Vladimir Caamaño - A Broad Life

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”.

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 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:

• Con­tes­tant in TBS’ Tour­na­ment of Laughs: tbs​.com/​s​h​o​w​s​/​t​o​u​r​n​a​m​e​n​t​-​o​f​-​l​aughs
• Mash­able arti­cle: mash​able​.com/​h​o​w​-​a​-​h​u​g​-​f​r​o​m​-​h​o​w​i​e​-​m​a​n​d​e​l​-​l​a​u​n​c​h​e​d​-​t​h​i​s​-​u​n​k​n​o​w​n​-​c​o​m​e​d​i​a​n​s​-​c​areer
• Howie Man­del Just For Laughs Gala: Youtu​.be/​J​F​L​H​o​w​i​e​M​a​n​d​e​l​G​a​l​a​-​V​l​a​d​i​m​i​r​C​a​amano
• Jim­my Kim­mel: Youtu​.be/​J​i​m​m​y​K​i​m​m​e​l​-​V​l​a​d​i​m​i​r​C​a​amano
• Guest appear­ances on Super­store and Brook­lyn Nine-Nine
• As Abn­er Diaz on CBS Dra­ma Tommy

Fol­low Vladimir:

• Web­site — laugh​ingvlad​.com
• Twit­ter — @LaughingVlad
• Insta­gram — @laughingvlad
• Face­book — Facebook.com/VladimirCaamaño
• Youtube — Youtube​.com/​l​a​u​g​h​i​n​gvlad