Jerry Trainor had to go absolutely crazy, unsurprisingly, for his audition for Crazy Steve on Drake & Josh.
During a recent appearance at GalaxyCon, the actor recalled his audition that ultimately landed him his breakout role on the popular Nickelodeon show starring Drake Bell and Josh Peck. Trainor first appeared as the erratic employee at the local movie theater in season two, which aired in 2004.
“When I auditioned for Crazy Steve, it had already been cast. Somebody else was already cast as Crazy Steve,” he recalled. “But I guess when he got to the set, he was not crazy enough for them, and so they fired him.”
That’s when Trainor went in for a “rush audition” for the role. “You have to understand, I had just gotten out of college [at the University of California, Santa Barbara], majoring in theater, where they’re telling me to, like, tone it down, bring it in, drop it in. Subtext, subtext, subtext,” he explained.
The iCarly star initially did his classic Crazy Steve “bit,” where he’s basically “calm, and then I fly off the handle.” However, the casting director, clearly loving what she was seeing, asked, “‘Oh my God, can you go bigger?’ And I was like, ‘Yeah, I can go bigger.’”
“And so then I did it, like, crazier, and she goes, ‘Can you go crazier?’ And I went, ‘Let me stop you right there. I can go nuclear. What do you want?’” Trainor continued. “She was like, ‘As big as possible.’ And I’m like, ‘You don’t want that.’ And she goes, ‘Literally, that’s what we need.’ And I was like, ‘OK, here it is. And I did it.’ The rest is history.”
He appeared on Drake & Josh for eight episodes, as well as the TV movie, Merry Christmas, Drake & Josh, before going on to play Spencer Shay, Carly’s (Miranda Cosgrove) quirky older brother on iCarly. He also reprised his role in the iCarly reboot, which ran for three seasons from 2021-23 before it was canceled.
