Actor Monty Geer is enjoying every second playing Cole on MTV’s Awkward. and has really enjoyed watching the character grow. With the show in its final season and storylines wrapping up, we checked in with the star. He talked to us about where he hopes to see Cole end up, what he remembers about auditioning for the role and his blossoming writing career that he hopes will one day lead to writing and starring in his own show.
BOOKTRIB: How have you seen Cole change over the past season leading up to the final episodes?
MONTY GEER: I feel like Cole just got even crazier! In the beginning I was just tiptoeing through and being like, “Is this right?” Then once the producers confirmed I’m like playing the part [the way they envisioned it], I just went all out and made big choices—a lot of more of that screaming stuff. And this season, I get a boyfriend, which is huge! Everyone has their own drama going on and I’m kind of the one just making fun of it all, like a trouble-maker. So there’s drama in all of our lives all of a sudden.
BT: How would you like to see Cole say goodbye? Is there a goal for him?
MG: At the end of Season 6, I would just love to see him owning some crazy Viper Room-type bar or something. He’s making some weird independent films and Cole and Theo are so crazy, but at the same time they’re really, really smart. So I think they have so much potential to do some crazy Banksy-style project that the whole world sees.
BT: What do you remember about auditioning for Awkward’s Cole?
MG: That was actually pretty crazy. Cole is such a rebellious character and he’s a gay character, so I knew everyone was going to play a stereotypical gay character. I just thought, “I’ll just be a normal person and I’d be gay, but I wouldn’t come off gay at all.” So I go in, my hair is all spiked and I’m wearing a shirt that’s the most random shirt I could find; some rebellious, rebel-without-a-cause T-shirt. And I go in and immediately I pull my chair straight up to the casting director’s desk and I put my feet on her desk, which is a big risk and I didn’t know how that would go, and then I started the scene. It was one of those things that could have ended terribly, but they loved it and they recorded it like 10 different times because they wanted it perfect. Then we’re doing a chemistry read for the callback and the guy that is playing Theo (Evan Crooks) already got the role and we did a movie six months or so before, so we freaked out in the room when we saw each other. I’m thinking, “Oh this is great. I got it.” I’m super prepared for my role, but for some reason he freaked out and didn’t know his lines and that made me freak out and we just bombed hard. Here I am thinking, “I ruined this huge opportunity, there’s no way I’ll get it now.” Then I got the call from Evan actually and he was the one who told me I got the role.
BT: So what really pushed you to get into acting? How old were you?
MG: I think I was probably around like 10 years old when I started liking it a lot. What got me hooked was the original Saturday Night Live. So throughout school I used to make a lot of home videos because that was the only outlet for my creativity. My friends and I would write stuff and shoot stuff. We used to try to sell our skits for a dollar at school. We’d have DVDs and show them a couple of skits for free and then say, “If you want to buy all 10, it’ll be a dollar.” We would put all of $40 into the project. I was about 16 when I started travelling to New York to go to New York Film Academy during my summers. Then I moved to New York to do a lot of comedy there, like stand-up improv, and wrote for some shows there, like College Humor and stuff.
BT: How did you get into writing pilots and all of that?
MG: Well I used to write a lot of sketches in high school in New York and I would film them. I would do monologue jokes for Late Night With Jimmy Fallon and some like Comedy Central roasts; I was kind of like a freelance writer. Plus, I was always into comedy and I did stand up for a long time, so I’ve been writing comedy for a while, but I started writing pilots probably a year and a half ago. My biggest dream is to write my own show or movie and star in it, like Amy Schumer’s Trainwreck or do what the Always Sunny in Philadelphia guys are doing.
BT: Would you ever think about writing a book?
MG: I study the idea of happiness a lot. I go to high schools and I promote how to see life in a way that makes you happiest and I try to inspire people, so I’d like to study the actual form of happiness and write a book about like, “This is how I see life. This makes me the happiest.” Or an autobiography that I’d love to write later in my career: “The Adventures of Monty Geer” or something. I go to a lot of crazy places, and I love scuba diving, and I’ve been parachuting. So writing something like that would be fun, just about all of the crazy adrenaline stuff I’ve done.
Don’t miss Monty Geer on MTV’s Awkward. Monday at 9 p.m.
