Max Burkholder chatted to Courageous Nerd about playing John Bennett in the new Ted series on Peacock.
As “John Bennett”, actor Max Burkholder plays a younger iteration of Mark Wahlberg’s character from the Ted movies. Franchise creator Seth MacFarlane reprises his role as Ted for the series.
Perhaps best known for his work on Parenthood, Max’s film credits include Daddy Day Care, Friends With Money and The Purge.
Max has provided voices on shows such as Family Guy, American Dad!, The Land Before Time, Invincible and The Cleveland Show.
We chatted to Max about his experience playing John, working with Seth MacFarlane and much more.
How did your journey in acting first start?
Max Burkholder: My first job, I started when I was 3. In defiance of all child labour laws because none of them apply to the entertainment industry. My parents were both actors. A friend of theirs is a casting director who needed 15 or 20 toddlers who could sit still and say lines when it was needed.
I went in for it, it was Daddy Day Care. I didn’t get it, then the kid they hired was not loving the set environment. I’m told there were a lot of tears involved. They brought me in a few months later. Allegedly, I still remembered my lines from the audition months before.
They were like, we need a kid right now. I think my Dad drove to City Hall to get my birth certificate so we could do the start paperwork. I was working that day.
An extraordinary confluence of luck that got me into the industry at all.
You have worked with Seth MacFarlane across several projects – Family Guy, The Orville and now Ted.
Max Burkholder: Those three, yeah, I did American Dad! here and there. I think one episode of The Cleveland Show, but Seth wasn’t really part of that. I started doing voices for Family Guy when I was probably around 6 years old.
Too young to be allowed to watch it. Wasn’t allowed to read the scripts besides my lines. I got my start with that very young as well. When I was doing Family Guy and American Dad!, I was a kid. There wasn’t a working relationship with Seth.
The Orville was a 2-week shoot that I was there for 5-6 days of. Not a lot of face time with him then. This is the closest and most intensively I’ve got to work with him so far. It’s just wild seeing him work, it’s crazy.
There’s the creepy little kid character in the first Ted movie. They were having the table read and needed a kid to play the kid. I was always sort of around in the studio. They knew who I was and about me.
I was playing the creepy little kid character, probably around 10 years old. Way too young to be hearing any of those jokes. Definitely too young to be hearing any of that, I was having a blast.
By playing John, you’re sharing a lot of screen time with a character who isn’t actually there. Did knowing what Ted was like from the movies help you imagine him?
Max Burkholder: The movies definitely helped. I think everyone really struggled with that part in the beginning. It’s just super weird for at least the first couple of weeks. No amount of preparation you do can prepare you for that level of new weirdness.
There were definitely a lot of takes ruined because my eyeline was wrong. Or, I’d look over at Seth to deliver my line rather than where the bear is supposed to be. It wasn’t as efficient as it could be, just because it was so new for the first little bit.
After a while, you start getting really used to it. You start being able to picture him anywhere that you want.
What can fans of the Ted movies expect from the show, if they haven’t already seen it?
Max Burkholder: A lot more of the same type of humour. If you liked the movies, you’re going to love the series. It’s more hours of this kind of humour than both movies combined. There’s so much of it, it’s all so funny.
It’s the same team of writers and the same director. Same VFX, even better VFX, I would probably say.
I think just get ready for some good funny sh*t…just a twinge of sincerity every now and then.
Your ‘real world’ co-stars on Ted include Alanna Ubach, Scott Grimes and Giorgia Whigham. Did you guys go through bonding experiences to create an onscreen family?
Max Burkholder: For sure. Around the time we started the table reads, we started going out to dinner. Getting drinks, going over to each other’s houses and hanging out. We really wanted to make sure that dynamic was there. That we all liked and trusted each other before we even got into the whole thing.
We had 2 or 3 days of rehearsal time before we started properly shooting. We got together and did the big family dinner scenes and living room scenes.
The 7, 8, 9 page scenes where everyone’s together in a room. We really made sure to get the timing down before starting shooting.
Normally, you’ll chop up a scene here and there. Those we shot all the way through. We’d do 5 takes all the way through, from this set up. That would take an hour. 5 takes all the way through for the next set up, that would take another hour. They were all day things.
We really wanted to make sure we had it locked in for them.
Can you relate to John or are you completely different in real life?
Max Burkholder: 100%, I can relate. I think if I tried to deny it, all my friends would get very angry at me. I was also a sexless, stoner loser with my degenerate friends in high school. Absolutely. I was in LA, so it was legal.
I didn’t have to take too far of a leap to get into John’s shoes, if that makes sense.
Daddy Day Care celebrated 20 years since its premiere last year. How does it feel to have been acting for that long?
Max Burkholder: It’s been a long time. I’ve been working for 23 years now. To me, it feels like my whole life. I barely have any memories from before I started shooting.
If you’re asking if I feel like I’ve lived for a long time and been through it, the answer is yes. I didn’t know I would feel this old at 26.
Aside from Ted, are there any other projects you would like to shout out?
Max Burkholder: I don’t have anything upcoming I’d be able to talk about with any sort of certainty. The industry is still in the middle of its engine spinning back up after the strikes. Things are coming down the pipe, more slowly than maybe I would like.
I didn’t really get the chance to work on anything last year, besides some stuff here and there with friends.
It’s my favourite thing in the world to do, I love acting. I just want to do it more.
Ted is streaming on Peacock (for US viewers) and Sky (for UK viewers).
Follow writer Conor O’Brien on Twitter
A lifelong TV and Film buff, Conor founded Courageous Nerd in 2019. He has conducted hundreds of interviews for the site, as well as written comprehensive feature articles on a variety of topics. You can find him on X: @conorrcn.
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