I recently sat down with the two stars of the new HBO series, How to Make it in America, for the easiest interview I’ve ever done, and the most fun. They’re super nice guys, incredibly energetic, and absolutely into what they do. I’m sure most actors are into what they do, but it’s actually rare to see this kind of enthusiasm for the gig.

Bryan Greenberg and Victor Rasuk have a lot to say. And not just about their new HBO series, How to Make It. But about basketball, the 70s, Los Angeles, Twilight, growing up in the projects, acting, women, Hebrew school, music, you name it. Before How to Make It, Greenberg and Rasuk didn’t know each other. But they knew of each other. They’d played in the same basketball league out in LA. And Greenberg had seen Five Feet High and Rising, the Cannes and Sundance award-winning short that lead to Raising Victor Vargas and insta-cred for Rasuk. But now they’re friends. And it’s not bullshit, some angle cooked up by the marketing folks to get butts in seats. That chemistry they have in the show? It’s real. They enter the room animated, mid-conversation, tossing details into each other’s stories. They love stories, and as two young actors who’ve been in the business for years, they’ve got a lot of them to tell.

Like how Rasuk landed that short film. He was a 13 year old kid from the pj’s (projects he later brought Greenberg into, but that’s another story). Some NYU students were shooting in Tompkins Square Park. Rasuk was hanging around, but he was a New York kid. New York kids don’t stand back. “I was like, ‘Hey, can I be in your movie?’” That wasn’t Five Feet, but the next one was. Two years later there was Vargas and the Spirit Award nomination. Then Lords of Dogtown, Stop-Loss, hanging with Benicio on Che. But that’s another story too.

And like the time George Clooney gave Greenberg a talking-to. It was on Unscripted, and Greenberg had just nailed his big scene with Frank Langella. “You know, ‘You don’t know me! You’re my acting teacher, not my therapist!’ And at the end of the day, I was like, ‘I fucking killed that!’”

“No you didn’t, son!” Rasuk says. Their hands smack in the air.

“In my mind,” Greenberg says. “And the next day George brought me into his office and was like, ‘Come here.’ I was like, ‘What’s up?’” Greenberg shows how he sauntered up to Clooney, confident, cocky. Rasuk laughs. He’s loving this story. “And George said, ‘I don’t ever want to see you act. The minute I see you act, it’s over.’” Rusak sits back, eyes wide. Greenberg says, “I was like, ‘Noted. Got it.’ The best acting advice I ever got.”

“That’s kinda gangster,” says Rasuk.

Despite its name, How to Make It is not a primer for our times. Though it’s the latest show to call NYC home, it’s setting is the New New York, eight years after 9-11 but with fresh Wall Street wounds and a creeping feeling that the famous dream we all cling to, along with our babies and guns, has become a nightmare. Greenberg and Rasuk play Ben and Cam, two friends struggling to make something happen, on their own terms, in the outer boroughs. Ben’s a struggling artist and designer who works at Barney’s by day, and Cam’s an exuberant hustler who’ll chase a dream all the way to the Bronx if he has to, even on his bike. “My character,” Rasuk says, “in a lot of ways is a composite of guys I grew up with or came across in New York City.”

And in a lot of ways, Greenberg’s character symbolizes Manhattan. “Ben can go into the projects [before shooting, Rasuk took Greenberg to the LES pj's where he grew up], he can go to the Wall Street guys, he can be in the art scene, he can blend into the nightlife with the skateboarders and promoters, he can go to the upper east side with his Jewish folks. He embodies all of it. And he brings it all together.” The actor was raised in the Midwest and went to NYU but lives now, like Rasuk, where the sun never stops shining. “I don’t love LA,” he says, “but I love working.” Even though Rasuk hasn’t looked back since Victor Vargas, he feels the same way. It’s about the work. When Greenberg says, “It’s just being in the moment and loving what you do,” Rasuk says, “Just like How to Make It.”

“Yeah, like How to Make It,” Greenberg echoes. “We’re trying to capture the vibe of people on the grind, not being satisfied with their place in life, doing whatever it takes to get ahead. The beauty is we don’t really know what we’re doing. We just have a dream.”

A dream that finds them, in the pilot, borrowing three grand off a drug dealer to buy a roll of primo Japanese denim off the back of a truck. The jeans they’ll make will sell for hundreds a pop. But, “We might launch into something else too,” Rasuk says, almost in character, loving the mystery of what’s to come with the first season of a show that everybody’s excited about. They grin, smack hands, and keep talking.

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