Bio
Blaine Palmer is an actor and improv comic best known for his roles on Shrill (Hulu/Broadway Video, dir. Carrie Brownstein), Portlandia (IFC/Broadway Video) and as corrupt undertaker Harold Melville on Grimm (NBC).
Blaine has also appeared on The Wonderland Murders (Investigation Discovery). On the big screen, he can be seen in The Last Champion (In House Media Film Partners), welcoming home WWII hero Chris Klein in Valley of Light (Hallmark) and as Amanda Seyfried's neighbor who seems creepy, but turns out to be nice, in Gone (Lakeshore Entertainment).
Blaine also gained recognition for the Old Spice commercial The Smell From Heck (Wieden+Kennedy). Prior to Old Spice, he worked with creative teams at Wieden+Kennedy to spoof a self-promoting personal injury lawyer as The Enforcer for EA Games.
He’s played in improv comedy groups in San Francisco and New York, and gained recognition for stage roles from musical comedy to Pinter.
“Blaine Palmer as Melville the funeral home director gets added to the list of characters I wish had showed up to this world earlier to become a recurring player. There’s such a charming sense of oddness to him.”
— Les Chappell, AV/TV Club
“He was so darn funny. He was always frazzled and shifty-eyed. I really enjoyed the actor’s performance. He was a breath of fresh air.”
— Krystal Clark, SyFyWire
My Story
This all started in the Ilgners’ basement. When I was seven I lived in Omaha across the street from the Ilgner family. On cold weekend days, the three Ilgner boys, my best friend Tom Gannon and I usually played in their basement. Sometimes we’d pool all the bottle caps we’d collected, assign them the identities of different naval warships according to brand, and enact battles of the South Pacific.
We watched a lot of horror movies on TV, and one Saturday morning, Jeff — the oldest — suggested we create a play where all the famous monsters would gather to scheme for power, betray and fight. We loved this idea, selected our characters — the snarling Wolf Man, stiff-walking Frankenstein, Dracula, Hunchback and Mummy — created and rehearsed a scenario worthy of a Shakespearean fifth act. We spread out across the block offering friends and parents the opportunity to pay a nickel to see our performance.
By strangulation, knifing and deadly bite, we killed each other off.
Blaine Palmer is an actor and improv comic best known for his roles on Shrill (Hulu/Broadway Video, dir. Carrie Brownstein), Portlandia (IFC/Broadway Video) and as corrupt undertaker Harold Melville on Grimm (NBC).
Blaine has also appeared on The Wonderland Murders (Investigation Discovery). On the big screen, he can be seen in The Last Champion (In House Media Film Partners), welcoming home WWII hero Chris Klein in Valley of Light (Hallmark) and as Amanda Seyfried's neighbor who seems creepy, but turns out to be nice, in Gone (Lakeshore Entertainment).
Blaine also gained recognition for the Old Spice commercial The Smell From Heck (Wieden+Kennedy). Prior to Old Spice, he worked with creative teams at Wieden+Kennedy to spoof a self-promoting personal injury lawyer as The Enforcer for EA Games.
He’s played in improv comedy groups in San Francisco and New York, and gained recognition for stage roles from musical comedy to Pinter.
“Blaine Palmer as Melville the funeral home director gets added to the list of characters I wish had showed up to this world earlier to become a recurring player. There’s such a charming sense of oddness to him.”
— Les Chappell, AV/TV Club
“He was so darn funny. He was always frazzled and shifty-eyed. I really enjoyed the actor’s performance. He was a breath of fresh air.”
— Krystal Clark, SyFyWire
My Story
This all started in the Ilgners’ basement. When I was seven I lived in Omaha across the street from the Ilgner family. On cold weekend days, the three Ilgner boys, my best friend Tom Gannon and I usually played in their basement. Sometimes we’d pool all the bottle caps we’d collected, assign them the identities of different naval warships according to brand, and enact battles of the South Pacific.
We watched a lot of horror movies on TV, and one Saturday morning, Jeff — the oldest — suggested we create a play where all the famous monsters would gather to scheme for power, betray and fight. We loved this idea, selected our characters — the snarling Wolf Man, stiff-walking Frankenstein, Dracula, Hunchback and Mummy — created and rehearsed a scenario worthy of a Shakespearean fifth act. We spread out across the block offering friends and parents the opportunity to pay a nickel to see our performance.
By strangulation, knifing and deadly bite, we killed each other off.
(Dracula and Hunchback have successfully eliminated all the others)
HUNCHBACK
A toast!
(Dracula and Hunchback toast and drink. Dracula gags and clutches his throat. As he falls to the ground — )
DRACULA
Aaagggghhhh!
HUNCHBACK
(Triumphant) Now I am King!
(Looks around him, the realization slowly dawning)
Of what? Nothing!
(He grabs the poisoned cup.)
I’ll drink my death!
(He drinks, gags, clutches his throat and falls to the floor).
CURTAIN
HUNCHBACK
A toast!
(Dracula and Hunchback toast and drink. Dracula gags and clutches his throat. As he falls to the ground — )
DRACULA
Aaagggghhhh!
HUNCHBACK
(Triumphant) Now I am King!
(Looks around him, the realization slowly dawning)
Of what? Nothing!
(He grabs the poisoned cup.)
I’ll drink my death!
(He drinks, gags, clutches his throat and falls to the floor).
CURTAIN
I never got over the thrill of that day.
I fell further in love with performing in high school. In The Bad Seed, Leroy the janitor was my first crack at the so-he’s-definitely-weird-but-is-he-evil-or-sympathetic? kind of character I’ve often played since. And one night I drove with a schoolmate from our suburban Arlington Heights into Old Town Chicago to see something called Second City. At intermission, she turned to me and said, “You’d like to get up there and do that, wouldn’t you?”
She was right. My improv work started a few years later in San Francisco and never stopped. I worked there with such brilliant comics as Robin Williams, Debi Durst, Amy Hill, Alex Herschlag and the late great Jim Cranna; after I became a father, I entertained the kids on rainy days with theater games.
My wife Regina and I met in San Francisco, playing exuberant and repressed teens in Spring Awakening (Wedekind's original version — by the time Sheik and Sater made it a musical I’d aged into the grim and oppressive adult roles). We bounced from San Francisco to New York, where our three children were born, before landing in Portland. A perfect little Craftsman bungalow has been our home for over twenty years. Regina’s mom moved in with us after the kids moved out; they’re on to creative careers of their own. In the Portlandia episode “Most Pro City” I played opposite my daughter, Francesca Tricamo-Palmer; naturally, she stole the scene.
When I’m not on screen or on stage, I like to write lyrics for parody songs, pull weeds in the garden, knock on doors for progressive candidates and policy measures, cook chicken cacciatore, play Agricola, root for the Yankees, infuse vodka, swim laps, and build Rube Goldberg-like systems to get water from the deck to the bird bath.
“He looks really creepy.”
— Hoola The Hoop, about Old Spice: The Smell from Heck
I fell further in love with performing in high school. In The Bad Seed, Leroy the janitor was my first crack at the so-he’s-definitely-weird-but-is-he-evil-or-sympathetic? kind of character I’ve often played since. And one night I drove with a schoolmate from our suburban Arlington Heights into Old Town Chicago to see something called Second City. At intermission, she turned to me and said, “You’d like to get up there and do that, wouldn’t you?”
She was right. My improv work started a few years later in San Francisco and never stopped. I worked there with such brilliant comics as Robin Williams, Debi Durst, Amy Hill, Alex Herschlag and the late great Jim Cranna; after I became a father, I entertained the kids on rainy days with theater games.
My wife Regina and I met in San Francisco, playing exuberant and repressed teens in Spring Awakening (Wedekind's original version — by the time Sheik and Sater made it a musical I’d aged into the grim and oppressive adult roles). We bounced from San Francisco to New York, where our three children were born, before landing in Portland. A perfect little Craftsman bungalow has been our home for over twenty years. Regina’s mom moved in with us after the kids moved out; they’re on to creative careers of their own. In the Portlandia episode “Most Pro City” I played opposite my daughter, Francesca Tricamo-Palmer; naturally, she stole the scene.
When I’m not on screen or on stage, I like to write lyrics for parody songs, pull weeds in the garden, knock on doors for progressive candidates and policy measures, cook chicken cacciatore, play Agricola, root for the Yankees, infuse vodka, swim laps, and build Rube Goldberg-like systems to get water from the deck to the bird bath.
“He looks really creepy.”
— Hoola The Hoop, about Old Spice: The Smell from Heck