Brock Ciarlelli – The Middle

By: Lisa Steinberg

Q) What are the recent projects that you have been working on?

A) I’ve been mainly working on “The Middle,” the development of Brad and everything going on with it. I’m just hanging tight to see what might happen down the road.

Q) Have you created a backstory for Brad since we don’t know much about his home life?

A) I kind of envision (based off of the family I grew up in) he is kind of from a showbiz world. He loves performing so I feel like his parents are always the ones who are there for him with whatever play he is putting on. I envision his mom is maybe that one taking him to casting calls. He has one of those dads who makes his son practice his free throws for basketball, except for him it’s the tap moves to make sure everything is perfect. I envision them to be very supportive, but want him to be the best at his craft.

Q) Would you like to see your family explored for Brad?

A) I would love that! Every now and then Brad will have dialogue like where his car broke down and his dad tried to help him change the oil, but it didn’t go well. You get little things here and there, but it might be fun to meet his family some day. You kind of see different layers of Brad as you go on each season. We’ve seen his room and it was completely decked out in Broadway and theatrical things. He had a clock set to New York time, LA time and one for Indiana. There was a huge sign for “Brad-way” for Broadway. As the episodes go on, you get a little bit more of who he is.

Q) We haven’t heard what Brad wants to do with his life. For now, he seems content on working in the food court.

A) I think a lot of it is that you are seeing Brad and Sue (Eden Sher) go through these milestones in their lives and I think he is still discovering what those milestones need to be. For example, he got accepted a college in New York, but opted to defer his acceptance because he wanted to do AmeriCorps. That’s what he is kind of doing in Indiana – kind of like the Peace Corps, but in Indiana. I think he is in that limbo stage after just graduating college. He’s kind of like most eighteen year olds who don’t know what they are doing and feeling out what is going to be the best for them. I think at the root of it he always loves performing. Even in the episode where he talks about AmeriCorps, he says he is building houses for the homeless and working for a non-profit. Once I finish fixing homelessness, I have this great idea that I want to present for Senior Citizens that I call “Memory Recovery for Senior Citizens Through Tap.” So, no matter what he is doing he always needs to add some flair to it.

Q) Sue and Brad’s relationship is one of my favorites from the show. They are kind of Lucy and Ethel. What do you enjoy the most about their dynamic?

A) What I love about their friendship is more than anything that they might go through these crazy antics (it’s a sitcom so they have all these exaggerated scenarios that happen to them), but each episode at the root of it you really see that they are loyal to each other and see they are number one to each other with their friendship. They are just always there for each other. They are loyal and that’s what I love about it. All their stuff is funny, but it is also believable.

Q) How have you grown through playing this character?

A) The cool thing is my first episode was the Thanksgiving episode of the first season and I was still in high school. I just graduated college now back in May. Brad just graduated and isn’t sure what he wants to do. He graduated high school on TV the same week I graduated high school. I see the parallels going on in our lives and when you are playing someone a little bit younger than a lot of the times you are going through the experiences you went through so you can kind relate to it and tap into your own personal stories along with that to bring it into the character. We were just talking on set and they said, “I can’t believe you started when you were a Junior in high school,” and they have seen me grow. They’ve seen me through my acting and so many embarrassing moments in my life (as we all grow up). It’s cool and again you get to bring those into the character as well.

Q) We have seen various aspects of Brad’s love life. Are we going to have any more romances for Brad?

A) We had an episode about a month ago where he came out to Sue and that was the first episode for Brad for Season 7. It wasn’t the main storyline, which I kind of enjoyed. Sue had her college roommate from hell. Sue’s roommate is making out with her boyfriend and all this stuff and they took Sue’s bed to make one big bed for themselves. There were some other things that were hard for Sue to handle so Sue and Brad got under the covers and pretended to be making out. Then, there was a half page scene that kind of ties everything up where Brad says, “I have something to tell you…” They just, again, have that mutual understanding of, “I know and it’s okay.” It’s that friendship and loyalty that shines through, no matter what. So now that has happened, we get hints of Brad taking notice of guys.

Q) Did you enjoy the ambiguous area of Brad’s love life?

A) What I truly enjoy about the fact he came out in Season 7 was it seemed very real, in terms of the world they are growing up in. They are growing up in middle America so right when he is graduating high school it felt like the right time to address it. What I was worried about was that it is a very understated scene and that kind of stays true to the show. I felt like because it wasn’t the main storyline it may have taken away from the validity of him and staying true to the story. But I thought it was done quite well, actually, with how the exec producers wrote the scene.

Q) Talk about working alongside Eden Sher on the show.

A) What is so cool about Eden is that the first episode I filmed with her was my first professional project I had ever worked on she took me under her wing. She told me all the things the crew may shout that I would have no idea what they meant. Honestly, just sitting there watching her go and work and see her play around with the dialogue and different ways to deliver a joke is quite amazing to see her in her element because she is so good. I truly think she is not getting the recognition she deserves for this show. I just am so fortunate that every single scene I shoot is with her. We goof around when the cameras aren’t rolling and sometimes the little things that we think are funny or that we are goofing about may end up on screen. Last season we had a performance for the school assembly and we were thinking, “What’s a funny thing that Brad and Sue could do to get in the moment?” We were just playing around, not intending for it to be put in the show, just for fun and the director said, “Oh my gosh that’s funny! Let’s put that in there!” So, it ended up making it in the episode. I think a lot of the bond Eden and I have off camera is shown when we play our characters on camera.

Q) Is there anything else you want to be sure we share with fans of Brad and “The Middle?”

A) I’ll be filming a couple more after the Christmas hiatus, so Brad will definitely be back a lot more in Season 7.