Just weeks after Richard Gere was homeless on East 10th Street, another actor is down and out on the same block, between First Avenue and Avenue A.
The clip above shows a take from Flesh and Bone, filming today. As we noted last time it was in the neighborhood, the Starz series from a creator of Breaking Bad follows “Claire, a gifted young ballet dancer with a dark, self-destructive past who is a new member of a rigorous New York ballet company,” per Vulture.
In the footage we grabbed, the man talking to Sarah Hay (who plays Claire) is Damon Herriman, who plays “a strange and engaging homeless guy who lives on the roof of Claire and Mia’s Lower East Side building,” per Deadline.
It’s tempting to take the piss out of these folks for getting paid handsomely to act homeless, but it seems Richard Gere’s heart is in the right place, at least. His thank you letter to Theater for the New City, whose facilities were used during the filming of Time Out of Mind, is reproduced on the theater’s Facebook page. “It is our hope,” writes Gere, “that the film will further the conversation about how we move forward as a society in caring for those who are less fortunate.”