Actor Steve Buscemi talks about his FDNY roots & the doc ‘A Good Job’
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Tonight (Monday), HBO airs the documentary “A Good Job: Stories Of The FDNY” at 9:00 p.m. ET. It features interviews done by actor Steve Buscemi who spent four years as an FDNY firefighter. He was assigned to Engine 55 in Manhattan.
Buscemi, the star of HBO’s “Boardwalk Empire”, was profiled on CBS’s “Sunday Morning” yesterday. The video is above and an excerpt is below along with the trailer for “A Good Job”.
As you may recall, it only came out publicly in recent years that Buscemi returned to Engine 55 in the days following 9/11 to help work the pile and has long supported the firefighters of FDNY.
Buscemi took and passed the test for firefighters, and in 1981 wound up at Engine 55 in Lower Manhattan. He’s one of the guys now, but back then it was a different story.
“It was very intimidating,” he said. “I was just nervous, you know? I was, like, the quietest guy in the firehouse for a long time.”
And when his shift ended, he’d moonlight as an actor. He kept up his double life for four years. But when he got a part in the movie “Parting Glances,” he quit the department.
The guys at Engine 55 thought he was nuts.
“They were really worried about me,” Buscemi said. “Because nobody leaves this job, you know? You just don’t. You don’t leave, first of all, a great job like this, and then also a secure job.”
