Jewish actor Michael Zegen has made a name for himself playing some less-than-savory Jewish New Yorkers, like Midge Maisel’s philandering husband Joel in the Amazon hit “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel” and gangster Bugsy Siegel in HBO’s “Boardwalk Empire.”
Now, in his first-ever leading role on the silver screen, he’s playing a hustling New York City real estate agent named Andy Singer — a character that Zegen says is “absolutely” Jewish.
“Notice To Quit,” a father-daughter comedy from first-time director Simon Hacker, takes place on a singularly bad summer day as Singer tries to avoid eviction from his home by desperately attempting to convince New Yorkers to sign leases on crappy rentals. To supplement his income — or lack thereof — he’s also illegally selling appliances from unrented apartments.
In the midst of this crisis, his 10-year-old estranged daughter, Anna (Kasey Bella Suarez), shows up; she and her mother are moving to Florida and she wants to see her father before she goes.
“He’s a sleazebag,” Zegen, 45, said in an interview with the New York Jewish Week, suggesting he and his character have little in common. “He really is, but he’s just trying to get by. He’s a hustler.”
But Zegen reconsiders his statement after a very brief pause.
“That’s probably the one area that that I have experience in, is hustling,” he said, reflecting on his first apartment in Harlem, and how he’d “set up shop” between auditions at the lobby of the Marriott Marquis in Times Square. “The good kind of hustling. I’m an actor, and I think all actors are hustlers.”
The multi-generational buddy comedy of sorts was shot on location uptown, downtown and in the boroughs. Andy’s widowed artist father is played by Jewish actor, comedian and Bronx native Robert Klein.
Though the film does not discuss the family’s ethnic identity, Zegen points out that his actual bar mitzvah photo was on display on set. “You can’t really see it, but I’m wearing a yarmulke,” said Zegen, who became a bar mitzvah in 1992 at the Glen Rock Jewish Center in New Jersey. “My parents are still members.”
Michael Zegen plays a hustling real estate agent in “Notice to Quit.” (Hyo Jin An, courtesy Whiskey Creek Releasing)
Growing up in a Jewish family — his maternal grandparents were Holocaust survivors; his mother was born in a displaced persons camp in Salzburg, Austria, and his grandmother recently celebrated her 100th birthday — Zegen began acting as a child.
“I caught the bug early on,” he said in a Zoom interview from his home in the West Village, our conversation occasionally punctuated by sirens on Greenwich Avenue. “My parents loved going to see shows — they still do. My brothers didn’t, for whatever reason, but I did, and I loved it and, and, you know, they nurtured it.”
After graduating from Skidmore College as a theater major in 2001, Zegen moved to the city to pursue work as an actor, eventually landing a recurring role on the FX FDNY-focused dramedy “Rescue Me.” He has also been on Broadway twice, in “A View From the Bridge” and “Trouble in Mind.”
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“I pretty much have done everything in my career in New York,” he said. “Not everything, but you know, most — which is great, because I get to sleep in my own bed.”
In “Notice to Quit,” which was shot on 35mm film, a rarity in our digital era, New York City emerges as a central character as Zegen’s Andy races — sometimes quite literally — from one location to the next.
“I love shooting in the city,” he said. “ I feel like we really captured the city’s energy and vibrancy. I really feel like this is the kind of movie that people are gonna watch 20, 30, years from now, and look back on and be like, ‘Oh, that’s what that looked like back then.’ Like those those famous New York movies from the ’70s, like, ‘Dog Day Afternoon’ and ‘French Connection.’”
On both stage and screen, many of the characters Zegen has played so far are Jews — with some Italians mixed in for good measure. “I’ve been lucky enough to play these Jewish characters in amazing TV shows and movies and theater,” he said. Still, he said, “I want to play everything.”
When it comes to landing Jewish roles, “I get it,” he said. “Especially something like ‘Maisel.’ From the get-go, I was like, I get this sense of humor. It’s like that Neil Simon-esque kind of humor that I think Jews inherently get.”
Zegen, who lives with his girlfriend and his mutt, Iggy, said his Jewishness is central to his identity. “I love celebrating the holidays,” he said. “I think it’s important to keep up the traditions.”
Looking ahead, Zegen, who has a role in the HBO series “The Penguin,” will appear in “Strategic Love Play,” a two-hander by Miriam Battye set to open at Minetta Lane theater in Greenwich Village later this fall. He also plays a Jewish character in Lena Dunham’s forthcoming comedy series on Netflix, “Too Much.”
“I think that’s going to be incredible,” he said of the show, which centers on a New Yorker who flees to London following a painful breakup. “We shot that in London, actually, not New York, for once.”
Zegen said he loves to travel, and while in London he visited Paris and Edinburgh. “I feel like that’s where all my money goes — traveling, and that’s great,” he said. “It’s worth it, because it’s important to be worldly and see the world and see how other people live.
“But I will say that, when I’m in all these other cities, whether it’s nationally or internationally, I always wonder: This is a great place, but like, why do you live here and not New York?”
“Notice to Quit” is now playing in theaters.
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