Nico Carney is taking the leap from stage to screen as the goofiest teenage boy you’ll ever meet. Carney is known for his stand-up, appearing in Netflix Is A Joke: The Festival, Late Night with Seth Myers, and Just For Laughs. Now the trans male stand-up comic is adding acting to his arsenal. He co-leads alongside Misha Osherovich in the trans buddy comedy, She’s the He. Carney stars as Alex, a 17-year-old who devises a plan with his best friend Ethan (Osherovich) to pretend to be a trans girl to get his crush Sasha (Malia Pyles). When Ethan is all dolled up, it turns out that she is a trans girl.
After the SXSW premiere, Carney and I discussed everything She’s the He, from landing their first feature role, finding their camaraderie with co-star Misha Osherovich, and the significance of working with a predominantly trans cast and crew in this twist on the raunchy coming-of-age comedy.
Rendy: Well, tell me everything about how’d you get on board this project?
Nico: It was very last minute. They had already actually cast the role I ended up playing, but then Jordan [Gonzalez], the actor who was initially cast, ended up getting a big project for a Stephen King adaptation, which obviously was a really cool opportunity. So he had to back out at the last minute. So they were looking for a trans guy and hopefully a comedian. And they, Misha, my co-star’s representatives knew of me, just from standup and stuff, and recommended me. And then our director, Shiv [McCarthy], had seen one of my standup clips on my Instagram or something and was like, “Oh yeah, this guy’s funny. I’ve seen this stuff before.” So then I got an email that was like, “Hey, look, check this script out. The director would love to meet with you.” And I was like, “Whoa, that’s crazy.” And then I read it and thought it was so funny and really original and cool. And then I got on a Zoom with Shiv and Vic [Brandt] our producer, and they were like, can you come next week? And I was like, “Yeah, I can come next week.” So yeah, it all happened pretty quickly, which was honestly probably for the best. I didn’t have a lot of time to overthink it.
Rendy: Where did you guys shoot and how long was the production?
Nico: We shot for basically a month in LA. I guess technically Pasadena and Reseda. But yeah, like the Los Angeles area.
Rendy: Because you’ve done standup for so long, how was the experience going from stage to screen in this big feature capacity for the first time?
Nico: It was cool. I mean, it was fun to get to work a different element of my creativity and my performance and things like that. I’m used to doing standup. But one of the fun things I’m doing on screen is that you can do it again if you screw up or whatever, you can always do another take. And it was a nice refreshing thing where it’s like, “Oh, it’s not like in standup.” If it doesn’t go well, you can’t be like, “Let me start the joke over and go again. Yeah, let me redo that.” So that was cool to get to have more breathing room to try things. Obviously standup is such a solo pursuit. It’s really fun to be working with other people, and I just really enjoyed also being a part of something that wasn’t fully my brainchild and it was somebody and multiple other people’s work coming together. I felt that was a really fulfilling process. So, I really enjoyed it.
Rendy: Alex and Ethan, their entire relationship is the heart of She’s the He. Tell me about how you found your dynamic in chemistry with Misha, because you guys are the heart of the story and everything.
Nico: I mean, pretty immediate. I thought we hit it off really well right away, and she’s such a professional, of course, and so wonderful to work with. I knew immediately. I was like, “Oh, I’m going to have so much to learn from her and I’m excited to get to be working across from her.” I just could tell how talented she was from the jump. It also was pretty easy. We really got along quite well right away, which I think really helped to translate it into the movie. It also helped that they put me up at an Airbnb for the month while I was out there, because I’m a New York local, and Misha’s place was right around the corner. So, I would pick her up and drive her to set most days, and she usually would make us late, but I would be picking her up our diva, and that was a nice good bonding time for us to get to go to and from set together and get to talk over what we were doing that day or just get to know each other better. It definitely felt like it was really natural chemistry.
Rendy: Alex has such a snap, quick-mindedness while you’re also very chill. Was there anything that you personally did to prepare to become him?
Nico: Yeah, Like I said, I didn’t have a ton of time to prepare because it was such a quick turnaround. I watched Superbad and I watched all these other buddy comedy movies just to think about how their friendship dynamics came across and how the various characters added to that to see how that could bring that into my own performance and how my end of this dynamic needed to work. I just kept leaning into just being as hyper and goofy as I could be, but it was ultimately, there’s a lot of reading the script and in my mirror saying, trying to be like, “What is the most 17-year-old boy way I could say this,” which is very fun. It was a very fun character to play because he is so nutty and says such dumb shit all the time. So it was very fun to get to lean into that side because I am not as — thankfully — not as goofy as he is.
Rendy: When it comes to the costumes, you have such a wide array of teenage fuckboi wardrobes. How did that get you into the high schooler mindset?
Nico: Well, I have to give a good shout out to our amazing costume team, Leah [Morrison] and Robbie [Lundegard]. Our two head costumes and stuff were, I mean, when I went in for my fitting, I was like, oh, this is going to rip. This is going to be so fun. Because I just saw having read the script and getting into this character and then seeing the outfits they were going to put me in, I was like, oh yeah, that’s perfect. This guy is as loud as his clothes are. And it really did help also in getting into that character, being in those stupid outfits every day that were just to help you get into that mindset of like, okay, I’m in this zone right now. I’m dressed like a 17-year-old boy. I’m acting like a 17-year-old boy. It really definitely helped. And I mean, all the costumes for everybody were so good and it just really, yeah, it added to the texture of the movie too. It all has its own sensibility within the clothing of that world too. They all are kind of funky in the way that they dress, even the more straightforward characters who are less or aren’t as, I don’t know, idiotic as Alex’s. But yeah, the costumes definitely helped us get into that zone.
Rendy: This is such an important coming out story and specifically just seeing the rest of the cast and crew being other trans people and part of the LGBTQ community. Can you tell me the significance of being on a project that will most likely, as I hope, help teens feel seen and possibly save lives?
Nico: It was definitely one of the really exciting things for me about the project and something that I just kept telling people when I was coming back and they were asking me about it. It was just so sick to be around so many other queer and trans artists that are wanting to be scrappy and make this independent movie and doing it for us and for each other. And it just felt like there was this level of, obviously at any time you’re on a film set or something, there is something greater than us that we’re working towards this film. But at the same time, it felt like there was also this other additional, there’s something greater than us at work here. This is this community that we’re creating and this ability to bottle that community that we actually have live here in the person into this movie and distribute that to people everywhere that they could really feel just how authentic the story is and how, I don’t know, I even just watching it back today, I was like, gosh, you can really feel how authentic this is and how authentic this is to the trans experience and to this comes from a trans person and is performed by trans people. You can just really feel that.
I think there’s so often media that gets out there that it’s like for gay people or whatever, but it’s like it feels forced or phony.
Rendy: It’s like pandering.
Nico: It just really washed over me today watching it again. I was like, “wow, you can really feel the authenticity in it,” which I love. And obviously also this story requires for a couple of the characters or a couple of the actors to play with gender in a way that might feel a little bit uncomfortable or might feel a little difficult. And I know there were days on set that were harder than others for certain characters who had to be on a stage. Obviously Misha as Ethan has to sort of detransition at the beginning of this movie from who she is now and then towards who she becomes at the end of the movie. So very delicate things to be dealing with and just knowing that I was going into this with a trans director and the costume designers, trans and lighting people are all these people around us that are watching us, giving us the space if we need it to take a moment and center ourselves to be okay.
And it was always temporarily when we were talking about production and stuff, that our mental health and safety was paramount and that we needed to make sure there was always time budgeted in for anything if people needed to take a step out and have a breather or whatever. So it’s just always how important it is to be around people that understand you when it’s like you’re dealing with heavy stuff. It was really important I think as we actually got into it and we’re doing these scenes that were really intense or had these more intense moments in the movie, it’s largely a comedy, but there’s a lot of really heavy stuff too, just because of the nature of the theme of it. And it was just really heartwarming to know, okay, we can actually go there with this comedy. We can go there as an actor and we can go there for all these scenes because we have the safety around us of a really loving community who understands what it’s like to feel that way and is keeping this set warm and safe for everybody. So it really was on so many levels, a really important part of the process.
Rendy: Tell me about being under Shiv’s direction, because I could only imagine how much warmth and vibrancy they brought to the set.
Nico: I mean, they were the best and they’re so smart. So just one of those people that you’re just like, oh, this is a genius person who has just done so many things and sort of jack of all trades and could really probably just as easily be of really high end professional chef. I mean one of those people that can just do anything. And thankfully has decided to do movies so that we can all get these great films, but so great about obviously keeping the creative integrity of the project and her vision and everything, but also allowing for us to be playful on set and to do some takes where we try some other stuff or there was even a scene that we wrote, we had to cut one scene and adjust it. Me, Misha and Shiv wrote it together an hour before we shot it because we had to fix something that just naturally came up as in the process. I was just so appreciative of how collaborative it was and how by that point in the filming, it was like we had already really tapped into these characters. So it was actually probably helpful for us to be helping with the writing because it was like, oh, well, I know now how I would actually say that. Having lived this character for a couple of weeks now. And same with Misha, so just in general, so warm, such great overall vision and guidance without also allowing us the room to play and to find things and be bringing ourselves to it as well.
It always felt like this obviously, they would never say, oh, it is my movie or anything because that’s just not how Shiv is, and you could just feel the generosity of that the whole time.
Rendy: What was it like having to play with a potato gun?
Nico: That thing was not functional. It was completely fun though. We were joking around about it, whatever, and then we were, I don’t know, thought it was going to burst through the wall, and then the first time we tried it, it was like it just fell on the ground and then didn’t work again. We had to totally mess up with that in the edit and everything to make it look functional, but it was not functional.
Rendy: The power of cinema.
Nico: The power of cinema.
Rendy: Did you have to play with a lot of ad-libbing during the movie shooting? Since you see the little outtakes and everything during the credits.
Nico: That was really fun. That was one of my favorite parts that we had all those bloopers, which obviously side of a funny movie we’re cracking each other up. But Shiv was really great about obviously the writing, a lot of the humor and the writing was already there in the script, but was also let us bring a little bit of that to it just to add something punchy or in the moment if it felt right just to say something else. And also, it was very trusting of me as a comedian and my ability to come up with things on the fly or to be able to add a joke here or there, and was always like, oh dude, that’s great. I love that. Never precious about who, I don’t know, came up with it or whatever. It’s not about that. It’s about all of us making this great thing together. So yeah, again, she is so encouraging.
Rendy: Now that you have made that nice little splash into the feature side, are there any other type of genres you would love to explore next?
Nico: I mean, I would love to keep working and acting and to do TV, film, any of that would be so awesome. I was so excited by this too, because when I got it, I was like, “wait, a trans buddy comedy?” That’s awesome. That’s incredible that this is my first feature that just feels so serendipitous and for me. And I just was like, yeah. So I would love to do more comedies and I’m hoping to be able to write some of my own as well and star in things that I write too. So yeah, definitely comedy. I’m also interested in dramatic acting too, so I would totally kind of, I don’t know. I’m drawn to, I think, project to project and script to script, story to story. Not necessarily tied to a specific genre. But I would be really open to anything that just excites me and something like this where I read the script and I was like, oh, that’ll be really fun to do. Yeah. So I think I’m very open at this point. I would love to get more cool projects like this, for sure.
Rendy: I was thinking of the movie Together, Together where Patti Harrison plays a pregnant cis woman. Knowing your trans experience, I find it so amazing to see you portray this super cis straight boy character. Can you speak to the importance of being able to play across every parameter that you can?
Nico: Yeah, totally. Yeah. I mean, it’s definitely, as a trans man and an actor definitely was. It was cool for me on this to get to play a cis character because I think so often people want to pigeonhole us and to just play trans characters, which is, I also, for the record, would love to play trans characters. And often when I write things, the character I would want to play is a trans guy. I talk about it a lot on stage as a standup and I’m very drawn to a lot of storytelling about trans people and would love to play that. But at the same time, realistically in this industry, it’s just not like those projects are coming all the time. So to be able to showcase that trans people can play cis people and can do it well and can be just as believable as an actor, as any other actor is believable as that character.
Emmett [Preciado], who plays Jacob, our bad guy in our movie, is also trans. It was so cool that we got to have this fight scene between these two trans dudes, and they’re both cis in the movie, and it’s just really cool. And also for this story in particular, I know it was always important to Shiv and felt really right that a trans guy play Alex, because it just felt like it would allow us to go there with certain things. Also I think having somebody alongside Misha who understands what’s going on and understands how delicate it can be and isn’t going to say the wrong thing or be obtuse or just not understand why parts of this filming process might be a little bit more difficult or require a little extra care and stuff like that. So I think it was just on top of the fact that it’s cool that I got to play, that I actually think it was necessary that it was a trans guy doing it, or a trans person or somebody who just understands where some of this is coming from, and then also can allow us to go there with some of the humor because it’s coming from a safer voice.
She’s the He is currently playing at film festivals.
