DC: Describe your journey as a young actor from when you first started compared to your focus now as a seasoned professional in the business.
MDN: I spent years juggling bartending jobs, scene study classes, unpaid black-box theater and student films before I made a dime as an actor. It was like having to live 4 lives in one. Present day is by no means struggle-free, and there are new challenges with a family and time management, but the big difference is probably that my goals and tastes have become more defined and refined. In many ways, all of the struggle has given me a much more nuanced palette from which to draw life experiences. Back then, I had a lot of hunger but, in retrospect, I don't think I understood the plays I was studying on the gut level that I might today because I hadn't lived through as much.
DC: Tell me the most challenging moment you experienced as an actor and how you managed to get through that situation.
MDN: There are so many to choose from, and a lot of times I'll talk about when my run on Scandal dried up without warning. I found myself unemployed and unwanted despite feeling great in audition rooms, and that led me to launch my podcast to save myself because the business was squashing me down. But there were so many other moments, earlier than that, when I'd been kicking around for a long time, studying non-stop, thinking I had something to offer but literally couldn't get an agent. I remember a moment in the late 90's, before I had landed The Sopranos, when I was bartending and acquaintances from college were working on Wall Street, making money while I was pouring them Guinness and thinking to myself, "Are you delusional, Matt? Is this really going to work out?" I guess each time I hit those walls, I'd eventually come back to the common mantra I'd picked up from my acting teachers: do the work. And I just never let myself quit. I call it the Rocky Balboa approach to business: If you can take enough punches, eventually you get a shot at the title.
DC: To be a working actor in Hollywood is extremely competitive. Explain your thought process when you are auditioning for a character and the mindset you take on to land the role.
MDN: I think I'm at my best when I've done the preparation work that's necessary to allow me to walk into a room confidently, not looking for a job. There are so many contributing factors as to whether you will get a particular job that are outside of your control as an actor. So, I've found that if I grade myself on whether or not I got the job, that's statistically a losing battle. On the other hand, if I grade myself on how prepared I am, I am completely responsible for that grade. It sets me up to go in thinking, "if you hire me, this is a glimpse of my take on the role". They may not like my take but that's not really within my control so I do my best not to focus on it.
Photo Credit Corey Nickols