NetflixThere's a big snowstorm rolling in and there's Ray Liotta, holding a cat nuzzling his neck. That's the image Ellie Kemper has of her Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt Emmy-winning guest star, one of the many famous faces stopping by the series for its third season. Out of the likes of Maya Rudolph, Daveed Diggs, Andrea Martin and Laura Dern, Liotta really excited Kemper—and made her nervous.
"I was very careful not to, like, ‘OK, let him say hello. Don't be crazy.' So we were both kind of quiet the first day—or he was kind of quiet the first day, then the second day I think he was kind of warming up, and the third day it was truly like—he was cracking jokes and like, ‘Hey, Red!'…I got a nickname, things could be worse," she told E! News.
"By the way, I want to say that during one scene there was a, like, Nor'easter coming, like literally happening over the course of the scene, and he just stood there. He would not go under any sort of shelter during the turnarounds," Kemper said. "He just stood and he was holding a cat and the cat was just crawling over him and he was so gentle…I wish someone captured it, I don't know that they did. I thought that says everything, he doesn't complain and he takes care of cats…He was great."
Tituss Burgess also named Liotta as the guest star who made him nervous and excited. Liotta appeared as a gas station owner who Kimmy and Titus scammed so Titus could poop in the gas station bathroom.
"He's intense. I was nervous because I've followed his career since Corrina, Corrina…It's a wonderful movie, isn't it? It should be a musical I feel. At any rate, watching the maturation process of his career and he always takes roles that are very dense. When we got to set, he has this brooding energy and I thought, ‘God, how is he going to fair with my Titus Andromedon?' And by the end of it we were besties," Burgess said. "I miss him. I cannot wait to hang out with him again, no joke. He is such a sweetheart. I love that man. It was nice to find that soft underbelly to his exterior."
Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt season three is now streaming on Netflix.