Growing up in Pella, most of the information Andrew Lopez got about being a Hollywood actor came from the TV show Entourage and all that he could find about filmmaker Judd Apatow.
“One of the things I found was that when he was in college, he would interview comedians, and that's how he started,” Lopez said. “And Judd went on to be the godfather of modern comedy, and I just started taking in all that info.”
In his freshman year of undergrad at Iowa State University, Lopez and a friend learned that the student union board had a fund for entertainment events.
“And we knew from watching those TV shows and just reading up on Judd Apatow and stuff that if we could get access to that money we could get access to the agents, and we could get access to the producers who help those artists, and then it would just be more knowledge for us,” Lopez said.
Taking full advantage of his position, Lopez even booked himself to open for the visiting stand-up comedians, including Aziz Ansari, Amy Schumer and Bo Burnham.
“It was crazy,” he said. “And I was bombing, by the way — I was not good.”
But for Lopez, it was another way for him to learn what it was like to be an entertainer and get a feel for being on-stage as a stand-up comedian.
I love Iowa, and a lot of things that were coming out on TV around that time period of 2018 was just like talking down on what they would call flyover states.Andrew Lopez
After receiving what Lopez calls “a top tier education in drinking on Welch Avenue,” he graduated in 2012 and moved to Los Angeles. Lopez landed an assistant job at the Creative Artists Agency and his friend began working for Donald Glover, aka Childish Gambino, another act that was booked at ISU. In short, the scheme totally worked.
In LA, he worked at the agency during the day and did stand-up at night. Eventually, he landed a job as a writer’s assistant for Neighbors 2 and Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates. He was working for screenwriter Brendan O’Brien, who ironically — or perhaps prophetically — was once an assistant to Apatow.
About five years after, he had outgrown his role as an agent and his career was plateauing. No one was reading his scripts and he was bombing on stage.
“I was eating alone at a Filipino restaurant, literally, like crying over like a bowl of rice, being like, ‘I'm gonna move back to Iowa. It's totally fine. I'll be a teacher,’” Lopez said. “And I remember Jo Koy walked into the restaurant, and he was the only other Filipino comedian.”
Lopez told Koy how much he meant to him, and asked if he would ever meet him for coffee. Koy gave Lopez his number and then brought him out on the road for four years touring arenas.
“And that's when I became a good comedian, was because of Jo Koy,” Lopez said. “But yeah, it was a random encounter at a restaurant.”
In the last few years, Lopez has appeared on FX’s The Bear, where he plays Garrett, a disciplined restaurant worker who first appears in the season two episode “Forks." He's also been in Apple TV’s Platonic, playing Reggie, a status-obsessed foil to star Seth Rogen. He’ll next be gracing the screen in the Will Ferrell/Zac Efron film Judgment Day, currently in post production.
Fans in his home state will be excited to learn that Lopez hasn’t forgotten his roots. In fact, his passion project is a series called Iowa, set to be produced by HBO.
Christopher Storer, creator of The Bear, met with Lopez in a coffee shop in 2018 to talk with him about his creative goals. Their relationship eventually led to Lopez's role in The Bear, but also to Lopez selling his script.
Lopez said he felt like the middle of the country wasn’t being depicted in a way that reflected how he felt growing up as an Asian kid in the Midwest.
“I had a great time in Iowa, and I still do. I love Iowa, and a lot of things that were coming out on TV around that time period of 2018 was just like talking down on what they would call flyover states,” Lopez said. “And I had written this script that was about living in small-town Iowa, and it was the only Asian family in town. We didn't even mention it, and everybody accepted us in the script.”
The project is still in development and Lopez recently traveled back to Iowa to work on one of the scripts and ensure the writing is as real as possible. He promised to come back to IPR when the series becomes a big success.
“The last thing I want is to ever be famous,” Lopez said with typical Midwestern humbleness. “The one thing I really want is to just make art about Iowa, and live in Iowa and just have, like, a normal life and get to show everybody else in the world how great it is to live a normal life in Iowa.”
In the Iowa Famous series, we're highlighting people with all types of connections to our state who have made an impact in arts, politics, social justice, education, sports and more. View all the Iowa Famous stories here. Have an idea of someone we should feature? Email talkofiowa@iowapublicradio.org.
