"I think that some dude from Downton Abbey dropped out—whoever that really handsome guy is with the best eyes," Anders Holm says, explaining how he landed his part as the rakish bartender Tom in How to Be Single and stole center stage in what turned out to be a monumental rom-com on par with—dare I say it?—Love Actually. "They were like, 'If you worked out for a month, you can do this role,'" the 35-year-old actor and writer adds with a laugh. To which we say: thank you, Dan Stevens, for your scheduling conflicts.
You'll recognize Holm as Mindy Kaling's pastor boyfriend on The Mindy Project and Anne Hathaway's stay-at-home husband in The Intern, but the Evanston native is most beloved as Anders Holmvik, the slightly fictionalized version of himself that he plays on Comedy Central's Workaholics. "They look almost identical," he quips when I ask how much Holm and Holmvik have in common.
The cult show, a paean to the slacker lifestyle that Holm and his friends originally conceived of as a web series, can best be described as the dude-bro analogue to Broad City (though Holm would disagree). Now working on its seventh season, the comedian gave HarpersBAZAAR.com a call to talk about trading his Workaholics physique for Tom's washboard abs, the tiny white shorts his wife was wearing when he spotted her in high school, and where the hell that amazing bar from How to Be Single is.
Harper's BAZAAR: You're back in the writer's room for the seventh season of Workaholics. What's it like in there?
Anders Holm: We work next to a Target, so it's always full of something one of us bought on a whim there—Garbage Pail Kids, Nerf guns (I think every writer's room goes through a Nerf gun phase), vinyl. Personally, I just buy a lot of ice cream and 15 different flavors of Oreos, and then everyone hates me because they eat it. Basically, the writer's room—well, it doesn't smell great. It's a lot of guys, though we're trying to get more ladies on board. Hopefully, it'll become less of a locker room.
HB: How did you, Adam DeVine, and Blake Anderson—the core Workaholics trio—first meet?
AH: It was an orgy. Blake and Kyle Newacheck, who directs and co-stars with us on the show, grew up together outside the Bay Area and met Adam in community college in the early 2000s. They all moved to LA, and I met Adam at the Second City, Los Angeles. YouTube had just come out, so we all were like, "Hey, let's make videos." Five years later, after making 90 videos that almost nobody saw, Comedy Central happened upon this web series that was in an office, and they were like, "Let's see if these guys can make this into a show," and, we did, by golly.
HB: Other than your uncannily similar looks, how much do Anders Holm and Anders Holmvick have in common?
AH: Well, the looks, for sure, with the exception that they straighten my hair into a quaff, while in reality I haven't brushed or combed my hair in 20 years. Besides the hair—which I think people should know is very important—I'm not an all-in "yes" guy like Anders Holmvik is, which makes me less fun, I imagine. I am guarded just like he is but not quite as guarded. He's got a real bug up his ass. I don't have a bug. Or if I do have a bug, it's not up my ass. It's, like, on my butt cheek.
HB: Does everyone call you Ders, like they do in the show?
AH: Ders is something I've been called since I was six by neighbors and stuff growing up. Before the show, if someone shouted "Ders!" I was like, "I'm going to turn around and see a close friend, someone who really knows me." Whereas now, when I hear "Ders" shouted, it's almost certainly a drunk man trying to touch me (which I also welcome wholeheartedly).
HB: So when you got the How to Be Single offer, it came with a disclaimer that you needed to hit the gym?
AH: It wasn't like if you work out; it was like just work out. The director, Christian Ditter, was this cool German guy, and he was like, [in a German accent] "I cannot tell with your shirt on—are you in good shape? Perhaps you can work out a little bit." That was my wakeup call after having a kid and farting around the house for so long. The worst part was that by the end of the movie, I'd lost, like, 25 pounds, but all the scenes in which I had my shirt off were shot in first three days of filming, after I'd only lost the first five.
HB: Were you at least notified that that would be the case so you could resume eating Oreos?
AH: No! But I was like, cool, a free trainer. It was an opportunity to take advantage of a grown man shouting at you to lift a weight. (That's all working out is.)
HB: What was your workout routine like?
AH: It was a lot of me getting shouted at to push a sled and pull a sled. It was mostly sled work.
HB: I've been on a relentless hunt for Tom's, the bar from How to Be Single. Where is it?!
AH: I think it was an actual bar, but they covered it up, put subway tile over stuff, and moved everything around, so it wouldn't be the same if you went back now. It was just up the street from SoHo House in the Meatpacking District. Next time I'm in New York, I'll take you there, and it will just be a sandwich place. [Editor's note: Mystery solved: Tom's was constructed in then-empty space at 55 Gansevoort Street, on top of the Raven.]
HB: What's your all-time favorite bar?
AH: The Red Shed in Madison, Wisconsin. That's a nice, real shitty bar that makes a mean Long Island Iced Tea. If you're 20, it's perfect. As far as a new bar? I grew up outside of Chicago and would go to the city every weekend, but I was always so drunk by the end of the night that whenever people ask for recommendations, I'm like "I cannot name one place."
HB: What does a typical boys' night look like for you?
AH: Boys' nights are few and far between, but they're next level. Me and all the Workaholics guys just went to Australia to promote Workaholics. Blake and I DJ'ed a party that got out of control, and Adam started twerking. These kids stormed the stage, and security didn't stand a chance. The whole thing got shut down.
HB: What comedy shows are you really into these days?
AH: Who am I frothing over? I think Nathan for You is a really funny show, along with The Grinder and Baskets. I really like Man Seeking Woman. It's the coolest show because they just do weird stuff, and it doesn't feel weird; they make it normal somehow, which I applaud. And Broad City—I think those guys are awesome.
HB: When do you tend to come up with your best ideas?
AH: It varies. I'm pretty restless in bed, so I can lie there for a couple of hours and be like, "Hey, that happened today. What if that happened at a zoo?" I'll jot the idea down. Then I'm like, "All right, so now that it's a zoo, that penguin's loose," or, whatever. I usually start with broad ideas. So it's like: "Penguin...at a zoo...it's loose...but that's a bad thing because this guy just promised his fiancé that he was going to be responsible." I bring it back to why it would matter that there was a penguin loose. Make sure you print all this that I'm saying.
HB: Well, I can't wait for the forthcoming penguin episode. How did you and your wife Emma meet?
AH: Technically, we went to summer camp together when we were 12. But it was when we were in high school together, and we were at cosmic bowling—which is what you did before cell phones. She was wearing these little white shorts, and, you know, in the black light, they pop. So, I was like, "She seems cool from here." And then I stalked her for a few months, and it turned out that she's a totally respectable, super smart human with a giant brain and not just a pair of white shorts.
HB: Does she weigh in on your jokes?
AH: Yeah. When I'm watching Workaholics and live tweeting, she'll sit and watch it with me. Three or four seconds before the episode ends, she's always like, "I like that one." Or "That one wasn't as good as the last one." She doesn't mess around.
Romy Oltuski is a writer and editor based in New York. Her work appears in The New York Times, Forbes, Harper’s Bazaar, InStyle, and The Cut.
