A 20-year-old failure keeps podcast Dead Eyes burning
Written by ABC Audio ALL RIGHTS RESERVED on January 9, 2022
In early 2020, the American actor and comedian Connor Ratliff launched a podcast about an incident that had been haunting him for years. In 2000, he had been cast as Private Zielinski in the HBO mini-series Band of Brothers. It was a small role, but Ratliff was fresh out of drama school and thought his career was finally up and running. But then Tom Hanks, who created the series with Steven Spielberg, saw his audition tape and remarked that the actor had “dead eyes”. And so Ratliff was called back to do the scene again, this time in front of Hanks. Then he was fired.
Ratliff is not a household name, though you may recognise him from small roles in The Marvelous Mrs Maisel, Veep and Orange Is the New Black. He appears in adverts, performs improvised comedy and, thanks to Dead Eyes, his series about the Band of Brothers debacle, is now a successful podcaster. Considering the subject matter, Dead Eyes could well come over as the ramblings of a bitter, needy man. In fact, it is a charming, quizzical and funny reflection on what it is to be rejected by one of the biggest and most beloved actors of recent times. Ratliff contemplates the nature of success and failure and the experience of climbing the greasy pole of the entertainment business. What, he asks, was the actor who replaced him like? What exactly are “dead eyes”? And how do other performers deal with disappointment?
The format is part interview show, part memoir, with Ratliff providing whimsical snapshots of his life and career. Guests including D’Arcy Carden (Janet in The Good Place), Mad Men’s Jon Hamm and the singer-songwriter Aimee Mann, whose music helped our host through the hard times, gamely appear to help him work through his issues. Seth Rogen pops by to discuss his own professional failures. Hanks, Dead Eyes’ answer to Godot, has yet to show up.
By rights, the series, which is halfway through its third season, should have ended ages ago. Listening to the early episodes in 2020, I thought it a brilliant idea but a shortlived one. Yet here Ratliff is: indefatigable, still picking at this 20-year-old wound, still disarmingly funny while pondering the perils of working in commercials or talking to Damon Lindelof, co-creator of Lost, about what happens when everyone hates the ending of your hit TV series.
That there is still mileage in the podcast is a result of its host’s imagination and self-awareness; no one is more alive to the ludicrousness of this enterprise than Ratliff. He knows that what happened to him is unremarkable, part of the rough and tumble of the struggling actor’s life. Yet he still gets us invested in the mystery. Because, three seasons in, the world still needs to know: why did Hanks fire him?
