Currently: Playing Philip, a college student who must deal with his best friend’s total transformation, in Neil LaBute’s The Shape of Things at The Promenade Theatre. Weller appeared with the rest of the off-Broadway cast in the play’s premiere at London’s Almeida Theatre earlier this year.
Hometown: New Orleans, Louisiana. Weller decided he wanted to be an actor after appearing in his kindergarten class’ Christmas play. “I sang `I Ain’t Getting Nothing for Christmas,’” the actor states. “The week afterwards all these hot seventh grade girls kept coming up to me and telling me I was really good. So I figured that was the way to go in life.”
No More Tips: Like many actors, Weller had a day job when he got his break as an understudy in the Broadway production of Six Degrees of Separation. “It was a good job for me-that was when I got to quit waiting tables, which is key,” he says. “It was towards the end of the run so everyone was relaxed and let you go on whenever you wanted. So I went on a lot.”
You Only Win Some: While Weller achieved great critical success with the film Stonewall, he has also had some “big disappointments” in Hollywood. “I had this great character in Coyote Ugly and now you can only see it on the DVD in the cut scenes,” he says. “My role in Armageddon is another sad story-I was entirely cut out of it. Though apparently if you are watching it on video and you have a frame-by-frame feature you can see me.”
Things To Come: When his agent called him with the offer for The Shape Of Things, Weller was “home licking the wounds” he received from losing starring roles in a play and a Showtime original series simultaneously the latter apparently because he shaved his goatee, making him “too pretty for the part”. “The offer was pending a conversation with Neil,” Weller explains. “I guess my English major held me in good stead as I theorized and bullshitted a little bit about literary motifs and such with him. I think I actually used the words `LaButian motifs!’”
Weller the Stalker? Prior to The Shape of Things, Weller had briefly met Paul Rudd and already shared a very special connection with onstage fiancée Gretchen Mol. “I met her on an audition and wound up looking up her name and information-it was before she was a star so she was listed. I called her and left her this message saying `This is Fred; I just met you at an audition.’ I told her I wasn’t a stalker and that I’d never call again if she didn’t call back. She didn’t call back.”
Playing Philip: Weller’s character in The Shape of Things might be labeled abrasive by some, but the actor actually admires him. “He certainly has his flaws but he also has a lot of virtues. In a lot of ways he is the boy in The Emperor's New Clothes who says what other people are thinking but no one wants to say. And he is driven by his affection and loyalty to his friend. I think he is like an M&M-hard exterior but soft on the inside-which makes him great to play.”
