Jack Martin Is Well Suited for This Moment

The ingredients that make a winning Mindy Kaling comedy are a cup of charming and relatable characters, a pinch of complicated relationships, and a strong helping of comforting nostalgia. These are all qualities her latest offering, Not Suitable for Work, has in spades. The workplace sitcom about a group of ambitious 20-somethings trying and notably stumbling to achieve career success while navigating personal relationships in NYC will hit home for anyone in close proximity to Murray Hill's finance bros and anyone who has ever tried to make a name for themselves entering the workforce—basically everyone. But the show's real chef's kiss comes from its core five played with impeccable chemistry by Ella Hunt, Avantika Vandanapu, Will Angus, Nicholas Duvernay, and Jack Martin.

For us, Martin was a particular standout this season as Josh Teitelbaum, an aspiring journalist who uses his last name to land a job at a large media company of which his father is the CEO. At first glance an entitled nepo baby with daddy issues, Josh ultimately proves himself a good friend and idealist who uses his connections for good. Not to mention, Martin's comedic timing is effortless throughout, delivering some of the show's best one-liners.

To hold us over after season 1's major cliff-hanger involving Josh, Hunt's AJ, and Angus's Davis, we caught up with Martin to discuss his own wobbly career journey, the prestige TV that shaped him, and why rich-people satire makes for comedy gold.

How's your summer been so far?

It's really good. You know, a lot of promoting the show, which has been awesome. And it's been great to see it come out and get the reception and everything. I just took a trip to Europe, which was really fun.

Yes, you went to Copenhagen, which is one of my favorite cities.

Oh my God, it was incredible. My friends were getting an Airbnb in Sicily, and I wanted to meet them, and they were doing Copenhagen first. I was like, "I guess I'll just join for that too." I was blown away. I think it's the nicest city I've ever been to. The fashion's crazy. I got some really nice clothes. The subway system is the nicest subway I've ever been on in my entire life. The food is really good. I jumped into [one of the harbor baths]. That was great.

Sounds amazing! Well, let's talk about Not Suitable for Work. The show is about career-obsessed 20-somethings. Speaking of your own professional journey, when did you realize acting was the career for you?

I wanted to do it when I was a kid. I just pretty quickly believed that it wasn't possible, so I didn't get back to it until I was a lot older. I took an acting class [in college], and I was reminded of how much I loved it. I was doing this monologue and repeating it over and over for fun and getting way too into it. I signed up for this summer program at NYU, and it was great. I got my first agent there because they'd have these industry nights where you could audition for people, and I got signed. I graduated early because of that, and then COVID started immediately. That was awesome. So I started making sketches online because no productions were happening, and I had basically bet my entire life on acting. My current manager, who is the best ever, cold-emailed me, and I literally thought it was spam. I was like, "Why would a guy this great cold-email me?" He's an amazing guy, and he saw all sorts of things for me—probably more than I did for myself—and signed me. I got my first show pretty quickly after that.

What were some of the earliest influences for you in the industry? Were there any characters or actors that really shaped you?

I've always loved film, but I think what I was really die-hard about as a kid was prestige TV. I loved HBO. I would watch everything on HBO. I loved The Sopranos, loved Game of Thrones and Curb Your Enthusiasm. I think Succession is the greatest show of all time besides Not Suitable for Work, of course! Those are the kinds of series where I watched them 1000 times.

I love satire. Not to sound like a pretentious actor, but I love when art speaks to something really effectively. Sometimes, satire doesn't even have to be funny. Or it's not meant to be funny, and then I find it funny anyway. I find that Succession, The White Lotus, Sopranos, and those sorts of things are really funny because they are so close to a real truth. Well, I guess I can't say that as much about Sopranos because I'm not in the mafia.

Fair. I was gonna say that most of those are pretty heady dramas. Did you not initially see yourself as a comedic actor?

I mean, no. I always loved comedy. I loved Arrested Development, Always Sunny [in Philadelphia] (I think Glenn Howerton is the greatest comedic actor ever), The Office, Mindy projects. I'm a Nathan Fielder disciple. I've seen everything he's ever made. There are so many great comedies that I love. I truthfully just didn't think I was funny enough to do comedy. I think it's because I revere these people so much, and I thought I could never do what these people do. And then I started making the sketches, and they were comedy because you can't really post dramatic acting, crying online. People liked it, and I was like, "Okay, I guess I'm a comedian."

How did Not Suitable for Work find its way to you?

It was so crazy. It was both the most random thing and the most "meant to be" thing ever. I've been a big Mindy fan forever, and I heard about this show comically early. I saw it probably before the Deadline announcement. I think I was hearing about it from reps and stuff, but I heard she was making a show about Murray Hill, which is where all my friends from college moved to after graduation, and they did the finance-bro thing. So I was so familiar with that world. That's what a lot of my sketches were about, these finance guys and LinkedIn and that whole world. I just think it's so funny and so performative. When I heard she was making that, I was like, "Oh my God, I gotta be in that show."

It's actually a crazy story. It's kind of a story where I feel like I'm not supposed to tell it, but I think [Mindy] mumbled it in public, so I think I'm good. It's not bad or anything. They were looking at someone, and they called… I don't know how to put this without really specific names. They called him, a guy I know, about this other guy, and he was like, "Well, what about my friend Jack?" which was crazy. I didn't know this was happening. I didn't know he was going to do this. I didn't tell him to do this. It's the biggest friend move someone's ever done for me. But he did that, and literally, they called me that day. I did a Zoom, then I got a test deal that night and flew out to L.A. and met Mindy and did my final read in person and got it. It was like a four-day process. It was also literally my birthday.

The universe was really out there working for you. What do you love about a Kaling comedy and what she brings to the table in terms of writing?

Because she's so smart, if I could just put it simply. This is the kind of thing I could talk about for 10 hours, but that's really the bottom line of it. She's just brilliant and very thoughtful, very intentional. Every single line is very thought-out. She's very precise, and she's threading a very specific needle in this show, which is a skill that she's incredible at—making something that is for everyone but it's also about something very specific and is true to that specific world. It's so hard to do both of those at the same time because they're literally opposites. It's very impressive to me. I'm very grateful to be part of it.

What about your character Josh felt like an exciting or unique challenge for you as an actor?

What I was saying earlier about Succession and stuff like that, I love things like that. I love The Menu. I love Triangle of Sadness. Rich-people satire, you know? Because it's about power, and that's a very playable thing as an actor for a character. It can lead to a lot of comedy. This is a different character, different show. It's not the same at all, but he reminds me a little bit of Kendall Roy, and that was really fun to play because [of] the whole dad dynamic, where he worships his dad but he also hates his dad but he also wants his dad's approval. It's like one million things at once, and it's so essential to who he is. My thing with comedy is I always try to take it seriously and play the character as I think they would really be in real life and play it earnestly and not try to be funny. Hopefully, that reads as funny. But you need good writing to do that, and luckily, this is an incredibly well-written show, an incredibly well-written character. So that made it easy for me.

How can you personally relate to the experiences of these characters?

Truthfully, I relate the most to Kel [Washington], an actor. [There are] definitely a lot of differences, for sure, but just the whole actor experience and choosing not to do the prestigious job and everyone thinking you're crazy and doing the acting because you love it and practicing your monologue in your living room, annoying your roommates because you're doing vocal warm-ups or whatever. I think all of us would say that on the cast. Also, Nicholas Duvernay is a phenomenal actor. He makes you want to relate to him.

The season ends on a big cliff-hanger with Josh seeing AJ and Davis kissing. How would you imagine Josh handles this situation?

You know, the true and real answer is I have no idea what they're gonna do, so I can't even spoil it if I wanted to, but I think it'll be interesting. He's someone who is so focused on everything else. He's focused on being successful and having a great career. He's focusing on being the man he wants to be. He has this vision of the perfect guy, and he's trying to be that. He's trying to appease his dad and figure out all that, get promoted, be a person, change the world. There are so many things on his mind, and love is not one of them at all. You can tell because he has two breakups in the season that are basically because he's not invested. What's cool to me about that kiss moment is I think it's the first moment of the entire season where he does care. I think that'll be interesting because, obviously, it ends there, so we have not seen that version of him at all. My assumption is just based on what I know about the character. … I think that you're going to see more of that and that version of him where suddenly love is more of a priority.

It looks like you had a genuinely good time working with this cast. What are some of your fondest memories?

It was incredible. I feel like it's always gonna sound like PR when everyone's like, "I had a great time." I really had a great time. We're all such good friends. Will Angus, who plays Davis, I've been close friends with for years. We met in 2020 doing sketches, and we've done a bunch of stuff together. When I found out he got it, I was over the moon. We lived together when we shot the show. And Nicholas I met right before we started shooting, and we just instantly hit it off. Avantika and Ella are awesome. Everybody is—Victor Garber, Mindy, obviously.

One moment that was really special to me is [that] those sets that we shoot on the stages are real buildings. It's not like there's only one wall. After we wrapped, we all went into the guys' apartment, and it was just the five of us, and no one knew we were there. So it was this very private moment. We popped a bottle of champagne and just hugged each other, and it was so nice. I feel so lucky. This is such a special cast. They're kind. They're generous. They're humble. They're respectful. They're funny. They're incredibly talented. They're phenomenal actors.

Well, here's to hoping a second season happens because they can't just leave it there. That's rude.

It's funny. I'm the same. I'm, at the end of the day, a fan. I hope we keep going. I hope we keep going for a long time.

Not Suitable for Work is now streaming on Hulu.

Photographer: Max Montgomery
Stylist: Jake Sammis
Groomer: Simone Kogen