Michael Kostroff (The Wire, Luke Cage, The Blacklist) joins us to talk about stumbling his way into career opportunities, teaching people how to audition without stress, and the joys of complainly loudly about minor inconveniences.

Michael can be found on Facebook and Twitter, or at his official website. Read about Audition Psych 101 at the official website, or follow it on Twitter. You can also read Michael's blog, The Weekly Curmudgeon, for all your 'grumpy old man complaining about stuff' needs!

Topics discussed:

• 1:05 Michael's superhero origin story
• 5:25 Playing Maury Levy on The Wire
• 10:30 Working alongside famous folk, doing your job as a supporting actor
• 13:00 Playing Dr. Burstein on Luke Cage (Also, Michael blasphemes regarding the Marvel universe)
• 24:50 Playing Detective Wilcox on The Blacklist
• 34:30 Michael's musical theatre roles, incl. Max Bialystock (The Producers) and Thenardier (Les Miserables)
• 38:20 Performing in a stage tour (Michael wrote about this in his 2005 book, Letters from Backstage)
• 47:45 How accidents shaped much of Michael's career
• 50:50 Audition Psych 101, Michael's highly-praised workshop teaching the psychological ins and outs of the audition process
• 1:00:30 Playing Wicks in Banshee, the most out-of-character role Michael has played
• 1:02:35 Being counter-intuitive and letting low expectations keep you grounded
• 1:05:35 The subjectivity of auditions, how the results say nothing about you
• 1:10:05 The Weekly Curmudgeon, Michael's hilarious blog for grouchy old people
• 1:19:25 I proceed to bitch about gift vouchers for a while
• 1:22:40 Forced positive thinking is dumb
• 1:26:00 Where to find Michael around the web