This week on Wits, the hilarious actor Danny Pudi of TV’s Community and singer Har Mar Superstar. Star Wars gets all Ken Burns with tearful letters from actual Storm Troopers in the battle between the Empire and the Rebellion. And a Wits game show, in which Har Mar Superstar uses the word “collapsening.”
Danny Pudi has quickly established himself as a highly sought after actor in film and television. He has just finished shooting the lead role in the independent feature The Tiger Hunter, opposite Jon Heder, and last year starred opposite Marc Feuerstein, Rebecca Romijn, Stanley Tucci, Marcia Gay Harden and Henry Winkler in Larry Gaye: Renegade Male Flight Attendant. Prior to that he starred opposite Moritz Bleibtreu, Patricia Arquette and Michael Imperioli in the European feature Vijay and I. Pudi’s first directorial effort took him to the Sundance Film Festival in early 2014, where his short film Untucked, a documentary film about the Marquette basketball team and produced by ESPN Films, was in competition. Pudi will next be seen returning to his breakout role of ‘Abed,’ in the hit comedy Community, previously on NBC and continuing its life on Yahoo.com.
Acclaimed singer, songwriter and performer Har Mar Superstar (aka Sean Tillmann) named his flamboyant alter ego after the Har Mar mall in suburban St. Paul, Minn., where he spent his youth watching movies and writing songs about passersby in the food court. "Har Mar Superstar used to be a different person," he says. "It used to be my excuse to get away with the more fantastic things in life. ... I guess the confidence I got from being Har Mar Superstar translated into my real life, so now we're one and the same." His latest record, the soulful Bye Bye 17, was released April 23 on Cult Records, with the single Prisoner having its world debut on The Current.