LOS ANGELES
MARCH 18, 2026
STRANGER: Pete Gardner
LOCATION: Aroma Coffee and Tea, 4360 Tujunga Avenue, Studio City, Los Angeles
THEME: Lunch with an actor who took the long way to Hollywood and loved every detour
“August 18, that was the greatest day I could ever remember.”
Pete Gardner’s recalling a beach day, about 10 years ago. It was early in his run as part of the main cast in “Crazy Ex-Girlfriend,” a musical comedy television show. For Pete, the role was the culmination of years of acting and improv work, of self-discovery and reflection, of a journey from Scarsdale to globe-trotting adventures then Chicago and Los Angeles.
Decades of auditions and second-places over the years. Now, finally, a series regular role on a show halfway through shooting its first season.
But on August 18, Pete wasn’t needed at work. So he took himself to the beach.
“I’ll never forget it. I knew the job was gonna last for like 15 more episodes, and so I didn’t have to check my email, I didn’t have to worry about an audition tomorrow, about anything. I was like 50 years old and that was my first legitimate day off in years. What a magical feeling that was.”
Pete, now 61, is sharing that story across the table from me at Aroma Coffee and Tea in Studio City, Los Angeles. I’d arrived a little early to the interview and so got to see Pete pull up on his stylish black Vespa, looking cool with his helmet and over-sized goggles.
From the second he arrives he’s incredibly easygoing, quick to joke and laugh, and radiates a warm energy. After placing our orders, he shares stories about his travels to – and love for – my home country of England, talking with an upbeat energy and constant awe about what he saw and experienced; a trait that’s a through-line when he’s telling stories.
We place our orders at the counter at Aroma. It’s a bungalow converted into a restaurant, each room cozy with soft colors and comfortable furniture. We take a table on the outdoor brick floor patio, a quiet spot with ivy and tropical plants surrounding us.
Our waitress brings the food; Pete’s having grilled salmon salad with red onions, tomatoes, cucumbers and capers, on a bed of mixed baby greens and balsamic vinaigrette. He’s here often and knew right away what he wanted.
My pick is the chicken tortilla salad: grilled chicken breast, tomatoes, black beans, jack and cheddar cheese, guacamole and roasted corn with crispy flour tortillas, romaine and Santa Fe ranch. Fresh and filling, I make quick work of it.
The waitress has a slight fumble setting the bowls down, spilling some water. It’s no bother to Pete or me, but she’s apologetic. “Sorry, I was playing cards last night with like five people and did the same thing, I spilled all over the cards.”
“Oh really?” asks Pete quickly. “What game were you playing?”
“It’s called Pit. It’s really fun, it’s three to eight players.”
“My wife and I are always looking for new ones. Whenever we go out to restaurants and stuff like that, we always play cards waiting for the food.”
She hopes we enjoy our lunch and leaves, and Pete takes the conversation to the other side of the Atlantic again. “The thing I love about England is, when I went with my wife, everywhere we went, just naturally when I talk to people, like this woman who just came around a second ago, I’ll do a little bit about the cards. In England, they play right along, they’re up for it.”
He was born Pete Zahradnick in Scarsdale, New York, calling it a picturesque place with beautiful homes and a duck pond. Bucolic but insular, with people keeping to themselves.
Pete’s father changed the Czechoslovakian family name to Gardner. “He was a go-getter, he was the basketball coach, the scout leader. He also had a very good sense of humor,” he says, suggesting that may explain why Pete was “always the class clown” in school.
He was just 13 when his father died. Going through that experience freed him up to make the most of his growing interest in acting. “For the first time a part of me realized that life is short and it has a limit. I feel like after that age, I just started to feel like there’s no reason to have fear about it. I decided I’m gonna do this, and it grew and grew.”
He graduated high school in 1982 and enrolled at Manhattan’s American Academy of Dramatic Arts. “I realized very quickly that without any life experience, there’s no use in pretending to be King Lear when you’re 18, 19 years old. Any character you play, there’s got to be a piece of you that identifies with it, or at least with the character’s viewpoint. Because that’s the only way it’s ever going to ring true.”
“I had a bit of an Indiana Jones complex at the time.”
One weekend he went to visit a friend at Skidmore College in upstate New York. “There were all these lovely, beautiful women and this group of guys having so much fun. It was just the greatest experience. I was like, that’s the thing I’m missing, I don’t have that in my life. I went for a weekend and ended up staying for two-and-a-half years.”
He adds, “Another thing I kind of believe without really believing is manifestation. There’s many times in my life I can point to where I looked at something and I was like, this is it, this is exactly what I’m looking for. And I don’t really understand how that works except for I feel like sometimes you kind of focus and it happens. It’s happened to me over and over.”
At the 2.5 year mark, Pete read about a sheep station in Australia and decided that some globe-trotting was in order. “I had a bit of an Indiana Jones complex at the time,” he says.
With a group of friends, they opened up an atlas to Australia and picked a place at random: Wagga Wagga. They made grand plans to travel and work there, but one by one people dropped out until it was just Pete. He went, landing in New Zealand first and hiking the Milford Track. “It was beautiful, I was living my Indiana Jones dream.”
Australia was next; Adelaide, Perth and Sydney. He stayed in hostels, rode dirt bikes, fed wild dolphins, even making it to Wagga Wagga during his time there.
During his travels he saw the 1984 film “Birdy,” a drama starring Matthew Modine and Nicolas Cage about two young men preparing to fight in the Vietnam War. “It moved me so much,” he says of the acting. “When I came out of the movie theater, I was like, Pete, that’s what you should be doing. What are you doing here? You should go back and do that.”
He wrapped up his expedition with stops in India, Malaysia, Nepal and Thailand and then headed back to the U.S. with a destination in mind: Chicago.
“My hero at the time, and still is to a certain degree, has always been Bill Murray. And he was kind of my North Star. How did he do it? He went to Second City. All those guys, like John Belushi, Gilda Radner, they all went to Second City. That must be the place.”
From the minute he arrived in 1986, Pete felt he’d found not only his place but also his people. “Midwestern people are very open and friendly, your butcher, the guy who cuts your hair, everybody interacts and that makes life so much more fun. And there was great theater, great music, a great blues scene, great food, and it was beautiful with the lakefront.”
Another manifestation: When he visited a friend’s Super Bowl party in the city, he could see Second City from the backyard and knew that was the type of home he wanted. Two years after that party, he and then-girlfriend and later wife Suzie moved into the building.
“I don’t want to get artsy-fartsy about it and just be like ‘the universe knows,’ but I really do feel like if you can say that it’s your thoughts, that’s exactly what I want, I really kind of feel that it will come to you. And you have to catch it when it comes to you. You have to take advantage of it. I really believe that. It’s just happened too many times.”
“I didn’t want to be the last guy on the Titanic.”
He studied improv comedy with Del Close, the tutor for Belushi, Murray, Radner and others. Pete developed “Jazz Freddy,” a 45-minute theatrical improv show that debuted in 1992. He’s proud that many people involved with Jazz Freddy got picked up by Second City.
That includes Pete, who went on to direct Second City’s touring company, at the time including Amy Poehler and Tina Fey. They’d go on to huge success with “Saturday Night Live” and many other shows. Poehler’s career started to take off when she decided to move to New York and launch the Upright Citizens Brigade sketch and improv troupe.
When she told Pete of her plan, he was shocked. He said that she was enjoying fast success at Second City and should stick around. “I got in that mentality of Second City, that there’s nothing going on except for what’s happening in Second City. Amy was like, ‘Pete, it’s New York,’ and then I was like oh – it’s time for me to get out too. A lot of my friends had started to leave and I didn’t want to be the last guy on the Titanic.”
He looked west to Los Angeles for the next move.
By then he and Suzie had married and had a son, and owned their place in Chicago. Suzie encouraged him to go to LA solo in 1996 and give his acting career a shot. He couch surfed for a while, soon picking up some acting gigs in commercials. “My dream was to be on television, to be on a sitcom.”
He started to get guest star roles on TV shows. Then he recalls one time he filmed a big part in medical drama “ER” for an episode. “It was my mom’s favorite show at the time and I had three scenes in it. I went to my high school reunion and told everybody,” he says, putting major emphasis on the last word. “And the night it aired, I got a call from my mother and she said she didn’t see me in it. How’s that possible? I was a quarter of the show.”
Turns out his part was excised so they could add in more scenes with a guest starring actress who had just won an Oscar. “I think that was probably the worst it’s ever felt,” he confides. “And so with manifestation, I also believe that when you say stuff and you start talking about it, like, I’m in this movie, then boom – he’s gone, he’s not in it.”
So he’s careful with his manifestation. And he kept working, eventually landing a recurring role on the Chris Elliott action comedy series “Eagleheart.”
One day filming a scene, Pete improvised a line and saw the director coming up, ready to lecture him, when Chris intervened and said the adlib worked, it was funny. Soon after, Chris invited Pete to get cocktails in his trailer along with his makeup guy, and they started to bond. “I was like, my god, this is fantastic, it taught me how to be when you’re a regular on a TV show, this is how you treat people. I include them, make them feel part of the family.”
“That’s also my thing, that’s my kind of vibe.”
He later auditioned for the role of Darryl Whitefeather in “Crazy Ex-Girlfriend,” a TV romantic musical comedy by Rachel Bloom and Aline Brosh McKenna, when it was initially being put together as a half-hour. Things moved along nicely until scheduling clashes with “Eagleheart” kept him from going further in the process.
A year later, he was heading to Israel to film a commercial for the country’s tourism board when he got another call from the “Crazy Ex-Girlfriend” team. The show was now going to be hour-long episodes, and they still needed a Darryl, so he sent in a tape and did in-person auditions. A final decision on whether he got the part would come on a day he was overseas. The night before, he unplugged his laptop, turned off his phone and went to sleep.
“When I turned on my phone it was messages, messages, messages, my wife, my agency, saying I got it,” he says, smiling broadly at the memory.
Darryl is a kind, friendly character who’s a little in over his head, can come on a little overbearing and occasionally doesn’t know when to stop talking, but always sweet. “I knew I had this guy, he’s trying his best and keeps failing, and everybody else can see it but he doesn’t know it, and he keeps trying, and that’s gold. And that’s also my thing, that’s my kind of vibe.”
In the show, characters often break into musical numbers to express their feelings. Pete praises all his co-stars, including Santino Fontana who starred in the first two seasons and has a Tony-winning voice (and was the 99th dinner interviewee along with his wife Jessica). “He’s like Sinatra, when he’d sing at the table read, that was like a $300 concert seat.”
Pete had some outstanding songs of his own, including “Gettin’ Bi,” an 80s romp of a song about Darryl embracing his bisexuality. He credits the enduring popularity of the show’s songs to Bloom and composer Adam Schlesinger, who died in 2020. “He was such a major monster talent, I think he was the special sauce in the whole thing. He came up with all these funny, beautiful, hooky ideas. There was something special about that guy.”
Yet another manifestation: “My dream was always to have an improv show where the people played instruments,” he says. And now he was in a musical comedy series.
He became especially close with co-star Donna Lynne Champlin (the 111th dining stranger), and they’d often tag-team red carpet interviews. Doing press for the show, Pete remembered actor and comedian Neil Flynn’s advice: “He was a pro, I told him I don’t know what to do. He said, ‘Always tell the truth, keep it short, and if you can, be funny.’”
“That’s my approach to sex, all three,” I joke.
At this Pete lets out a bellow of a laugh, rocking back in his chair then forward in the direction of my tape recorder. “Keep that!” he says gleefully into it.
I’m beaming. “I’m just proud I got to make you laugh, that makes me very happy.”
This year, he reunited with Bloom to shoot the pilot of “Do You Want Kids?” The TV comedy alternates between scenes of a married couple (Bloom and Rory Scovel) that have a baby and scenes of the couple if they opted against one, and how that affected their lives.
“I want to get on another TV show. It’s so much fun, I like having a job to go. This would be a nice little button on the end of this thing,” he says, referring to the interview I’ll write.
Pete replaced an actor that had to drop out as the dad of Scovel’s character. “I’m always the new guy, anytime somebody leaves, I step into the void. Even when I was on an improv team. People would leave and then I was the new guy. It’s always been my thing.”
Pete recalls talking with Bloom about the new show at “Crazy Ex-Girlfriend” co-star Vella Lovell’s baby shower (Suzie knitted a quilt as a gift). He also acknowledges the uncertainty about a series pickup. “It’s always up, down, up down.”
ABC will later pass on the show, but Pete’s right, the story is still a nice button. “I just started to say yes whenever opportunities came up. And some of them were good, some of them weren’t that great. But it started the ball rolling,” he says across the table.
“I love funny. I love it. I just wanted to be a part of it.”
Two hours after first meeting Pete, lunch comes to an end. I thank him for coming out, he jokes about the work ahead of me in writing up the interview.
“I have a tendency to blah, blah, blah,” he says.
I could listen to him blah, blah, blah for many more hours. “What a career.”
“It’s been crazy. But you know what? If you have fun and you enjoy it, also, you know what I think the thing of it has always been? I love funny. I love it. I just wanted to be a part of it.”
For decades, he certainly has been a part of it, whether that’s improv, acting, traveling or just getting a kick out of a salad and a goofball journalist he only just met. I walk him outside, and with perhaps a hint too much giddiness I ask if I can take a picture of him on his Vespa.
He proudly shows off the sleek black machine. There’s no hesitation when I ask if he can pop his helmet and goggles on and pose for a last photo. He’s delighted to play along.
That seems to be Pete – a man who never lost the ability to find joy in life, whether that’s trekking the globe, grinding away at comedy, or just enjoying a day at the beach.
He earned that day off.