Kate Micucci

Recently I got the chance to sit down with actress and musician Kate Micucci to talk about her acting career, her music and… Sand castle building? Read all about it and more in this exclusive interview!

It was announced back in January that your band had signed a deal with HBO for a television pilot. Could you give us an update on how the project is going?

Kate Micucci: It’s going great! Right now we’re still in the writing phase but I’m hoping that I’ll have more to tell you soon.

While we’re on the subject of acting; You have played many television and movie roles throughout the years, do you have any favorite roles?

Kate Micucci: Oh, man. I’ve had so many! Right now I’m really loving working on Raising Hope, it’s such a blast! I actually love all the actors on the show! So it’s a great place to be and work! That and I really loved playing [the character] Stephanie Gooch on Scrubs, it was an amazing experience working on that show. And “When in Rome” was a blast. That [film] had an awesome cast and we shot in New York City in the spring, it was pretty magical!

Obviously your music has had a major influence on your career, but we’d like to know what music influenced you the most. Did you have any major inspirations?

Kate Micucci: Oh, gosh. I think growing up there were two really big influences; One was

Billy Joel and the other was Broadway Musicals for sure. I grew up being one of those kids who was kind of a Broadway geek.

A lot of the B3K readers are fans of your comedy band ‘Garfunkel and Oates’, and I often hear the question “Where did they get the inspiration for their name?”. Most sources say it was inspired by Art Garfunkel and John Oates. Is that true, and if so, could you possibly go in depth behind the reasoning?

Kate Micucci: Yes, it definitely came from those two guys who are, well… The nicest way to say it is “famous second bananas”. John Oates is now a friend of ours. He contacted us on Myspace back when we first started playing and said “Hey, you’re using my name, you owe me a beer!”. He was really sweet and we have played together a few times.

We have all seen you with your famous ukulele (not to mention the odd piano or two), but we’d like to know, just how many instruments can you play?

Kate Micucci: Oh man. I mean, I can play a lot of instruments pretty poorly- *laugh* but my main instruments are the the piano, guitar and ukulele; but even with the guitar I’m still just a hack. I took classical piano classes as a kid, so the piano was always my main instrument growing up. I also played the trombone in the marching band when I was a kid but I’m pretty bad at it now. If I pick up [a new instrument] I can usually figure it out, you know?

While we’re on the subject of your musical skill I’d like to talk about one of your other skills, namely sculpture. On your web site you display a few sand castle sculptures you created and go on to say you taught sand castle building classes! Can you tell us about it?

Kate Micucci: Yeah, I used to teach sand castle building. That was back when I was struggling to pay my rent so I got a job at a hotel in Santa Monica and I would teach sand castle building classes to the hotel guests. That was a pretty sweet job. How often do you get paid to show up and hang out on the beach? It’s probably the best odd-job I’ve ever had.

So where do you see your career heading in the next few years?

Kate Micucci: Oh gosh, I would be so happy if it was just more of the same, but more of it! I really love working on television and I’d also love to do more movies, and play shows and travel. I’m fortunate that this past year I traveled a lot and worked on a couple of television shows, so if I could do more of that, that would be awesome! Hopefully [we’ll] get our HBO show on the air and that would be pretty sweet.

So in closing, do you have any favorite television shows, graphic novels or things of the like?

Kate Micucci: Yeah, I do actually. I love Mad Men right now, that’s my favorite show that’s on the air- Well, I’m waiting for it to come back on the air, you know. *laugh* “I Love Lucy” is my favorite show of all time and I’m a big fan of “Freaks and Geeks” so those are my three favorite shows. As far as graphic novels do you know the cartoonist Jeffrey Brown? He’s kind of my favorite right now. I’m not sure what [his work is] considered, really. He does these amazing books mainly about his relationships and they’re awesome. You can pick them up at comic stores.

I think that’s it! Thank you so much for taking the time to speak with us!

Kate Micucci: Awesome, thank you so much!