It was a surprise to Southold resident and vintage truck enthusiast Nick Antonucci when his classic car insurance, Hagerty, reached out to tap one of his trucks for a period television show.
The company requested pictures of his restored 1960 F-100 to send to producers from popular comedy-drama “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel,” who are in the process of shooting the show’s fourth season. Show representatives liked it enough that they asked for a few more photos, then finally, he said, “three producers on the show said all right, we want Antonucci’s truck.”
And fans of the show will get the chance to see the vehicle in an upcoming episode of the Amazon series.
Mr. Antonucci has been fascinated with trucks since he was a child. Nowadays, he’s graduated from building models to restoring full-scale vehicles. He found the 1960 F-100 in Ohio “about five and a half years” ago. It was “in rough condition,” but he saw potential.
“I like to try to restore them to the original stock look of the truck … what you may see when you walk into the showroom for this truck in 1960, what it would look like if you rolled it out of the parking lot — that’s what I strive for,” Mr. Antonucci said.
He also has a 1988 Ford F-150 that he “loves to death,” and he’s in the process of restoring a 1950 Chevy half-ton pickup truck in his garage.
Although Mr. Antonucci was paid for the F-100’s cameo in “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel,” he did it for the experience. “I’ve never watched the filming of a show like this,” he said.
He left home a little before 4:30 a.m. in late April to get to the set in Old Westbury by 6:30. The commute might be an hour and a half for a modern car, but Mr. Antonucci’s vintage truck doesn’t go faster than 55 mph. Plus, he lost some parts on the way.
“I’m driving on the expressway … and there was a pothole the size of the Grand Canyon. I couldn’t turn left. I couldn’t turn right. And I just said my prayers, hit it and, sure enough, my exhaust system … dropped right there,” he said. Much of his commission for the car’s appearance in the show is going into repairs.
Mr. Antonucci arrived while the film crew was setting up. After positioning his vehicle, he stuck around on set. He ran into actress Marin Hinkle (Rose Weissman), “a very nice woman” — although they “didn’t really get to talk to one another” — and at one point, stepped in to help an actor driving a vintage Rolls Royce who didn’t know how to use a stick-shift on the column. One of his biggest revelations from the experience, however, is that film sets are “super boring.”
“My truck was full of bales of hay,” Mr. Antonucci recalled. “When they stopped shooting, I didn’t want to wait for the folks that work there to take the hay out. I just started taking it out myself and helping on the set. Because I would have been there forever.”
He would only agree to provide his truck for another cameo if the set were much closer to home. But he exchanged numbers with some truckers and met “a lot of nice folks” while he was there.
“Now, when I read the credits, it’s meaningful,” he said. “It really takes a lot to produce a show like this.”
Season 4 of “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel” doesn’t have an official release date yet, but Mr. Antonucci’s car is expected to appear in episode 5.
Be the first to comment