Scott Michael Foster
Scott Michael Foster is an actor, born 1985.
Foster has spent his career playing men who are charming on a schedule. Cappie in Greek, the fraternity president who runs on wit and avoidance across the show's run from 2007 to 2011, set the template, and it is still the role people quote at him.
Crazy Ex-Girlfriend is where he got to take that template apart. As Nathaniel Plimpton III, from 2017 to 2019, he arrived as a handsome corporate obstacle and was steadily exposed as a mess, and the show made him sing, which he does well enough that it stopped being a joke. It is a rare case of a musical comedy using its straight man as a genuine instrument rather than a foil.
Between those, Leo Hendrie in Chasing Life from 2014 to 2015 gave him a drama lead, and he has accumulated recurring work in good shows: Tyler in Californication in 2012, Hunt Whitmarsh in Halt and Catch Fire in 2014, plus parts in Once Upon a Time and You, neither of which appears among the credits listed here.
The film credits are thinner and mostly genre or seasonal, an officer in The Boy Behind the Door and in The Pact II, and the romance Choose Love.
Movies (3)
TV (10)
Where to start with Scott Michael Foster
The best recommendation comes with a caveat attached. Crazy Ex-Girlfriend is the correct starting point, but Nathaniel does not arrive until well into the run, so you are being asked to watch a lot of an already excellent musical comedy before he shows up. Do it anyway.
If you want him immediately, Greek is the alternative, a college comedy far more affectionate and better written than its premise promises, and Cappie is why it endures. Halt and Catch Fire is the best show on this list by some distance and worth watching regardless of who you came for. Chasing Life is the earnest one, a family drama that asks a great deal of him. Californication is the sourest, and The Boy Behind the Door is a tight little horror film if you want him playing against type.