‘Average Joe’ Star Michael Trucco on How BET+ Series Is ‘Hard to Pin Down’ (Exclusive)

Michael Trucco can currently be seen in the hit CBS series Fire County. But the 53-year-old actor also stars in new series called Average Joe which is streaming now on BET+. PopCulture.com spoke exclusively to Trucco who had a challenging time explaining what fans can expect from the series. 

“It’s hard to pin down,” Trucco exclusively told PopCulture. “It’s a drama. It’s a suspenseful drama with a little brevity to lighten the load. It’s a buddy picture. I mean, I’m all over the place, because you could label it several things. It’s a show about family, first and foremost. It’s about mainly it’s about bond, and family is blood family, but it’s also friendship. That is at the core of this show, is the family dynamic and what these people would do for each other to help each other. You throw them into this mix of this crazy world of organized crime, and the title is apt. It’s Average Joe. These are just simple, average, blue-collar folks who find themselves in extraordinary circumstances.”

Deon Cole plays the main character name Joe who gets into some hot water when a group of dangerous men finds out that his late father has stolen millions of dollars from them. Trucco’s character, Benjamin “Touch” Tuchawuski, is Joe’s long-time best friend and a police officer with a drug addiction. When he finds out that Joe is in trouble with the Russian mob, he decides to get involved in the action instead of reporting it. 

“It was challenging, man, and it was exhausting, in the best way,” Trucco said about playing his character. “It all comes down to the script and the character. I read this way back in July of last year, and it just spoke to me. The challenge of playing a character that has all these secrets and has all these issues and these dark sides, to be able to straddle that line, to walk the edge of that sword and trying to keep those things hidden from his best friends. He’s also a cop. He’s trying to maintain his life professionally, but things personally are starting to come unhinged.”

Trucco has appeared in a number of notable television shows in his career. But when it comes to Average Joe, he said it’s the most “intense thing I’ve done, I mean in terms of tone, I did a series called Battlestar Galactica. That show got dark. It also was the fate of humanity was on the line, so we carried that emotion through four or five seasons. The speed and the intensity and the tone of this show, the fun. This show puts its finger on your pulse and never lets up. Your heart rate starts going from Episode 1.”

Trucco stars in Average Joe along with Cole, Malcolm Barrett, Cynthia Kaye McWilliams, Ashley Olivia Fisher, Pasha Lychnikoff, and Ashani Perkins. The first two episodes are streaming now on BET+ with a new episode premiering on June 29. New episodes will debut every Thursday.