Actor Bill Kelly
A chance fax announcement that Bill Kelly noticed at his radio station job in Florida back in the early 2000’s advertised that the Florida State University (FSU) Film School would be holding open auditions for student films has led to a career that spans almost 20 years and includes appearances in over 50 television and film projects.
Mr. Kelly told me in a recent interview, “I made it a point to go audition and got booked pretty quickly. I ended up doing about 30 student films which gave me the opportunity to learn the process of filmmaking.”
Kelly now appears as Washington DC Police Captain, Tony Mallory, in the new NBC hit crime drama series, Found. According to the National Missing and Unidentified Persons (NamUS) database, which is funded by the U.S. Department of Justice, more than 600,000 people go missing annually. The one-hour weekly show focuses on protagonist Gabi Mosely and her crisis management team at the fictional agency, Mosely & Associates, who use state of the art technology and keen observation skills to find forgotten people. During the first episode, which aired on October 3, viewers find out that Gabi was kidnapped as a young teen and spent more than one year in captivity, and now makes it her purpose to find the missing who are sometimes overlooked, such as people of color.
Mosely, played as an adult by actress Shanola Hampton, often runs afoul of the law because of her unorthodox methods and frequently argues with Kelly’s Captain Mallory. Found completed filming before the 2023 WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes and aired its first season of 13 episodes from October 3, 2023 to the season finale that was broadcast last week, on Tuesday, January 16, 2024.
Appearing in four episodes in the first season, Kelly can be seen in these following installments of Found: S1-E1 – Pilot Episode – Aired on October 3, 2023; S1 – E5 – Missing While Undocumented – Aired on October 31, 2023; S1-E9 – Missing While Scamming – Aired on November 28, 2023; and S1-E10 – Missing While Indoctrinated – Aired on December 5, 2023 all on NBC.
The full first season of Found is now available on the streaming service Peacock. On November 29, 2023, NBC Universal announced that Found has been renewed for a second season that will have 22 episodes. This week it was also announced that Found is a 55th NAACP Image Awards nominee for Outstanding Drama Series. In addition, Found is a 35th GLAAD Media Awards Nominee for Outstanding New TV Series.
Bill Kelly (left) along with Brett Dalton as Detective Mark Trent and Shanola Hampton as Gabi Mosely in Found, Pilot Episode. Photo courtesy of NBCUniversal Media, LLC
Found is my new favorite drama television show and it was created by Nkechi Okoro Carroll, who goes by NK. I recently participated in a Zoom seminar where NK, along with one of the female writers, explained that they use a mostly female crew in the production of Found. In addition, Director/Producer DeMane Davis, @DeManeDavis, would regularly live tweet on X during the new episodes, which allows fans of the show to watch along and interact with other followers of the television series.
I like Found so much that I wrote a blog about the series that was published on January 1 in this post. Each episode is exciting, suspenseful and nerve-racking!
A native of Richmond, Kentucky, Kelly tells me that he “grew up as a normal kid of the 60s/70s playing outside and riding bikes all day. My first taste of acting was as Jed Clampett in our Senior play, The Beverly Hillbillies.” After attending Eastern Kentucky University, Kelly moved to Florida and continued to work in radio. When asked about making the transition from radio to acting, Kelly states that: “Radio is an extension of acting as you are always fun and lively no matter what is going on in your personal life when the mic is off. My boss use to tell us, ‘Hang your emotions on the door before you come into the studio to do your show’ so you could put on a good act.”
Some of his notable roles include: Sheriff Jackson in the 2022 feature film, Where the Crawdads Sing; Clay Grunwald in the TV series, Bloodline; and Detective Hobbs in the third season of True Detective, starring two-time Academy Award winning actor Mahershala Ali and filmed entirely in Northwest Arkansas.
When asked how he got involved in Found, Kelly states, “My agent called me about a new show called Found that would be shooting soon and that I was asked to audition for the role of “Mallory”. I got a call a couple of weeks later saying that I had gotten the part! I was thrilled, to say the least!”
He ended the interview by saying, “I have a couple of things that I did right before the writers and actors strikes happened. One was a small role in a new series for Ava DuVernay and the other was for The Corp based on the book, The Pink Marine.”
For more information about Mr. Kelly, you can visit his Internet Movie Database (IMDb) page or his website.