‘Platonic’s Tre Hale Admits He Was ‘Intimidated’ By Seth Rogen At First: He’s A ‘Hero Of Mine’ (Exclusive)
Tre Hale stars in the series ‘Platonic’ as Andy, Will’s super chill and loyal best friend. The athlete-turned-actor talks working with Seth Rogen and Andy’s loyalty to Will.
Seth Rogen and Rose Byrne team up in the new Apple TV+ comedy series Platonic, and Tre Hale is coming along for the ride. Tre plays Andy, Will’s best friend and partner at Lucky Penny Brewing Co. HollywoodLife spoke EXCLUSIVELY with Tre about his journey to playing Andy in Platonic and the dynamic between Andy and Will.
Tre auditioned for the role via self-tape before getting a callback and chemistry read with Seth, which he called the “scariest moment of my entire life. I was very, very intimidated. I’ll never forget hearing his laugh for the first time. It was like, ‘Oh, my God, this is really happening.’ Like, he’s really here. I’m about to do a scene. That was crazy. It went really well. I ended up getting the part, and we did the table read. The fear never left. I don’t think the fear left until like episode 4 because it just is such a surreal experience. He’s like a hero of mine. We ended up talking about this on set, like the things that he made, quite frankly, narrated my childhood. It’s what I watched. It’s where I get a lot of my jokes that I like to say.”
He continued, “There were actually a couple of times on set where I improv-ed a joke that was something he wrote from a movie years ago. I didn’t even realize. That’s how crazy it is. Getting on a set with him and working with him, let alone being a close friend of his on the show, was surreal. It still is crazy. I learned so much because I asked him questions 24/7 probably to him getting annoyed, but I wanted him to tell me everything. It was just absolutely an invaluable experience.”
Even though Will is older than Andy, Andy definitely serves as a “big brother” type to Will. “It’s kind of this funny juxtaposition of the young guy is the one that has to manage everything and get the older guy to get his head on straight,” Tre told HollywoodLife. “He loves Will. That’s his boy. Will is the guy that got him into the bar business, and he just wants to have his back. Even though he does kind of feel like Will is slacking at times, as you saw in the third episode when we get into a little bit of a heated exchange, it’s also very quickly remedied, and we’re right back to being thick as thieves because that’s the relationship that they have.”
Tre admitted that Andy is “skeptical” of Will’s rekindled friendship with Sylvia. “He loves his boy. He’s got his boy’s back and on top of him constantly seeing his boy’s already behind the curve for his age. He also knows that he’s going through a divorce right now. His mind’s a little frazzled. He’s all over the place, so I think Andy is a little suspicious of this rekindled relationship, reintroducing himself back into her life. He knows that in the past, this relationship was all-consuming and took a lot of Will’s time, and messed up the things that he had at the homefront. He’s a little skeptical and just wants to make sure she has the best intentions.”
Even though there have been some disagreements about the trajectory of the brewery, which has caused issues between Will and Reggie, Andy is always going to stand by Will. “Will gave him his start, bro. That’s his boy,” Tre said. “I keep going back to the third episode because I really think that sums up their relationship with the arguing, bickering brothers. It can be so intense so quickly, and then it switches like that. It’s very funny after that I believe it was Sylvia who says, ‘That was so crazy.’ And Will is just like, “We do that all the time. It’s no big deal. It’s actually healthy for us.'”
As for what lies ahead in Platonic, Tre promised that “the moments get sillier. The lines get wackier. The fun we have as we explore both Seth and Rose’s character’s relationship and as that applies to the outside world, and Charlie. There’s so much. I’m so excited for you to see more of Carla Gallo, who is an absolute star. She’s so funny. The world is going to love her.”
Before Tre became an actor, he was a football player at UCLA. One theater class changed his entire life. “I took a general elective class with a bunch of my teammates called Theater 123. My professor, I’ll never forget him, was the guy who had to handle all of us — and we were the worst,” Tre told HollywoodLife. “We were just there to get a passing grade. I will never forget, and I hope he hears this just one day because he changed my life. But somebody had asked him to do one of his monologues, and he did this monologue from Shakespeare. I was just floored by the transformation watching him go be this super calm and mellow guy and how he just hit that. I was sold. I’ll never forget walking to Coach Jim Mora’s office right after that and asking him. I wanted to take it on as a minor, and I needed his permission because it affected football, the theater minor. I was going to be late to meetings and practices every now and then. Thank God, he was super, super helpful, and super supportive.”
Tre considers himself “lucky” that he “learned very quickly that NFL wasn’t for me. I say that just because a lot of guys hold on to that for a long time. It’s a very, very hard thing to obtain. Funny enough, I gave up one insanely hard dream for another one. But I was one of the lucky ones that I knew that kind of early, so I got to kind of throw paint at the walls at UCLA and figure out what I wanted to do. I remember an uncle told me exactly that. You’re here at UCLA with an opportunity in five years to utilize the school and what it has to offer. I was fortunate enough to find that theater program.” New episodes of Platonic drop Fridays on Apple TV+.