land the part, his improvised audition and a few callbacks led to him being cast as Sylvère.
After Stamatopoulos learned he had gotten the part, he says he received a call from Soloway that was vague but seemed to imply that he needed to get healthy and not drink as much. He agreed, especially since he knew he’d have to shoot a ton of sex scenes, but later felt that they were telling him he had a drinking problem. Things seemed to be going swimmingly in the months that led up to the shoot, and Stamatopoulos asked Hahn to get dinner so that they could begin building their on-screen relationship. Before jumping into the story of their dinner, he revealed that he had wanted to try heroin, so he’d done it once with a fan in Chicago but decided he didn’t like it.
At the dinner, their “no rules” conversation soon led to Hahn revealing that her brother was an ex-heroin addict and she’d worked with Philip Seymour Hoffman, who had passed away after overdosing in the middle of their project Happyish. “I said, you know, this is weird, but I tried heroin for the first time the other day and I hated it,” Stamatopoulos recalled. “And she freaked out. And at that moment I knew… It’s over.” When he tried to question Hahn about if she didn’t want him to do the project anymore, he says she said “it’s not up to me”.
Despite assuming he was set to receive an email dismissing him that night, he proceeded to go to rehearsal as planned, where he said his relief was short-lived, as Soloway and Hahn soon disappeared to go talk. He was then summoned to talk to Soloway, who said she couldn’t hire him now because of the drug use. While Stamatopoulos admits he didn’t want the part that much, he confessed that it was “humiliating” and also ended up not getting a writing gig for another show at Amazon, though he doesn’t know if the two are related.
“Jill Soloway has a problem with addiction,” he concluded. “And I think the lead actress did too.”
