From Season 2 all the way until the last episode of the final season, Season 6, I played an FBI agent on USA Network’s popular television series White Collar.
Ben Hauck as Agent Graham in Episode 214 (“Payback”) of White Collar
The gig was a sweet one. Much of the time it was background work in the FBI bullpen (the office where Peter and Neal work), doing crosses and reflection work. Sometimes I also did stand-in work. But frequently I did featured work when Peter held a meeting in the conference room. I’d be in the conference room with other members of the “Harvard Crew,” and it was some great little bits of camera time — enough to make my parents happy when they saw me.
While I never truly had lines in the series, I had lines dubbed over me at least once — in Episode 205 (“Unfinished Business”), in which I was dubbed to say “C’mon, let’s go” as I arrested a bad guy near the end of the episode. (The accent is hilarious.) But even sweeter was that in Episode 214 (“Payback”) my character got named! I was thenceforth named Agent Graham (dubbed by the late actor, James Rebhorn), but probably the only person on set who really knew that that was my FBI agent’s name.
Michael Logan & Ben Hauck as FBI agents on White Collar
White Collar was consistent AFTRA work for me for the spring and summer months. (I skipped working on Season 4, turning down the invitation in order to work on SAG projects rather than AFTRA projects for health insurance and pension reasons.) I developed a lot of great friendships and laughed a lot on set with the other background actors. White Collar was an exceptional set in that the principal actors didn’t ignore us, and they knew many of our names. When the series’ lead Matt Bomer went on to act in the film The Normal Heart, in which I was a utility stand-in, he noticed that I was the guy who seemed to follow him around on all of his projects!
A little bit of trivia: I actually first worked on the series in the last episode of Season 1, but I couldn’t find myself in the background of that episode. I was just a party guest rather than an FBI agent. Or was I undercover??
