Joe Dinicol has had quite an illustrious career for a 30-year-old actor. From The Virgin Suicides to The LA Complex, he has enjoyed featured roles in projects ranging from Scott Pilgrim vs. the World to Diary of the Dead, and now Joe is excited to be part of Betas, the intriguing new Amazon show that goes one step further than The Social Network. “Betas is about a group of people who start this social networking app in the hopes of making it big and making their stamp on Silicon Valley,” Joe says. “They are struggling to deal with the social world in a very technological way.”
Joe plays Trey, one of four friends who hope they’ve found the next big thing in tech. “Trey is sort of the face or front man of the group,” he specifies, also mentioning how this role was something new for him. “I like how driven he is. I’ve played a lot of hesitant awkward people, but this guy is quite confident – he has a very clear idea of what he wants. To play someone with that kind of engine is a nice change of pace.”
But that isn’t to say Trey doesn’t have his geeky or slightly insecure side. In fact, Joe has had experience playing the ‘cool geek’, here and in the stalled series LA Complex as well. “It’s a big part of who a lot of us are,” Joe says. “A balance of the façade of keeping things all together that masks our insecurities. I think we all have things about our personalities that we deem sort of ‘nerdy’ that we cover up with a cool façade.”
The set of Betas is a fun one. “We really lucked out all around. Even the crew, they were like, ‘This is fun for us!’ Everyone really vibes well and are really behind the show.” As for a favorite scene, Joe has to go with the Kickstarter parody. “There’s one scene in the second episode where we do a founders video for investors with a self-important monologue that was fun to shoot,” he remembers.
Looking to the future, Joe is currently enjoying some downtime after the “intense” Betas shoot, and is considering some theater options. When asked which role in history he would most like to have played, his answer was twofold: Josh in The West Wing, or Max Fischer in Rushmore, “which my favorite movie of all time!”