The actor Paul Walter Hauser emerged onto Fifth Avenue to pick up an açai bowl from a guy on a bicycle, then headed back up to his hotel room. He wore slippers, shorts, and a black tank top that exposed his biceps tattoos: on the right arm, his nineties comedy heroes (“Short & Stern & Farley & Varney & Carrey & Williams”); on the left, “1 Corinthians, 6:19-20” (“Your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit”). “I was in a weight-loss challenge with my brother-in-law,” he explained. “We said whoever loses has to get that tattoo, which is very like my family: just hella religious and extreme decisions. I lost thirty-five pounds. Then I booked ‘I, Tonya’ and had to put it all back on.”
“I, Tonya,” in which Hauser played one of the bumbling lowlifes who plans an attack on Nancy Kerrigan, was his breakout role. Since then, he’s been a dognapper (“Cruella”), a Klansman (“BlacKkKlansman”), a serial killer (“Black Bird,” for which he rapped his Emmy acceptance speech), the emotion Embarrassment (“Inside Out 2”), and the title character in Clint Eastwood’s “Richard Jewell,” about the security guard who discovered a pipe bomb at the 1996 Olympics and was then falsely suspected of planting it. Hauser has cornered the market on a certain kind of meaty, cloddish, yet affable Everyman, his roles a confederacy of scene-stealing dunces. This summer, he plays Liam Neeson’s police sidekick in a “Naked Gun” reboot, a lovesick ranch hand in “Americana,” and Mole Man, a subterranean supervillain, in “The Fantastic Four: First Steps.”
The promotional marathon was wearing on him, so Hauser had arranged for an I.V. drip that morning, to “give me a jolt.” Carla Nilo, who runs a mobile service called the Glow Café, arrived in his room. Hauser was getting the Glow Latte, which contained a high dose of Vitamin C and other nutrients, and guaranteed a “lit-from-within look.”
Hauser flung his bare feet on a sofa and held out an arm. “One litre of I.V. fluid is equivalent to drinking two gallons of water,” Nilo told him, as she set up a fluid bag on a stand.
“Oh, praise God,” Hauser said. He’d been dehydrated after starting Zepbound, a weight-loss drug. But he didn’t want to lose too much weight, because he’s been cast as Chris Farley in a bio-pic. “Part of playing Chris is owning the body type,” he said. His stout figure has been a mixed blessing in Hollywood: “The very thing I begrudge has also given me opportunity.”
Nilo inserted a needle, as Hauser lay back and ate his açai. He grew up in Saginaw, Michigan, the son of a Lutheran minister. “I tell people I’m a Jesus guy, because ‘Christian’ just sounds like you love Donald Trump and you’re terrified of gay marriage,” he said. When he was sixteen, he started doing standup at bars and church functions, riffing on the McDonald’s mascots. (“The Hamburglar—he’s like a homeless Zorro.”) At twenty-two, he auditioned to be an extra in the movie “Virginia.” He told the director, Dustin Lance Black, that his Oscar speech for “Milk”—in which Black had promised queer youth that God loves them—had moved him to tears. Black ended up giving him a speaking role.
Hauser relocated to L.A. and booked a few sitcom parts. But he ran out of money and had to return home and work at a bowling alley. “It’s the most demoralizing feeling ever, to be giving people their bowling shoes while they’re quoting a line you said on television,” he said. In a funk, he drank and smoked pot. (He’s now three years and nine months sober.) He hit three hundred pounds and contracted gout. A few years later, he tried L.A. again, sleeping on a kitchen floor in a house with five roommates. “Shit was gnarly,” he said. At auditions, “it was always ‘Can you be a Cheeto-dust-fingered, basement-dwelling idiot?’ ” Then he booked “I, Tonya” and had to regain weight to look like the “sonuvabitch” he was playing. “Taking it off took months. Putting it on was, like, three weeks of just ice cream and whiskey and bread.”
“I love bread,” Nilo chimed in.
“Ah, bread,” Hauser said. “Our dear friend and foe.” Lately, he’s getting in shape by pursuing another dream: pro wrestling. After fighting in a charity match, he’s teamed up with Major League Wrestling and now has a signature move: the Haus Arrest. “I wrap my arms around the body, and then I pull them forward, and they land face-first onto the mat, because I have them in a straitjacket,” he explained.
I.V. done, Nilo bandaged his arm. The drip had given Hauser a “surge of confidence,” he reported, but the açai-Zepbound combo wasn’t sitting well. “I’m in hell right now,” he said, as his stomach squealed. “Fuckin’ hell.” ♦
