Remember When: Michael Cerveris Played a Punk Rocker on ‘Fame’

It’s been a busy November for actor/musician Michael Cerveris. His Americana band Loose Cattle released their third album Someone’s Monster. The musical Tammy Faye, featuring a score composed by Elton John and in which Cerveris plays the role of televangelist Jerry Falwell, played Broadway. And the hit HBO show The Gilded Age, in which he is a regular cast member, has been announced to return sometime in 2025.

Reaching for Fame

Before he started racking up his notable screen and stage credits, Cerveris was another actor and musician looking for that big break. His first big TV gig was playing British rocker Ian Ware on the sixth and final season of the Emmy Award-winning hit show Fame, which aired in the 1986-87 TV year.

“Ian was from London with a pretty dodgy British accent, I’ve got to say,” Cerveris confesses to American Songwriter. “He was Mr. Shorofsky’s problem student again, who’s brilliantly talented. He can play classical, jazz, rock—he really just wants to play rock and roll. He doesn’t really read music but can play anything by ear, and Shorofsky wants to teach him to be a real writer and musician. They let me pitch songs all the time. None of them ever got taken, but I remember I was always trying to make the show more authentic.”

Cerveris was a fan of rock and punk and had played in bands—a little over a decade later in 1998, he toured as part of the Bob Mould Band—so he tried to make things feel more legit. “I am very proud to say that they let me choose the T-shirts and stuff that I wore a lot on that show,” he recalls. “I’m pretty certain that I was the first person to wear a Sisters of Mercy T-shirt on television, and I’m pretty sure we were probably one of the first shows to feature Sex Pistols music on American television.”

Punk Rock Reckoning

In the season’s 18th episode “Ian’s Girl,” Cerveris’ British student faces his old band and his ex-girlfriend coming to visit him in NYC. He is torn over them thinking he sold out as a college student and wants to show them he’s still rock ‘n’ roll. He performs the Sex Pistols song “No Feelings” with a punk band at a club in front of his old pals.

Cerveris implored the producers not to go to central casting and procure generic Hollywood extras. He offered to go to L.A.’s Scream Club—which he frequented and where he saw Jane’s Addiction’s second show—and recruit real-life punks. They agreed to let him do it. As the actor noted, this was in the days before cell phones.

He recalls, “So I walked around [and said] ‘show up at this address, you’ll get $50 for the day, and they’ll feed you, and just dress like you’re coming to the club.’ That’s it. So you look around that venue and that room—there’s an LA punk band called The Zeros in the background, and a bunch of LA punk bands and fans populate that room. I’m so proud of that scene. It feels like the most authentic punk club on syndicated television in the ‘80s, because I basically dragged all these people down.”

Enter Lee Ving, Without Fear

In the two episodes prior to “Ian’s Girl” including the one right before, Fear frontman Lee Ving shows up essentially playing himself, but as a guy called Fred. Ving and Fear had become infamous to some TV insiders for playing Saturday Night Live in 1981 at the behest of cast member John Belushi. Even though their set wasn’t really that maniacal, the moshing fans they brought with them freaked out some of the crew. That was not an issue for Fame.

“One of the writers who created my character had always wanted to make things as authentic as possible, and he was a big Fear fan,” Cerveris says. “So he got Lee to come and play this character, and I was thrilled and so excited. And the rest of the cast were like, ‘Who is that guy?’ ‘That’s Lee Ving, man!’”

In the show, it was Cerveris’ Ian Ware who got into trouble. During “Ian’s Girl,” when he sees another punk harassing his ex during his band’s set, he jumps into the pit and proceeds to give him a beatdown. Funnily enough, Ving performed the upbeat, bluesy pop-rock number “The Night Rolls On” while strolling the school, which seemed out of character with the hardcore punk of Fear but is fun to watch. (Ian Ware got a guitar solo, and MTV’s Martha Quinn made a cameo.) In one of the final episodes of Fame, Cerveris got to jam on an anthemic number called “Burn Down the Night” with some schoolmates.

Iconic Influence

Although he is known for Broadway shows like Sweeney Todd and Fun Home, and TV shows such as Mindhunter and Fringe, Cerveris also portrayed the rocking leads in The Who’s Tommy and Hedwig and the Angry Inch. But above all, the actor says there is one icon who helped guide his singing.

“I love [David] Bowie because as a kid he was the main rock star whose songs I could actually sing,” Cerveris explains. “I couldn’t sing high enough to be Robert Plant. I was a bit of a metal kid too, and I think a lot of the reason why I didn’t really pursue playing in metal bands was I just couldn’t scream that high. I just couldn’t do that. But Bowie was somebody who sang in a range that I could sing in who was doing this fantastic rock and roll theatrical stuff. I would say David Bowie was basically my inadvertent vocal coach just by trying to sing his songs.”

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Photo by Walter McBride/WireImage