Jon Barinholtz helps drive the comedy engine in ‘American Auto’
nypost.comBarinholtz, 42, who played Marcus White, the sophomoric, dim-bulb warehouse supervisor on the sitcom, created by Justin Spitzer (it ended its run last March). “Justin approached me about a show he was going to take out for pilot season — this was 2019 — and without even reading the script I knew it was going to be amazing.”That series was “American Auto” and Barinholtz snared a co-starring role, but COVID shut production down in 2020 just as shooting was about to begin. “I thought it was going to go away as so many pilots did,” he said. “But, at the same time, ‘Superstore’ got picked up for a sixth season — and then [‘American Auto’] got the go-ahead as ‘Superstore’ ended.” “American Auto,” airing Tuesdays at 8 p.m., revolves around life at struggling auto giant Payne Motors.
Ana Gasteyer plays its newly imported CEO, Katherine Hastings, who knows absolutely nothing about cars (she doesn’t even drive) and relies on her motley-crew staff for guidance — including Wesley Payne (Barinholtz), the ne’er-do-well great-grandson of the company’s founder.
He’s always in the office and in the thick of things — but no one seems to know exactly what he does there.“He’s essentially an unfirable consultant,” Barinholtz said. “He’s not a good guy but he’s not a horrible guy.
Marcus was a little more of a doofus and a goofball than Wesley, who read more prickly on the page and was originally written as a bit older than me.
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