David Lewis is a familiar face to film and television audiences, but long before he was a busy actor, he was a bona fide baby barfly.
Lewis’ father was the lead bartender at The Waldorf; his mother was a waitress. If you were drinking at The Waldorf in the late ‘70s, you might have spotted Lewis toddling around under the watchful eye of his parents and his extended Waldorf family.
“My dad proposed to my mom at The Waldorf. They had their reception at The Waldorf. I learned to walk at The Waldorf,” says Lewis in a recent phone interview. “The waitresses used to babysit me there when both of my parents were working.”
The Waldorf was more than a second home for Lewis; it was also where he watched his father interact with patrons, and discovered that performing was in his DNA.
“If you’re a good bartender, you’re a performer, and you’re really good at talking and listening,” says Lewis. “I would see my dad hold court, and I got my sense of humour from him.”
Lewis has been a working actor since the ‘90s, when he entered the entertainment industry by way of commercials. He’s logged more than 200 acting credits in that time, including Motive, The Day The Earth Stood Still, Man of Steel, Lake Placid, Paycheck, and Harper’s Island. He starred in Shoes Off, a short film by Vancouver director Mark Sawers that won top honours at the Cannes Film Festival (“In my dad’s last year on the planet, he used to watch that film all of the time,” says Lewis). In 2015, Lewis won a Leo Award for Best Performance by a Male in a Web Series for his role as a stay-at-home dad in Parked (binge it at ParkedTheShow.com).
But as far as years go, 2016 has been the busiest of Lewis’ career. This fall, he can be spotted on multiple networks inhabiting a wide range of characters, including a “shadowy figure with a silencer” on Rogue, an army major on Travelers, and an over-the-top magazine editor in Girlfriends’ Guide to Divorce.
Arguably the most impressive of his upcoming roles is on BBC America’s highly anticipated Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency. This television adaptation of Douglas Adams’ novel series – penned by Max Landis and produced by the people behind The Walking Dead – stars Samuel Barnett as the titular holistic detective who investigates cases involving the supernatural.
The locally shot series also stars Elijah Wood as Dirk’s reluctant assistant, and features a long list of local actors in key roles, including Michael Eklund, Zak Santiago, Viv Leacock, and Osric Chau as a quartet of anarchist vampires known as the Rowdy 3 (see why that’s funny?). Lewis recurs as Agent Weedle, a character he describes as “new to the field. He’s used to being behind the desk. He’s more of a clerical agent. He’s out in the field with his partner, who is the Alpha male of the relationship – a Tom Cruise character – and I’m just so happy to be in the field with this other agent.” Lewis pauses, clearly choosing his next words carefully in order to avoid spoilers. He delivers them slowly. “Through a series of events, something happens to my character, which changes him drastically, 181 degrees.”
Showrunner Landis sets the tone for Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency, according to Lewis. “There’s a manic-ness to this. There’s a lot of humour involved. There’s a lot of tension.”
Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency represents an exciting get for the Vancouver industry, according to Lewis. “All of the actors, we’d be on set and looking at each other and saying, ‘Can you believe we get to work on this?’ This is the kind of thing you’d watch on HBO and go, ‘Boy, I’d love to work on that one day.’”
Lewis is a true-blue genre-hopper, equally adept at (and admittedly happy with) roles in comedy, drama, horror, and sci-fi. When he first started out, he was “always the nice boyfriend, or the computer programmer, or the nerdy guy,” says Lewis. “Then I hit my late 30s, early 40s, and I suddenly became the corporate douchebag: the guy who would cheat on his wife and have these financial dealings that were shady.”
Right now, Lewis muses that he seems to be booking mainly “mean and ugly” characters – a trend he claims to savour. “I look so clean-cut, there’s a really nice dichotomy of having me do terrible things,” he says. “I’m not the guy you would expect doing that terrible thing.”
Despite his current bounty of high-profile bookings, Lewis remains committed to the hometown indie scene, which he credits for feeding his soul creatively. He can currently be seen in The Goodnight Kiss, a short film he co-wrote with director Laura Adkin.
The Goodnight Kiss premiered earlier this month at the Edmonton International Film Festival, where it won the award for Best Comedy Short. Earlier this week, it had its American premiere at the Austin Film Festival.
Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency premieres Oct. 23 on BBC America. Keep up to date on Lewis’ upcoming TV appearances @davidjlewis11
