Last Things First: Frankie Quiñones
Episode #412
Frankie Quiñones is a stand-up comedian and actor best known for his character work. Frankie stars as Luis on the Hulu series, This Fool, which was just picked up for a second season. He also co-starred in a web series that got bought by TBS, The Dress Up Gang, put out his own stand-up and sketch special on HBO Max, Superhomies, has begun recurring as cousin Miguel on the FX on Hulu comedy, What We Do In The Shadows, and just launched his own podcast, The Frankie Quiñones Show, presented by Will Ferrell’s Big Money Players Network and iHeart Radio. Frankie joined me over Zoom to talk about creating characters such as Creeper and Emo Primo, his real-life relationship with This Fool co-star Chris Estrada, and more.
Here’s the trailer for This Fool. If you haven’t watched this series, then you should! It just got picked up for a second season on Hulu.
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This transcript has been edited and condensed only slightly for your convenience.
Last things first: Congratulations on your scene-stealing, show-stopping performance as Luis on This Fool. I know Chris (Estrada) has been on record saying he didn't write it for you specifically, but it feels like I don't know anyone else who could play this character.
Oh, right. Yeah, man. Thank you for saying that. Yeah, Chris has been a longtime friend for almost 10 years now. You know, I was always around him when he was working on the show, he'd spit ball about it. He was telling me what the process was and stuff like that, but they were more looking for something more on the nose, like a guy that was bigger than him, tatted up like, that kind of vibe and they were having trouble finding him. And then they had me start reading for the part. And then a couple of the producers were like, ‘Oh, man. He’s making it more interesting, being this Joe Pesci kind vibe.’ And the other producers and writers I've known for over 10 years also, like Pat Bishop, Matt Ingebretson, and Jake Weisman.
Those are the Corporate guys, right? (NOTE: Corporate aired on Comedy Central for three seasons from 2018-2020)
Yeah, they did that show Corporate.
You were on that, too.
They gave me a little cameo on that, yeah. So it was kind of cool because it helped that we already kind of had a chemistry going, but not everybody was on board. They were like, I don't know, Frankie, because they all know me as positive vibes. Hey, guys! What’s up? Let’s kick it! They were like, we need this tough dude. And I'm like, Well, you know, I did grow up around guys like that, and I knew I could do it. And Chris knew I could do it. And so he kind of went to bat for me, and they started having me read for the part. Slowly, other people that didn't see it at first started coming on board like OK, we do see it. After that, it made it fun after that, because then when they started writing the actual script, we already knew the vibe and they're kind of throwing me alley-oops in the script where I could be like, OK, here we go! Boom! And then Pat Bishop, Matt Ingebretson, and Diego Velasco — they directed all the episodes and they would always give me my takes. They’d go, alright Frankie, we got it. This next one is for you. Do you want another one? They would let me have fun with it and then in the edit, they would piece them together. Yeah, it was cool, man.