Fin Argus Joins ‘The Other Two’
After a series of dramatic roles, it was a shock for Fin Argus to leave the set of “The Other Two” each day and be in a good mood, rather than recovering from a poignant cry.
“I haven’t really done much comedic acting work in the past handful of years. It’s been almost strictly drama, heavy drama too,” Argus says over Zoom from home in Laurel Canyon area of Los Angeles. “I saw this audition come through and I was like, ‘Please, I would love to leave set and not have red puffy eyes for once in my sick, twisted life.’”
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Argus, 24, had a breakout in the NBC reboot of “Queer as Folk” last year, which they’re following up with a role in the much-beloved HBO Max comedy “The Other Two.” (The new season started last week, and Argus appears for the first time this week.) Argus was already a fan of the show, having binged the first two seasons in “maybe a singular day, if not a day and a half” and was “immediately freaking out” when the email with the audition landed in their inbox.
The character is named Lucas, who is revealed to be a method actor who meets Cary one fateful night out and is later revealed to stay in character throughout anything they’re shooting.
“It was a dream character, because not only did I get to try my hand at a comedic role, but I got to try my hand at seven or eight comedic roles, and really push myself,” Argus says. “Also, a lot of the comedy is that the character’s so melodramatic, so that scratched a very personal itch because I’ve been doing so much drama, and I love that, and it’s a great acting exercise and experience in itself. But to be able to take a bird’s-eye view and make a comedic, satirical commentary on that melodrama and people taking acting so seriously.…I don’t know, it was refreshing.
“I’ve been acting since I was 12, and I know the ins and outs of the industry at this point, and I think ‘The Other Two’ is a show that hits the nail on the head every time when it comes to making satire about the entertainment industry.”
Argus had recently wrapped production on “Queer as Folk” when they landed Lucas, and was at a point where they were open to trying something new. They are comfortable waiting between jobs, filling that time with a side career in music and a blossoming interest in drag, which they got into after playing a burgeoning drag queen in “Queer as Folk.”
“It’s kind of the perfect situation: whenever I am in between jobs, I can focus my energy toward music or drag or whatever it may be. Then when a project comes around that I’m really excited about, I’m like, ‘OK, I’m giving this my 110 percent. Let’s go,’” Argus says.
Argus grew up outside of Chicago and says they were drawn to performing arts as a young queer kid in a conservative environment who found freedom of expression in performance.
“I was bouncing off the walls, pinball machine brain, so my parents were like, ‘What do we do with this T-Rex of a child?’ So they put me in all the extracurriculars, and then acting is the one that stuck, because I felt this freedom to really express myself,” they say.
“There’s actually a video of my first acting recital, if you could call it that, where everyone had characters. We were acting out ‘Where the Wild Things Are,’ and because I was so difficult to wrangle, they just gave me the character of the river, which meant I laid on the ground and just flopped around. In the video, you can see me in real time deciding that I don’t want to be a river, I want to be a waterfall, and I did a handstand on the wall. It was basically wall twerking in my snakeskin boots.”
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