Neal Justin: Tony Shalhoub dishes about playing a Minnesotan in 'Flamin' Hot'

Tony Shalhoub grew up in Green Bay, where the Vikings are mortal enemies. But that didn't deter him from playing one of the most successful business executives to ever hail from Minnesota.

In "Flamin' Hot," now streaming on Hulu and Disney Plus, the five-time Emmy winner portrays the late Roger Enrico, a Chisholm native who became CEO of PepsiCo Inc. The film, directed by Eva Longoria, is an inspirational comedy about a Mexican American janitor, Richard Montañez (Jesse Garcia), who takes credit for inventing Frito-Lay's Flamin' Hot Cheetos when Enrico was the boss.

The facts of the film are in dispute (a 2021 Los Angeles Times investigation found lots of holes in Montañez's story), but it's pretty safe to assume that Shalhoub had a ball.

In Shalhoub's favorite scene, Enrico samples some test versions of the spicy concoction, then reacts like he just rolled out of bed and stepped on a cactus. Even more hilarious is his wig. It might come of use again if Shalhoub ever wants to play Casey Kasem.

"That's the hair I always dreamed of having as a kid," he joked during a recent phone conversation from his home in New York.

Shalhoub, 69, only spent three days on the shoot, but he still did considerable research on Enrico, who died in 2016, discovering in the process that the executive also served as chairman for DreamWorks Animation SKG Inc.

The character references his hometown only once, but it's one of the film's more memorable moments. He's telling Montañez how much they're alike, sharing how he grew up in a small Minnesota town with "dreams bigger than that place could contain."

Shalhoub previously worked with two of the state's most celebrated dreamers. He appeared in the Coen brothers' "Barton Fink" (1991) and "The Man Who Wasn't There" (2001).

"They brought that Midwestern thing to the set," he said. "They felt like the guys I went to school with, just easygoing, accessible and with a great sense of humor. They really listen to people. Their sets are not run like a dictatorship. They're egoless."

Neither of those movies were blockbusters, although "Fink" has earned a cult following over the decades. The same could be said for 1999's "Galaxy Quest," the sci-fi comedy in which Shalhoub plays a C-list actor reluctantly drawn into an alien war.

"That one has had long legs," Shalhoub said.

But the actor is most beloved for his TV roles.

He just concluded a five-season run of "The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel" in which he played worrywart Abe Weissman, who slowly comes to respect his daughter's comedic gifts.

"That was a great, great gig," said Shalhoub, who won an Emmy for the role. "It harks back to the movies of the '40s, the kind Rosalind Russell did, with rapid-fire dialogue. You're not getting tied up in the psychological nature of the characters like you do with some material where everything seems so precious. You just went for it."

And then there's his signature character: Adrian Monk, the detective whose brilliance is often overshadowed by his phobias. Shalhoub, who picked up three Emmys during the show's 2002-09 run, just wrapped up shooting a "Monk" reunion movie for Peacock.

It was easier than he expected to slip back into a character who couldn't be more different from Enrico.

"I started thinking about that line Glenn Frey had after the Eagles got back together. He said, 'For the record, we never broke up. We just took a 14-year vacation,'" said Shalhoub. "That's what it reminded me of. Our band was back together."