Actor JONATHAN SILVERMAN

Actor Jonathan Silverman is known to many television and movie audiences for his work in such films as "Weekend at Bernie's," "Death Becomes Her," and shows as TNT's "Monday Mornings." Silverman can be seen next on an episode of the NBC series, "Law & Order: Special Victims Unit," as a stand-up comedian named Josh Galloway. In the episode entitled, "Comic Perversion," Josh's recent set on stage leads to two of his fans raping a woman. We spoke with Silverman about the character:"A lot of this comic's material is...vulgar. It crosses the line of not only good taste, but it's very offensive. His fanbase thinks he's hysterical and are young, impressionable college students. In this episode, Josh talks about this violence act. I don't want to be too graphic, but two of his fans watching the show ACT upon that. As they leave, they find a girl who was belittled by my character up on stage. They do some bad things to her, and the detectives come after me for possibly helping incite this crime. As we learn more, we find out that he is not only talking about it on stage, but is also involved in the proclivities as well."Silverman goes into discussing reading the script for the first time and taking on the character:"It was a pretty intense read. My first reaction was from an actor's standpoint, which was, 'This will be so much fun to do.' Whenever I get to play a bad guy, or someone unlike myself, it's exciting and a challenge. Then, I had to take a step back and figure out what the reaction might be. Am I playing someone who CONDONES this particular situation? I'm not just playing a guy who does bad things, but he preaches about doing bad things on his stage. I ultimately jumped in with both feet and tried to make a way for him to come across as sympathetic. He truly believes what he is doing is noble, allowable, and freedom of speech. It was honestly one of the best written roles I ever had, and one of the most exciting times I had as an actor. I was very proud that I did this."Silverman recently directed and produced the film, "A Bet's a Bet," alongside his wife, Jennifer Finnigan, which is set to be released in September 2014. The romantic comedy stars Mena Suvari Geoff Stults , Keenan Thompson, and Kristin Chenoweth. We spoke about that plus much more in our podcast.