The Adam Pally Project His new live show might be stage-fright therapy, a midlife lark, or a middle finger to streamers. He’s still figuring it out.
NOTE: This article is a republication- Source: Vulture (by Jason Diamond).
Adam Pally is waiting for a lunchtime martini at Grand Central Oyster Bar when a pair of young guys — maybe 19 or 20, looking like they robbed the Aimé Leon Dore store and are making their getaway back to Long Island — sneak a photo of him. At least, that’s what it looks like. Pally waves off the incident: “No way. I don’t ever get recognized.” If anything, they were probably confusing him for one of the other “handsome, schlubby Jewish guys,” he says, like Seth Rogen, Josh Gad, or Jake Johnson. That happens a lot. But Pally is comfortable being that guy people think they know from that one thing; he’s carved a career out of playing various smart-asses in movies (often ones that star Aubrey Plaza — The To Do List, Life After Beth, Dirty Grandpa) and shows (he’s most famous for playing Max Blum in Happy Endings) that people usually tend to discover after they’ve been axed. “I sort of cultivate it,” he says with a laugh.
His martini arrives, and Pally explains what he means. One night, he was out in London with his Sonic the Hedgehog co-star James Marsden, who casually mentioned that he invited a friend to join them. That friend was Justin Theroux. Within minutes, the outing went from chill to wild. A crowd surrounded the group, and everybody was taking pictures of them. “I’ve met Justin before, but he doesn’t remember who the fuck I am,” Pally recounts. “So I’m stuffing pizza in my mouth, and he’s looking at me wondering who the fat shit eating pizza is.” Just as he’s ripping a second slice, a young girl and her mother pass up Theroux and Marsden to ask Pally if he was on The Mindy Project. (He was.) It’s her favorite show. She asks for a picture with Pally, and as the girl and her mother walk away, Theroux “looks at me like Are you an actor?, and I felt like nothing matters anymore. It doesn’t matter who you are. There’s no notoriety. You could be on the hottest show on HBO or famous on TikTok, and it’s basically the same. Anybody that thinks they’re more famous besides maybe Tom Cruise is under a real delusion.”
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