Early life and education
Fuller was born in San Francisco and grew up in Stockton, California, graduating from Lincoln High School in Stockton in 1971. He went on to earn a degree at the University of California, Berkeley (class of 1976). After graduating he moved to Los Angeles, where he spent roughly nine years selling real estate in the Pacific Palisades while simultaneously working the Los Angeles theater circuit at night. That dual life gave him both financial stability and a deepening stage craft that eventually made a film career possible.2
Career
Fuller's professional screen work dates to 1984. He spent the mid-1980s building a theater reputation in Los Angeles, which culminated in the 1986 US premiere of Steven Berkoff's dark comedy Kvetch in West Los Angeles. The production was a critical success and he reprised the role Off-Broadway in 1987.1
Screen work began arriving in earnest around the same time as Ghostbusters II. Fuller played Mr. Brell, a television executive orchestrating a violent spectacle, in No Holds Barred (1989). Three years later he brought a comic stiffness to the role of Russell Finley, the television director at the center of Wayne's World (1992), one of the decade's biggest comedies. In 2000 he appeared as Sheriff Burke in Scary Movie. He played a real-life figure in Paul Schrader's Auto Focus (2002), portraying Werner Klemperer. Later dramatic work includes a role in Ray (2004) and a turn as Pacific Bell Retirement Fund Executive Walter Ribbon in The Pursuit of Happyness (2006).3
Television became Fuller's most consistent platform. He appeared in the NBC drama Wildside (six episodes, 1985) and the ABC sitcom Manhattan Love Story (eleven episodes, 2014). His two signature television roles both arrived in 2009. He joined the USA Network mystery-comedy Psych as Coroner Woody Strode, a deadpan forensic pathologist whose macabre cheerfulness became one of the show's most popular recurring elements. Fuller appeared in 33 episodes between 2009 and 2014,1 then reprised Woody in Psych: The Movie (2017), Psych 2: Lassie Come Home (2020), and Psych 3: This Is Gus (2021),3 making Woody one of the longest-running threads in that franchise. In the same year he began a recurring arc on Supernatural as Zachariah, a senior angel whose smooth bureaucratic exterior conceals genuine cruelty. Fuller appeared in eight episodes across multiple seasons of Supernatural, from 2009 through 2019.1
Ghostbusters
Ghostbusters II (1989)
Fuller's path to Ghostbusters II began with the success of Kvetch. Harold Ramis's then-wife saw the production multiple times and brought it to Ramis's attention. Ramis saw the show himself and later arranged for Fuller to read for a part with director Ivan Reitman.2 The audition scene involved a desk catching fire, and the role ultimately went to Gilbert Gottfried. Separately, negotiations to bring back Walter Peck actor William Atherton for the sequel broke down. Reitman remembered Fuller from the earlier audition and offered him the role of Jack Hardemeyer, Mayor Lenny's principal aide, without further negotiation.4
Ghostbusters II was among Fuller's first significant film jobs. He flew to New York for the first time, arriving in winter, and was taken directly to the set of the Manhattan Museum of Art exterior. Just before his opening scene with Bill Murray, Fuller was quietly told that if Murray did not warm to him he would be replaced. Fuller's nerves drove him to overact; Murray, being diplomatic, noted that he had brought "a lot of energy" to it.4
Ivan Reitman pulled Fuller aside and gave him direction he would later recall as transformative: "do less than you ever thought it was possible to do." The next take landed, and Fuller kept the job.4
Fuller filmed over the course of roughly two months. A scene requiring coverage over his left shoulder was planned but the camera operator concluded it would not work; the scene was abandoned, though Fuller was paid for the additional month regardless.
Role and character. Hardemeyer is Mayor Lenny's image-conscious aide, managing the mayor's political positioning as he eyes a gubernatorial campaign. He works to keep the Ghostbusters suppressed: when the team threatens to go public with their findings about Psychomagnotheric Slime, Hardemeyer arranges for them to be wrongly committed to Parkview Psychiatric Hospital, calculating that their removal from public life will insulate the mayor from embarrassment. The gambit collapses spectacularly. With the Ghostbusters locked away, supernatural chaos sweeps New York unchecked, and Mayor Lenny fires Hardemeyer on the spot upon learning what he did.5
Screen appearances. Hardemeyer appears in the following chapters of the film: "World of the Psychic," "Their Day in Court," "Two in the Box," "Scaring the Straights," "Tenth Level of Hell," and "World is Safe Again."5 Three scenes involving Hardemeyer were filmed but cut: "Peter's Concern," "Jack Buys It," and "Statue of Liberty Back in Place."
IDW Comics
Hardemeyer's story continued in IDW Publishing's Ghostbusters comics, set after the events of the film. Having been blackballed following the mayoral crisis and left homeless, Hardemeyer breaks into a condemned property tied to the Shandor estate and makes an alliance with the ghosts residing there, arming them with electron-powered variants of the Ghostbusters' own equipment engineered to leave human victims comatose. Winston Zeddemore ultimately unravels the scheme and rescues his teammates.
Ghostheads (2016)
Fuller appears in the documentary Ghostheads (2016), which chronicles the global Ghostbusters fan community. His interview footage was filmed outside Ghost Corps headquarters on the Sony lot, and outtakes from those sessions were included on the Blu-ray release as a dedicated bonus segment titled "Fuller Moments" (2:47).6
