You know Kelly AuCoin, you may just not know it yet. A true character actor, he’s been leaving his mark on stage as well as in television and films for over two decades, with appearances in shows like Law & Order and Gossip Girl, movies like Julie & Julia and The Kingdom, and plays like The Call and Some Men. If there is one thing his performances have in common is precisely how little they have in common, AuCoin is the kind of actor who dives head first into what the part demands from him. In The Americans he plays Pastor Tim, the peaceful man of the cloth who becomes the confidante of young Paige (Holly Taylor) who joins the Church trying to escape the craziness of her parents’ house. AuCoin is practically unrecognizable under a wavy blond wig, a prop that could easily distract us from his subtle, dramatic work if he wasn’t so committed to the part.

In the Manhattan Theatre Club production of Melissa Ross’ Of Good Stock, AuCoin plays Fred, the supportive husband of Jess (a touching Jennifer Mudge) who’s hard at work trying to put together the perfect weekend for her younger sisters (played wonderfully by Alicia Silverstone and Heather Lind). While the play’s more outlandish elements occur around the female characters, AuCoin’s grounded work often keeps some scenes from steering into soap territory. He delivers his lines with a wisdom that makes us truly believe he’s known these characters forever. Most pleasurable of all is watching the way he reacts to his cast members’ work, he has beautiful chemistry with Mudge, achieves comedic perfection opposite Silverstone and warms your heart in scenes with Lind.

We had the opportunity to discuss Of Good Stock with AuCoin, who also elaborated on his process when approaching difficult characters and how working in The Americans and House of Cards reminds him of his teenage years.

Fred is a food writer, and I spent the whole play starving because you kept talking about food and grilling stuff. Can we talk about your favorite meals? Are you as good a cook as Fred is supposed to be?

(Laughs) We don’t have the best kitchen setup in our small New York apartment, so we don’t get to experiment a whole lot. We cook fish really well, every week we go to the farmer’s market and there’s a great stand with local fish. My wife is a historical marine biologist so she knows a lot about the fisheries in the area, so we always try new fish, stuff that’s not necessarily popular. But we’re both so busy generally that we can only cook home a couple of nights a week. My wife’s a pescatarian so I don’t get to cook bacon as much as I’d like to, so it’s a joy to do that onstage and that smell...my favorite part of the show is cooking that bacon (laughs).

I’m glad that you’ve brought up the bacon because I feel recently more than before, theatre has been taking advantage of smell which is something movies can’t do. Can you talk about how that affects performing onstage?

Yeah, that’s interesting. I vaguely remember there was a failed movement in film called Smell-O-Rama or something like that...where they tried to pipe in smells of the things you saw onscreen, and I don’t think it lasted very long. I think that to be engaging in the actual activities with the actual props - cooking and eating onstage - I just love that. When I’ve taught acting, I’ve told students they need to find naturalism with their scene partners, so they should do scenes over lunch. Eating actually grounds people. I know in this play it’s important for the director, the playwright and the set designers that we have enough food to actually cook during the show, for example to have enough food for Hunter [played by Nate Miller] to almost choke on, and also the smell, that scene where we cook the bacon has actual sizzling bacon, the sound has been heightened a bit to come through the speakers. Like you said, when there’s something happening in front of you at the theatre, that’s something that can’t be replicated in any other medium. We’re all in the same room, smelling the same smells, and it only happens one time in any given way, so no performance is ever exactly the same. It’s magical! I know it sounds a little hoaky but I love it...

The Stockton sisters are not very likable. As an actor how do you approach a play in which you know the audience might not like the characters?

I think most of the time actors don’t think whether people will like the characters or not, I’m speaking for myself, but I think you do a part if there’s an interesting journey you can take with the characters. Sometimes there are things that are totally up your wheelhouse, that you know you’ll have fun doing, other times I can find a way into that which presents a challenge and maybe that’s where the appeal is. I don’t think people spend a lot of time wondering if the artist is gonna like the character, unless it’s overt, if you’re playing Hitler for instance. I don’t think any of us thought of any of the characters in this play as unlikable, the audience reaction isn’t something we can control, but I think we all thought of these characters as very real and their dynamic was very recognizable, in families we may love everyone but we don’t like them all the time. Families go through levels of which they’re irritated by each other, but on the page the play does a great job in showing that when push comes to shove family is what matters most, and that can be blood relations or family by tribe. I feel that Fred is irritated by everyone at some point during the play, but he is fiercely loyal, he loves these women and knows the family history so he’s very protective of them.

For the record, I thought the pants Fred wears looked very comfortable…

(Laughs) Yeah! I love a costume piece or a prop that does all your work for ya. I don’t even have to act in those pants.

I read that your parents always make an effort to see your shows twice. Do they let you know when they’re coming and do you get all nervous if they’re in the audience?

They live in Montana now so they never surprise me anymore. It’s funny, I think early on in my career I would get nervous if I knew anybody in the audience, I learned to fight those nerves so at this point I actually get energized by the fact there’s people I know in the audience. My parents are so supportive so it feels very warm and fuzzy when they’re around.

You grew up in politics, is the real life Washington D.C. close to what we see in House of Cards?

(Laughs) Interestingly enough I’ve been doing all these D.C.-based shows, in The Americans for example what’s interesting is the time frame because I was Paige’s age during the time I was there. They’ve done a great job in recreating the era, some of the commercials that pop up on the TV periodically are the same I grew up watching, so that’s cool. But on neither of the D.C. shows do I play a politician, so I find that really amusing, there’s nothing really D.C.-ish about House of Cards that I relate to by experience, because my character is from Ohio and I come help my brother. In the abstract it’s great, I love the fact that I’m in these shows. House of Cards is also much more operatic than my dad’s experience as a congressman in D.C., he’d be the first to tell you that, they show a heightened reality, which is brilliant.

I know that if I try to ask anything about The Americans Keri Russell’s character will jump through my window and kill me, but I’m curious about the character you play, Pastor Tim, in terms of whether people come up to you in real life and share their secrets with you like Paige does on the show?

(Laughs) She will! Oh no, that would be cool though! It might be a bit of a burden after a while, but people don’t recognize from that show, just because of that wig probably and actually early on during early table reads in Season 2, we would show up to readings and people wouldn’t know who I was, even on the set people rarely see me without the wig. It happens more often with House of Cards fans more often.

Pick three dream stage roles. But before that, do you know how to sing, if so, please pick some musicals!

I used to sing up through college and when I was doing rep theatre and Shakespeare festivals, I was always in musicals. I think I had a decent natural voice but I never pursued it, so as I’ve gotten older it’s atrophied. I guess I could probably get it back...now dream roles, when I was in college I wanted to play Judas in Jesus Chris Superstar I was obsessed with that for some reason, I always wanted to play Hamlet but I think I’m aging out of that now, and I actually got to play one of my dream roles in The Real Thing, I played Henry about seven or eight years ago. I love doing new plays, I fall in love with roles on a semi-regular basis, like two years ago, Jenny Mudge and I did a reading of this play and we played these roles opposite each other and I remember telling her afterwards “I love these roles, they’re perfect, I desperately wanna play it”, so for the next year and a half it was a dream role in the truest sense. As soon I saw that it was replacing the Richard Nelson play in the MTC season I called my agent and said something like “this is my dream role, get me an appointment”. I don’t carry around my ideal roles with me wondering when I’ll play them, I fall in love with new things as I discover them.

Of Good Stock is now running. For tickets and more click here.