After 30-plus years in showbiz portraying country bumpkins and Southern-bred simpletons -- most recently on HBO's "Deadwood" and "True Blood" -- character actor William Sanderson may finally have pushed past "that guy" status.

Too bad, then, that he glibly regards his break-out role as a career low.

The memorable performance came during a March 21 episode of the cult Adult Swim program "Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job!," in which Sanderson played a suicidal family man in a two-minute mock commercial for a Spam-like product called H'amb.

Asylum -- because we regard Sanderson as being one of the most unsung actors this side of Bruce Campbell -- phoned the 62-year-old at his Burbank, Calif., home to congratulate him. We also asked him what he'd do if this hilarious bit turns out to be the thing he's best known for.

"Probably [shoot myself]" he says. "I'd like to become immortal, so maybe if I kill myself, this'll become the finest work of my non-career."

Coincidentally, the ratings for the Cartoon Network show rose 16 percent in March among adults aged 18 to 34, according to Turner Network Television. Could it be the Sanderson effect?

Either way, it's not impossible to think that Sanderson, after years of sweating roles in forgettable TV movies and off-off-Broadway productions, will finally become recognizable to the millennial generation as something other than that guy from "Newhart."

Read on to see Sanderson in the "Tim and Eric" sketch and to find out what thinks of his most recognizable roles to date -- including those from "Deadwood" and "Blade Runner."


Sanderson has appeared in over 30 movies and TV shows in his self-proclaimed "non-career." Here's what he thinks of four of his best:

J.F. Sebastian, "Blade Runner" (1982)
"Afterward, I noticed gradually jobs [came to me] that were not just a renegade or a child molester or a rapist," recalls Sanderson. "I got to play more sympathetic characters, because [Sebastian] was ostensibly more of an innocent.

"At the time, Ridley Scott was telling me 'We got this guy, Harrison Ford. He has a couple big movies coming out. He's got a great sense of humor.' I didn't care. I just wanted to work."
Larry, "Newhart" (1982–1990)
"I got the idea [for the character] from a Bowery bum," says Sanderson, about the character with a brother named Darryl and another brother named Darryl. "He would pick lint off his head and mutter to himself, 'I'll kill the bitch.'

"[That was] probably the first nail in the coffin, but my wife seemed to like the show. So it helped me meet ladies."

E.B. Farnum, "Deadwood" (2004–2006)
"When I met the great David Milch," Sanderson tells Asylum, "I fooled him -- and he put me in every episode.

"It makes it frustrating when people come up and say, 'I'm sorry that show ended.'"

Sheriff Bud Dearborne, "True Blood" (2008–present)
"[Dearborne] doesn't do much, and, because of the books, I should already know that," he says. "But I didn't have enough character to turn the money down -- and he shaved.

"Usually I play an unshaven, but a chance to shave and take my wife out to eat? Alan Ball is a saint."