Romany Malco

In The 40 Year-Old Virgin (2005) Jay works the floor of an electronics shop and gives Andy advice at a rate Andy cannot take in. Malco's trick is to deliver bad advice with complete conviction and then, a beat later, let us see that he half knows it is bad. He, Paul Rudd and Seth Rogen sound like men who have stood behind the same counter for years, which is why the friendship holds even when what they are saying is no help at all. Apatow lets the routines run long. Malco is usually the one keeping them moving.

He came to acting late and sideways. He was a rapper with College Boyz in the early 1990s, then a producer, and in 1997 John Leguizamo told him to try acting. Eight years later two things landed in the same year, the Apatow film and Weeds, and he has since said of the first that "I was actually begging [writer-director] Judd Apatow to cut me out of it." The parts that followed came in a recognisable shape: fast talkers, men who chase women and explain themselves afterwards, in Blades of Glory (2007) and Think Like a Man (2012), where his Zeke Freeman will not commit to anyone. He has made two films with the director Tim Story. Then, in A Million Little Things (2018 to 2023), he spent five years as Rome Howard in a drama, without a counter to lean on.

Conrad Shepard is the other Malco. In Weeds (2005) he and Tonye Patano play Heylia and Conrad, the suppliers Nancy relies on, and Jenji Kohan writes their kitchen as the one place in the show where anyone tells the truth. Malco slows right down there. We were surprised by how much we wanted the show to stay in that kitchen: he and Patano are the only adults on screen who know what they are doing, and their competence is restful after an hour of everyone else improvising. He was a regular for three seasons, and the show thins out after three seasons. We would not swear the two facts are related.

The fast-talking friend is a part that can be written lazily, and often has been, and when a script gives Malco nothing but volume he tends to give volume back. He is better when someone lets him be the person who knows, which is why the kitchen beats the shop floor. Start with the shop floor anyway, for the counter talk, and then watch him sit still. He has now written and directed a film of his own, Tijuana Jackson: Purpose Over Prison, which reads to us as a man who has stopped waiting for someone else to write him the part.