THIRD WATCH

One TV Show. One Jerk Off. One Lost Opportunity.

MIKE CARAVELLA

August 19, 2026

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“Aaron Fucking Boone”... If you’re a baseball fan 40-plus years old, then you are steeped in the lore of the Red Sox/Yankees rivalry, and know of this famous game on October 16, 2003. As a die hard Mets fan, the baseball backdrop of these two teams was an extra turd on my shit sandwich already served to me that day. But this day lives in infamy to me for other reasons. That reason being a nepo-turturro disappearing into the darkness of Mulberry Street in Little Italy, NYC wearing a shitty Jason Giambi jersey, and taking with him, potentially, my big break.

This was a fun and exciting time in my life with many transitions happening at once, which in actuality is kind of my M.O. every 5 to 10 years. For the first time in my life though, I was giving a full-force effort into pursuing my acting career after many half-hearted starts and stops since I was a teenager. I gave up the teaching career a year earlier, which was really just an excuse for me to coach football. And coaching football was really just an excuse for me to have a “real” job. My pursuit of acting initially came to a full dead stop 8 years earlier in 1994, when I inexplicably, in a very deep, long running alcoholic haze, decided to get married to someone I knew for only 6 months. The divorce, and custody battle for my two children from that relationship, lasted longer than the marriage. I won that custody battle by the way…

One day in September 2003, I got a call from my agent telling me there’s a possible good opportunity with the NBC police procedural, THIRD WATCH. It’s going to start out small, a day-player role, as an enforcer for a new-age mafia family with the head of the family being played by Nick Turturro. But it is a nine episode story-arc and I have to commit to being there for all nine episodes even though they’re not committing to paying me. I have to book myself out, meaning I can’t take other jobs for days they’re “holding” me. The conversation was short. A year earlier I was teaching P.E. in upstate NY, with a strong side dish of being embroiled in family court. Even though they were asking me for over two months of commitment but only guaranteeing me one day of pay, these are the opportunities in this business that you can’t pass up. I was all in.

My day on set arrives. We’re actually on location in Little Italy in Caffé Roma on Mulberry Street. Everything starts off great. I’m excited. I have about 5 scenes for the day, all in the cafe, but the first one out of the gate was my profiled one. Not only will Nick be in the scene, but series regulars Nia Long and Jason Wiles as well. Great start.

I’m hanging around out front of the cafe, waiting to get called in, when Nick arrives sporting his NY Yankees jersey with number 25 on the back for Jason Giambi. A poor purchase to say the least. This was a tumultuous time in NY with our passionate baseball fan bases. As mentioned earlier, I’m a Mets fan, and the Yankees were on the tail end of their fading great dynasty run. But fandom changed since I was a kid. My group of friends growing up were split down the middle between Mets and Yankees. And we used to accompany each other to both Yankee and Shea Stadiums for the games. Not to say we didn’t rib each other, because we most certainly did. But fandom took a different turn in recent history, becoming hostile and virulent. And the Yankee fans were feeling themselves at this moment in time. None more than Nick Turturro.

For a guy whose major talent in life is being the brother of John, he is about as arrogant as they come. Just do a basic web search, and you’ll see how sociopathically toxic he is, particularly when defending his fandom. I have a theory about over-zealous sports fans. And this coming from someone who played, coached, and also trained professional athletes for over 40 years combined. It is displaced anger and distraction from an unfulfilled existence. Which is even more puzzling with Nick. Or maybe it isn’t. Given that everything he has comes directly from big brother's footsteps.

The consummate professional nepo didn’t stay in character all day. To be fair, it is TV work and my experience is that a lot of TV production is paint-by-numbers across the board. That’s why so many people in the industry are drawn to it. He didn’t sit quietly anywhere contemplating his craft or his choices either. How, you may ask, did he prepare for the scenes he was filming that day? By parading obnoxiously in front of the Cafe in that infernal Jason Giambi jersey yelling into his cell phone at people trying to score tickets for that night's ALCS Game 7 Yankees-Red Sox matchup. Let's give him some credit here. This is 2003. He was years ahead of everyone else in the world at being the asshole yelling into his cell phone all day in public. Quite the trend setter. Everybody has something they do well.

As the day progressed into evening, Nick was starting to get uptight. We were still filming, and he had a Yankee game to get to. As the sun started to set, his agitation was on full display as he made sure everyone knew what his priority was, and it wasn’t giving his best performance to this TV episode. As the sun went down, so did Nick’s patience for doing things professionally as the clock crept to about an hour before gametime. He did the only thing a man of his caliber can do. He stormed off set without finishing his scenes. And took with him, mine and probably others, income and opportunity.

The powers that be of Third Watch were not thrilled with his behavior. They squashed the whole 9 episode arc. They did one more episode a few weeks later with a few minutes of this story interwoven briefly with other story lines. I was brought back for one more day for one throw away scene sitting at a table in the Cafe for continuity. Nick wasn’t even there as they placed another actor in there. And I guess they got one more scene out of him somewhere to nip the whole thing in the bud and wrap up the story, and that was that.

What’s the moral of this story? I have no fucking clue. I got to go back to raising my kids by bartending and scrapping for acting crumbs, and he got to go on and book 50 more jobs for years because he’s John Turturro’s brother. And the Yankees even won a legendary historic game that night to pour even more salt in my wounds. Life can be shitty sometimes. But you keep on going, and live to talk about it another day. That’s exactly what I’m doing here.

That being said… Fuck Nick Turturro. Fucking asshole.

“Forget it, Jake. It's Chinatown" - Joe Mantell - CHINATOWN

Once upon a time, I was the youngest Head High School Football Coach in New York State at 25 years old. And I was good at it, even though it was a fall back career choice for me. That all ended in chaos and lies caused by the ex-wife in the small upstate New York town that I was now living and working in. Focused on raising my kids now, and in a new relationship with an amazing woman that I have had the privilege of calling my wife for the last 25 years, I was able to recalibrate. The flexibility I needed to be available to my two small children, but also needing the income to match what I just gave up meant one thing. Bartending. Which I loved. That flexibility also gave me time to pursue things for myself. I went head first back into acting classes, driving the hour south a few days a week from smallville upstate back to my roots in NYC. A year later, I was in the mix as an actor in the industry, auditioning regularly, and occasionally booking jobs.