Todd Joseph Miller, commonly known as TJ Miller is an American comedian and actor. He has worked in several Hollywood projects as an actor and a voice actor. The 42-year-old comedian recently revealed how his brain condition made it hard for him to work normal hours.
TJ Miller Opens Up About His Brain Condition
In an interview with Drinkin’ Bros Studios podcast, Miller revealed how he had brain surgery in 2010 for an Arterial Venous Malformation (AVM) due to a malformation in his brain. He explained how he had a haemorrhage while he was filming for Yogi Bear 3D in New Zealand.
“So, I had this hemorrhage because my brain is unstable and luckily I had a bleed, two seizures, and then I went to the hospital.”
“They took [malformation] out of my brain and so now I take this medication from having seizures, strokes, and aneurysms. Obviously, two of those are okay [and] the other one’s not great. So a seizure and aneurysm are fine because you either die or don’t die. But a stroke…”
TJ Miller has worked in several well-known movies and shows throughout his career such as Deadpool (2016), Deadpool 2 (2018), Transformers: Age of Extinction (2014), and Silicon Valley, among others. He has also done voice acting for movies such as How To Train Your Dragon, Big Hero 6, The Emoji Movie, Gravity Falls, and Yogi Bear 3D.
He further added that he’s also been on medication for mania. While talking about how he got a bad reputation in Hollywood, TJ Miller stated that “people couldn’t understand” his condition.
“What happened was, I was working at a speed that people didn’t really understand but could profit from in Hollywood. I never really talked a lot about being brain damaged or as my cognitive remediation neuropsychologist would say, “You know there are challenges.””
The Deadpool actor continued to explain that while the doctors has “sort of fixed” the damage, his level of mania would be attributed to bipolar disorder.
“So, you know, later I would sort of find out that this speed [of work] was just, I just thought I didn’t need to sleep more than four hours I thought that I could work for nine hours straight and that was just fun for me.”
Speaking about his reputation in the industry, TJ Miller went on to explain how his work routine was so packed that he would often sleep in between scenes and get back to work during lunchtime. While working on Silicon Valley, Miller would wake up at 5-6 AM, get to work, wrap up shooting, then do stand-up till midnight, and write material till 2 am. This routine would cause TJ Miller to take naps in between his shootings which gave people around the wrong idea of him.
“What happened was, people thought I was a drug addict because that’s not how most people work.”
Miller who played the role of Weasel in the first two Deadpool movies will not be a part of the third instalment. Last year, in an interview with Adam Carolla, TJ Miller expressed that he doesn’t want to work with Ryan Reynolds because he was mean to him.
“We had a really weird moment on ‘Deadpool’ where he said, ‘Let’s do one more take.’ And then as the character, he was horrifically mean to me as if I’m Weasel. So he was like, ‘You know what’s great about you, Weasel? You’re not the star, but you do just enough exposition so that it’s funny, and then we can leave and get back to the real movie.'”
“Would I work with him again? No, I would not work with him again,”
