Steve Howey wants you to know he can still throw a movie punch — but he’s retired from blowing out tendons. “I snapped my Achilles, man,” he says with the grin of a man who’s been punched, kicked, and probably gummed to death by vampires. “I like my tendons to be attached. Daddy needs to put the ball down.”
Howey, forever your favorite Shameless barman and sidekick, is living out his monster-slaying fantasies in Netflix’s Day Shift, where he trades bar rags for bloodsuckers alongside Jamie Foxx, Snoop Dogg in a cowboy hat, and enough roundhouse kicks to make Van Helsing look like a toddler in a Dracula costume. “I’ve never done an action thing like this before,” he says. “It’s like going to stunt school and getting paid for it.”
Credit goes to director J.J. Perry, a former stuntman with a grin as big as his choreography. “The stunt guys were so gracious. I know how to throw a punch, I can kick your leg pretty good — but throwing a movie punch is different. It’s a dance.”
And the accent? If you thought that Armenian twang came from years on Glendale’s finest back lots, you’d be half right. “I went to Crescenta Valley High — Glendale in ‘95 was the most populated area for Armenians besides Armenia. So when J.J. asked if I could do an Armenian accent I’m like, ‘You want me to sell you a Mercedes-Benz? White on white, beautiful rims…’ He was into it.”
His character, one half of the Nazerian vampire-hunting brothers, chews scenery like Snoop’s Gatling gun chews up undead LA. And he’s aware his old Shameless family will roll their eyes at his new fake accent and even faker stunts. “Jamie [Foxx] was like, ‘Yeah man, do your thing. It’s funny.’” If the Oscar winner signs off, who’s arguing?
There’s more: Howey’s also filling Arnold Schwarzenegger’s boots in the True Lies TV reboot. “You guys know I’m not an Austrian bodybuilder, right? But it’s its own thing. In the pilot, Helen becomes an agent. We’re not trying to touch the movie — you can’t. That movie’s a classic.”
It all comes back to the same grind: stay goofy, stay limber, keep the tendons intact. “It’s not being behind the bar anymore,” he laughs. “Now I gotta get out and kick some ass in a suit.”
And if Day Shift gets a sequel? “Your mouth to God’s ears,” he says. Vampires, Armenians, True Lies. Kevin from Shameless, but make it action hero. Maybe this time he won’t snap anything.
Listen to the interview above and then check out the videos below.
