The Actor Who Played Vinnie In Doogie Howser, M.D. Is Unrecognizable Now

Before "Grey's Anatomy" became the longest-running primetime medical drama on television, there was "Doogie Howser, M.D." Created by the late Steven Bochco and David E. Kelley, the three-time Emmy-winning series tells the story of a genius teenager who attends his residency program after becoming a licensed physician. It was an idea that was inspired by both a New York Magazine story and Bochco growing up with a prodigy for a father.

Taking on the titular role was a much younger Neil Patrick Harris who was still an up-and-coming star at that time. And while Doogie was the only prodigy in the story, he was not the only teen character on the show. Early on, the audience was introduced to Vinnie, Doogie's longtime best friend. Vinnie, who was played by Max Casella, remained supportive of Doogie throughout his stint in the medical world, and the two youngsters shared some memorable moments on screen together. Doogie and Vinnie's friendship lasted until the show drew to a close in 1993 after four seasons.

Since then, Harris has gone on to become one of the biggest stars around as continues to dominate in the worlds of film, television, and theater. Meanwhile, his former co-star went on to have quite the Hollywood success story too, although fans might have a hard time recognizing him from his time on the show.

"Doogie Howser, M.D." wasn't Max Casella's first acting job, but it was his first major role. Early on, he landed a few gigs here and there, including a guest spot on "The Equalizer" and a recurring part on the sketch comedy series "Don't Look Now." However, at that point, his career was relatively fledgling. To stay afloat, he had to get another job while living with his mom. "I was working in an off-Broadway theater as a janitor. We were broke," the actor told People in 2022. His career experienced a significant boost when "Doogie Howser, M.D." came along. 

On the show, Casella's character, Vinnie Delpino, is supposed to be the same age as Doogie, but in reality, Casella was already in his early 20s; Neil Patrick Harris was still a teenager when the series began. Nonetheless, it all worked out, especially since the actor bonded with Harris early on. "We had just a great time together. Like you said, we really had great chemistry, and I loved him," Casella later told The A.V. Club.

"Doogie Howser, M.D." fans may remember Vinnie speaking with a New York accent even though the character grew up in Brentwood, California. Turns out, Casella actually inspired this character detail. The actor auditioned with the New York accent and the show loved it. "They like it, and it's funny — sort of — so they told me to keep on doing it," he revealed during an interview with The Washington Post.

While "Doogie Howser, M.D." certainly gave Max Casella a lot of exposure in the business, it evidently was not enough to propel the actor to Hollywood star status. After spending four seasons on the hit series, Casella was back to struggling to find work. At the time, he only found success with animated projects. "I wasn't really interested in it, but it was the only work I was getting. I was glad to get something, but I was going through the motions," he told The A.V. Club. One of those projects was the animated series "Cro" from the Children's Television Workshop. On the show, Casella provided the voice for the titular character, a cave boy who knew how to apply engineering and physics to his daily life. "I wasn't even a child at that point! But I looked like one, and as far as anyone was concerned, I was one," he added, presumably alluding to his own growth hormone deficiency. In 2022, Casella told Page Six that he had to take hormones in his 20s because he did not go through puberty naturally.

Aside from "Cro," Casella also spent some time doing voice work for the animated series "The Adventures of Hyperman." He also did voice for an episode of "Hey Arnold!" Casella went on to work on other animated projects, including Disney's "The Little Mermaid II," "The Legend of Tarzan," and "Kim Possible," as well as Cartoon Network's "Courage the Cowardly Dog."

When the TV and movie industries weren't going Max Casella's way, he made his way to the stage. In the mid-'90s, the actor chanced upon a casting call for the Broadway production of "The Lion King." "'Lion King' came about just out of the blue," he recalled in his aforementioned The A.V. Club interview. "My agent in L.A. was like, 'Learn 'Hakuna Matata' and go read these two scenes.'"

Back then, Casella couldn't quite imagine how "The Lion King" would even work as a Broadway show, but the actor went for it anyway. Early on, he also gravitated toward the character of Timon, the wisecracking meerkat who becomes a guardian to Simba. As Casella told The A.V. Club, his rendition of "Hakuna Matata" won over the casting directors, and he nailed the puppet work section. "I realized I was a natural puppeteer," he said. "And [Julie Taymor] was just thrilled to pieces."

And while he was thrilled to have been a part of the now iconic Broadway show's original cast, at the time, he was not totally satisfied with where his career was going. Looking back, however, Casella was glad that he did it. "That turned out to be a phenomenal experience, but at the time, it just seemed like a huge digression from what I wanted to be doing," he later added.

After "The Lion King," Max Casella continued to act on Broadway, eventually joining the cast of "The Music Man." Around this time, he also took the opportunity to take acting lessons, and this came in handy when he joined the cast of HBO's "The Sopranos" during its 3rd season. On the show, the actor took on the role of Benny Fazio.

"Suddenly acting became fun and my confidence went up and I fell in love with the craft of it, which is where I'm at to this day," Casella told People. To be clear, however, Benny is far from being a fun character on "The Sopranos." Benny, who was part of the DiMeo crime family, was a recurring character on the series. Benny would go on to carry out several brutal acts for Tony Soprano (the late James Gandolfini) and Christopher Moltisanti (Michael Imperioli) — whatever it took to go up the ranks.

While many characters on "The Sopranos" suffered grisly deaths, the same can't be said about Benny. And Casella's happy his character was never axed. "Every time a script came out, you'd look at it like, am I going to have a job this year or am I going to get killed?" he once told Grantland. "It's nicer so you can pay your mortgage if you get to stay to the end."

After "The Sopranos" wrapped up its run, Max Casella made his way to the big screen with some of Hollywood's top filmmakers. In 2008, the actor joined the star-studded cast of "Leatherheads," the George Clooney dramedy starring Clooney, John Krasinski, and Renée Zellweger. Casella soon followed this up with a role in Sam Mendes' romantic drama "Revolutionary Road," the same film that reunited Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet years after "Titanic." In it, he plays Ed Small, and he couldn't think of a name more fitting for the character. "Very, very little is known about Ed Small. He's an obscure character lost in the mists of time," the actor once told The A.V. Club. Despite his small part, Casella gave it everything he's got. "I attack every role as if I'm the lead," he added. Casella also had nothing but praise for DiCaprio who was incredibly helpful behind the scenes too.

Years later, the actor joined Oscar Isaac, Carey Mulligan, John Goodman, and Justin Timberlake for Ethan and Joel Coen's music drama "Inside Llewyn Davis." Around the same time, Casella was cast in "Blue Jasmine," a Woody Allen film starring Cate Blanchett, Bobby Cannavale, and Sally Hawkins. 

In his aforementioned interview with Grantland, Casella shared that he landed "Inside Llewyn Davis" and "Blue Jasmine" after acting in a three-part one-act play called "Relatively Speaking." Ethan Coen and Woody Allen each contributed an act to the show. 

After playing supporting characters in various major films, Max Casella finally booked a lead role in Onur Tukel's rather disturbing rom-com "Applesauce," which is partly inspired by an experience that Tukel had in college. The movie tells the story of two couples who begin to clash after something from the past comes to light and body parts start to turn up.

Tukel had not met Casella prior to working together. Nonetheless, the filmmaker thought about sending the "Doogie Howser, M.D." star his script and hoped for the best. As for Casella, he wasn't initially convinced about signing on, especially after learning that he didn't have to audition for a role. "I thought for sure this has got to be a piece of sh**," the actor once told Entertainment Weekly. When he cracked open the script, however, Casella was pleasantly surprised. "And I'm waiting for it to suck and it's just getting better, and better, and better, and better. I'm laughing. My wife is in the other room: 'What's so funny?'" He went from feeling skeptical to being totally on board in the blink of an eye. As he recalled in his aforementioned chat with The A.V. Club, "I was so excited that I read it in one sitting, put it down, called my manager, and said, 'Set up a meeting with Onur right away,'"

Back when he was still working on "The Sopranos," Max Casella only had one wish: He wanted to do another HBO series and he wanted to score a lead part this time. Luckily for Casella, he met writer Terence Winter while on "The Sopranos" and Winter would keep the actor in mind for future projects. After "The Sopranos," Casella secured a recurring role on "Boardwalk Empire." A few years later, Winter teamed up with Casella again for "Vinyl." On the HBO series, Casella played Julie Silver.

Set in the 1970s, "Vinyl" follows the story of New York record executive Richie Finestra (Bobby Cannvale) as he works to promote his music label, American Century. Meanwhile, Casella's Julie serves as Finestra's right-hand man. It was a part that needed a great deal of research, but as Casella said in DuJour, he didn't mind. "When I started researching this show, I must have spent $1,000 on songs from iTunes just because I'd come across them while researching the history of rhythm and blues," he said. The star-studded ensemble also includes Ray Romano, Juno Temple, and Olivia Wilde.

Joining this project was a major career moment for Casella. "Well, I mean, I'm a member of the regular cast. And it's on HBO. And it's in New York City. Everything I ever wanted, everything I worked for... I've got it," the actor later told The A.V. Club.

In the years that followed, Max Casella found himself making brief appearances in several major network shows. Soon after "Vinyl," he also starred in "The Detour," a TBS adventure comedy about a father who decides to take his family on an adventure all over America. On the show, Casella appeared as divorce attorney Joe Delicious throughout Seasons 2 and 3. Around the same time, the actor nabbed the recurring guest role as Captain Daniel Pines in the NBC crime drama "Shades of Blue," which was headlined by Jennifer Lopez and the late Ray Liotta. And while he was already busy working on these two shows, Casella still found some time to do a couple of episodes for the Showtime crime drama "Ray Donovan" where he played investigator Emerson Lake. Years later, the actor also appeared once on "The Blacklist" as serial gambler Henry Morris.

At the same time, Casella also memorably appeared on the show "The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel." On the show, he also played Michael Kessler, a lawyer in Manhattan during the 1950s. "I love that period, it's very exciting, this kind of a guy. Pre-civil rights, these guys are starting it out, fighting against McCarthyism," the actor once told The Knockturnal. Casella only appeared on the show for a handful of episodes, making his final appearance in Season 4.

As he took on guest television roles, Max Casella also found himself doing several film projects. For starters, he joined the cast of the dramedy "Late Night," a feature film headlined by Emma Thompson, Mindy Kaling, and John Lithgow. The actor then ventured into something more intense with "The Rhythm Section," an action drama starring Blake Lively about a woman determined to avenge her family after they get killed in a planned plane crash. Soon, Casella also reunited with "Applesauce" director Onur Tukel for the dramedy "Scenes From an Empty Church." Set in the middle of the pandemic lockdown in New York City, the film tells the story of two priests who reluctantly decided to start letting parishioners into their church once again.

Meanwhile, around this time, Tukel and Casella also collaborated once more for the 2021 horror comedy "That Cold Dead Look in Your Eyes." The film follows a man suffering from hallucinations as he is about to lose everything important in his life. Casella plays the lead character's boss. By this time too, he had already become a fan of Tukel's work, which suggests more projects together moving forward. "Onur's his own genre. He's such a unique artist, he writes his stories about things that interest him. They go in all different directions yet the movies are so good and so tight," Casella once told Courageous Nerd.

Back in 2022, creator Taylor Sheridan brought legendary actor Sylvester Stallone to television with the crime drama "Tulsa King" for Paramount+. And that's how Max Casella managed to fulfill his childhood dream of working with the "Rocky" star decades after he starred in "Doogie Howser, M.D." "I had his poster on my wall when I was 10," he once told People. "He was everything you would want him to be."

"Tulsa King" may seem like familiar territory for Casella considering his time (and role) on "The Sopranos." On the show, the actor plays Armand Truisi, a criminal who is forced to confront his past after Stallone's character comes to town. And while Casella and Stallone have quite an intense onscreen relationship, they seem to have become good friends behind the scenes. "He made me feel comfortable because at his core, I think he's a blue-collar guy," Casella told Page Six of Stallone. "He's got a blue-collar work ethic, and he respects hard work." In a separate interview with New York Live, Casella had more praise for the Hollywood veteran. When asked about Stallone, Casella gushed about his "generous" and "loving" co-star. "He felt like an uncle of mine," he said. "Tulsa King" has received one Emmy nomination and was picked up for a second season.