Craig Gass: All up in Cynthia Nixon’s shit

If you’re a girl, you might know comedian Craig Gass as Miranda’s Weight Watchers boyfriend, Tom “Big Boned,” from Sex and the City. If you’re a guy, you might know him from the Howard Stern Show as himself — or Al Pacino, Tracy Morgan, Tom Arnold, Christopher Walken, or Mitch Hedberg. Currently on tour, this talented impressionist and stand-up comic will be in Austin through Saturday night at Cap City Comedy Club. Craig sat down with That Other Paper’s Christine Acker and Kristin Hillery to discuss growing up in a deaf family, stalkers, and being all up in Cynthia Nixon’s shit.

That Other Paper What were you like as a kid?

Craig Gass: I got away with murder because my whole family’s deaf. True story — my mom, my dad, and my sister are all completely deaf. When my teachers or my principals had to meet with my mom, I had to go with my mom to interpret everything, so we’d literally be in front of my principals and teachers, and they’d look at me and go, “Okay, tell your mom that the reason you’re here is that you’re having some behavioral problems.” So I’d tell my mom, “They’re saying that although they think I’m a very good student, there are some small things we need to work on.” I was lying through my teeth right in front of my teachers and the principal. I got away with everything. Every time my mom got mad at me, whenever she left the room, I always had the last word as she was closing the door, and she never heard. I always got to crank up the stereo and the TV. I couldn’t learn how to talk from my own family so I learned how to talk by copying all the voices I heard on TV, mimicking voices. I entertained my family with my impressions, which didn’t involve any voices. They were impressions of body language.

TOP Did you tell half-truths when you were in those meetings at school?

photo / Kristin Hillery Craig Gass (right) with Trey Galyon, who is featuring at the show this weekend 

CG: I would just sign really quick. I’d say, “They think I’m awesome, but there are some small things. No big deal; they just want to talk. They say that they love me.”

TOP Have you been doing impressions your whole life or did you start doing them later on in life?

CG: I’ve never worked at it. It’s just something I’ve always been able to do. If anybody has a weird voice around me, I can usually pick it up. It’s just this weirdo superpower that I’ve always had. Sometimes voices will come up just in conversation, like when I’ll be telling a story. The Tom Arnold impression just came from me seeing him on TV. I said to my friend, “Did you see Tom Arnold on The Tonight Show? I think he was high! He was all up in Jay’s face and he was all [in Tom Arnold voice], ‘I tell you, man, I love beer, women, and cocaine. Did you ever try painkillers?’” As I was telling this story the voice just came out. My friend said, “I didn’t know you could do Tom Arnold,” and I said, “I didn’t, either.”

TOP Do you ever pick up people’s laughs?

CG: Absolutely. I dated this girl for six years and I loved that she had the dumbest snort. For some reason, I adopted it and I can’t get rid of it. When I laugh really hard, I snort. I never did it before. I just cared about her so much that I found her snort endearing so I picked it up.

TOP I didn’t know if you ever laughed and thought, “Hey, that was Frank Sinatra!”

CG: [laughs] Sometimes I’ll laugh and fart and be like, “Is that Bobcat?”

TOP Is there a specific impression that people are always trying to get you to do?

CG: Once somebody put my phone number on the Internet and some guy called me and wanted me to call him back. I called him up and was like, “Hey, dude, how did you get this phone number?” And he said, “I got it from the Internet.” He told me the page and I found it and I was like, “Oh my God, I gotta get this straightened out,” and he was like, “Well, can I hear a little bit of Gene Simmons first?” And I said, “No, I gotta deal with this.” He said, “I know, but I’m just such a huge fan.” I was like, “Dude, you have my cell phone number and I don’t even know you.” And he goes, “I know, I’m just saying, I’m a huge fan. Can I ask you for this one favor? Can you call my friend and pretend to be Gene Simmons?” I was like,”Dude, look, I don’t know you and you’re calling my cell phone.”

TOP Did you call his friend?

CG: You know what, here’s the real asshole story: This guy was towing my rental car, so I ran over there and I was like, “That’s my car. Can I at least get my stuff out of it before you tow it?” He was like, “Sorry, man, it’s mine now.” He was being a total dick — he wouldn’t let me get my stuff out. It was my plane ticket and my toothbrush and stuff like that. So finally in desperation I go, “Do you ever listen to The Howard Stern Show? He said, “Every day.” I said, “Okay, I’m doing a show tomorrow night with a bunch of people from The Howard Stern Show and I can get you tickets.” And he said, “Are you Craig Gass?” And I go, “Yes!” So he goes, “Man, I really love your Al Pacino,” so I said [in Al Pacino voice], “Really? Cause you got my stuff and I need it.” So then he asked me to do the speech from the end of The Devil’s Advocate. So I got my stuff. The guy writes me emails all the time, like, “Hey buddy, miss you.” I was like, “You took my car!” He didn’t give my car back and I gave him tickets.

TOP Have you ever had any stalkers?

photo / Kristin Hillery Craig Gass (right) with Trey Galyon 

CG: I’ve had four stalkers, three of them men. The one girl is really psychotic. Her emails are up to the point of “Sorry I missed you the other night.” She’s in Alaska. She feels like she has some kind of interaction with me.

TOP So how did you get the part of Tom “Big Boned” on Sex and the City?

CG: I got a call from these people at Sex and the City who’d heard me on The Howard Stern Show and they said, “We think you’d be perfect to play a vulnerable guy.” [Note: In the episode, Miranda meets Tom “Big Boned” at Weight Watchers. He’s very insecure. He loves to go down on her but he wants to kiss her after he does it, and Miranda doesn’t know what to do. If she tells him it grosses her out, it will shatter his self-confidence, but she can’t deal with the post-cunnilingus kiss. They wind up breaking up over it.] I went in and auditioned and even though they normally send five or six audition tapes to HBO for casting, they only sent my tape because they felt so strongly that I was the guy for that role.

TOP I always wondered how actors felt about playing overweight characters.

CG: Well, they said, “You can either put on weight or we can change the material.” Obviously they can’t tell you to gain weight, but you can if you want to. I put on 35 pounds. I was eating huge-ass meals every night before I went to bed, and I went to Ben and Jerry’s every day. I put on 20 pounds in a month. Then they called me and said production had to be halted for a month because Sarah Jessica Parker got pregnant. So I kept waiting and I kept eating and by the time I got to the set, I’d put on 35 pounds. When I got there, I had to go down on Cynthia Nixon for 19 hours. It was all simulated, but I was all up in her shit.

TOP So what exactly do they put over it?

CG: She had on some really thin, short shorts and I had on underwear. I was so nervous when I got to the set that I didn’t even want to say hi to Cynthia because I had read on Page Six or something that the girls weren’t getting along. I thought, If they hate each other, they’re really going to hate me, because I was so big and gassy. I thought she was going to hate me. She was so cool! I wouldn’t even say hi to her, but the makeup girl introduced us. I said, “I’m sorry,” and she said, “Sorry for what?” And I said, “I’m sorry it’s me. I feel like we’re in an arranged marriage that involves a lot of head.” In the middle of that shoot, we’d take breaks, and I’d be laying next to her and holding her and asking her questions about her life because it was such an intimate thing. I asked her, “You have a kid, right?” And she said yes, so I said, “Are you married?” She said, “No, I have a boyfriend.” I asked, “How long have you been dating?” She said 12 years. I said, “So how’s that going?” and she just says, “Eh.” She got knocked up that same weekend, had a kid nine months later, and announced she was leaving her boyfriend because she was a lesbian. All of my friends were like, “Dude, you turned her gay!” I actually started the party that ended with that kid.

TOP You’re responsible for Cynthia Nixon’s child?

CG: I believe in some way I am the uncle to that child.

TOP Godfather at least.

CG: I always get these fucked-up characters that do weird shit. I had a character on Las Vegas who is an X-rated comedian. He’d been banned from some comedy clubs because he had this act where he liked to stir people’s drinks with his penis. He was called the “Portland Dangler.” I was almost in an episode of Entourage where I would have been a guy from a comic book convention who at the end of the episode got buttfucked by six girls with strap-ons. I couldn’t do that episode, though.

TOP What’s next for you?

CG: In June the roast of Gene Simmons is coming out. It’s me, Jim Norton, Jeff Ross, Lisa Lampanelli, Andrew Dice Clay, Paul Mooney, Paul Rodriguez, Danny Bonaduce, and Steve-O from Jackass. At one point Steve-O was so wasted that he started peeing on stage during the commercial breaks. Then he started peeing on Danny Bonaduce. I took a picture — it’s on my MySpace page.