Vladimir Caamaño - A Broad Life

June 22, 2020

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Vladimir Caamaño

Interview

Valerie Lopez

Article

Valerie Lopez

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Last year around this time, I thought I’d reached a pin­na­cle after talk­ing to sev­er­al of the actors involved with Let­terken­ny. But after this week’s guest, it looks like anoth­er pin­na­cle has been achieved. 

I’m a huge fan of Brook­lyn Nine-Nine and Super­store, TV sit­coms that I’ve binge watched in the last year. So when a rep­re­sen­ta­tive of Vladimir Caa­maño approached me to talk about his new show, Tom­my, I start­ed my nor­mal due dili­gence of look­ing at his expe­ri­ence. As a com­ic with Just For Laughs cre­den­tials, I was already set to say yes”, but when I saw his guest appear­ances on Brook­lyn Nine-Nine and Super­store list­ed, I belt­ed out NOICE”, and talk of sched­ul­ing began post-haste.

Caa­maño is an inter­est­ing fig­ure in TV, but let’s address his com­e­dy upbring­ing. He began in New York, the tough­est train­ing ground for a young com­ic, but also, as he’s quick to point out, quite a bless­ing. Where else can you so eas­i­ly hop on dif­fer­ent trains to hit dis­tanced and var­ied open mics? It’s a lux­u­ry not real­ly pos­si­ble in the oth­er coast’s com­e­dy behe­moth, Los Ange­les. Anoth­er lux­u­ry when mak­ing your way while build­ing a career is afford­abil­i­ty, and Caa­maño is quick to praise his dad, who allowed him to stay rent free with him in Brook­lyn while he hit the mics and learned the essen­tials of com­e­dy. As for what moti­vat­ed him to start? The sim­plest and most pure rea­son of all: while watch­ing an Eddie Mur­phy spe­cial with friends and observ­ing their laugh­ter, Caa­maño not­ed That’s a great way to get attention”.

(of stand-up comedy) That's a great way to get attention.
Vladimir Caamaño

Fast for­ward to 2016, when Vari­ety named Caa­maño one of the ten fun­ni­est comics to look for. His 2016 class includ­ed such nota­bles as Lau­ren Lap­kus, Cameron Espos­i­to, Roy Wood Jr., and Jer­maine Fowler. It’s but one impres­sive accom­plish­ment among many. Like the vaunt­ed invi­ta­tion to the 2015 Just For Laughs in Mon­tréal, an invi­ta­tion that took him three attempts to land (lest you think any of this is easy). It’s also where he received the Howie Man­del hug that launched a whirl­wind of activ­i­ty lead­ing to more com­e­dy cre­den­tials, like the invi­ta­tion to per­form on The CW Gala host­ed by Howie Man­del. Caa­maño was the sole JFL Fresh Faces com­ic to land an invi­ta­tion to that event that year. Add to this an HBO Entre Nos com­e­dy spe­cial, a Jim­my Kim­mel Live appear­ance, and you get the idea that all that ear­ly work in NYC was pay­ing off.

Then Hol­ly­wood began call­ing on this Domini­can raised in the Bronx. A Bronx Life is a sit­com idea that Caa­maño devel­oped into a pilot and – while it did­n’t get picked up – he hopes to be able to devel­op it with all the skills he’s picked up over the last 5 years. His appear­ances on Brook­lyn Nine-Nine, Mar­vel Run­aways, and Super­store all have helped him groom an entire­ly new set of skills. But none more so than land­ing a series reg­u­lar role next to acclaimed actress Edie Fal­co in the CBS dra­ma Tom­my.

In the dra­mat­ic series which launched in ear­ly 2020, Caa­maño’s char­ac­ter Abn­er Diaz serves as Tom­my’s dri­ver and per­son­al secu­ri­ty detail. Of his expe­ri­ence of work­ing with Fal­co, Caa­maño says If Edie says I can act, I can act!”.

Unfor­tu­nate­ly, CBS can­celled the show after one brief sea­son, mean­ing the end of one jour­ney for Caa­maño, but the promise of many more jour­neys is on the hori­zon. Dur­ing our talk Vladimir shares some­times he feels a bit like Kurt Von­negut and his style of let­ting the cards fall where they may. In Von­negut’s Gala­pa­gos, the phrase and so it goes” is often repeat­ed and whether it’s due to human action or how exter­nal fac­tors progress, for Caa­maño the key take­away is All we con­trol is the process”. 

Sup­pos­ing Caa­maño had been in con­trol of the process, would it sur­prise young Vladimir of 13 years ago that the process could have tak­en him on such a wild and diverse road? Per­haps it’s all root­ed in know­ing what we desire out of our indi­vid­ual human expe­ri­ence? We all want to pur­sue our dream and have our own ver­sion of suc­cess, but we don’t know where things will turn,” Caa­maño says. His road has tak­en so many inter­est­ing turns, we expect we’ll con­tin­ue to see new and inter­est­ing devel­op­ments with Caa­maño for some time to come. 

We all want to pursue our dream and have our own version of success, but we don't know where things will turn
Vladimir Caamaño

We look for­ward to see­ing where the road takes him. Espe­cial­ly, if one of his stops along the way is Austin. We’ll have the BBQ rec­om­men­da­tions ready.

Vladimir can be seen:

Fol­low Vladimir:

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Vladimir Caamaño