NYLON Nineteen
The star of ‘Dave’ talks loofahs, his St‑Germain obsession, and shares his preteen nickname turned AIM screename.
Travis Bennett might be getting a parking ticket. He mutters about this while digging into a protein breakfast at Go Get Em Tiger in Los Angeles on a recent April morning he’s enjoying with “his boys.”
“I’m about to get a ticket,” he tells NYLON. “It's OK. I'll have to live like that.”
He’s unbothered by the ticket, just like he’s unbothered by the last internet rabbit hole he went down — an attempt to figure out what the squeaky sound his breaks were making meant. The actor has been successful since he was a teenager, when Odd Future, the rap collective he served as a DJ and hypeman for, catapulted to fame over a decade ago. But now, Bennett has even more reason to be unbothered: He’s enjoying life as the breakout star of Dave, the hit FX show helmed by Dave Burd that dramatizes his real-life rise to fame as the rapper Lil Dicky, which returned for its third season on April 5 and airs weekly on FX.
Bennett, formerly known as Yung Taco, was best known for years as the goofball in Odd Future. Even though he’s past his Taco days, it’s still impossible for Bennett’s goofiness to not come out in his roles. That’s not because he is necessarily like his character Elz, Dave’s childhood friend from Philadelphia who’s pursuing his dream of becoming a music producer, but because he can’t help but be himself in every situation.
“For the most part, I'm in every scene, feeling like it's all brand new and all real life,” he says. “It doesn't feel like acting to me half the f*cking time, in general.”
Bennett is experiencing the show alongside all of us as it airs each Wednesday night, especially because he doesn’t remember what happened this season, plotwise.
“It sounds crazy, but when I shoot things, I'll remove myself from it and then I can't even lock it. I don't know what's going on. I watched the episodes last night and it was all new to me. It was like I don't remember everything. It's all a blur, but I had a great time doing it,” he says. “I love that the show comes out weekly, but I also hate that it comes out weekly, you know? Because being a fan of shows like Succession and Game of Thrones, that weekly sh*t is bulls*it. That breaks my heart. That stresses me out. I get to therapy and I'm like, ‘Dude, I don't know what's going happen, dude!’”
NYLON caught up with Bennett ahead of the release of the third episode of Dave Season 3 as he took on the NYLON Nineteen, telling us about his dream music festival lineup, his old AIM screen name, and his St‑Germain obsession.
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