Actor Paddy Wilkins returns home to Nebraska with acclaimed short film 'Piano Man' (2024)

Paddy Wilkins doesn’t play piano, but his nephew MilesWilkins is a jazz pianist. So, together, they made Paddy into “Piano Man,” the star of an acclaimed short film that will bring Paddy back to Nebraska this weekend.

The movie will be screened at the Benson Film Festival Sunday, giving Paddy Wilkins, a Lincoln Pius X graduate who studied theater at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, an opportunity to return to the city and state he still calls home.

At the center of every scene in the 20-minute movie, Paddy Wilkins plays the title character, a jazz pianist who has retreated from fame and public appearances and is working as a piano tuner, stopping in homes and venues across Los Angeles to do his work.

That story is rooted in an experience Miles Wilkins, a Lincoln East High School graduate, had in his Harlem apartment, where a piano tuner rode up on a bike, quickly and silently tuned the piano and disappeared back onto the New York streets.

Paddy Wilkins had shared the story withfriend Jay Zaretsky, who wrote and directed the movie.

Miles Wilkins was brought in to compose the music and he also played a lot of the music live for the shoot in L.A.

"He did a lot of the shots of the hands, stuff like that. I did play a little, he taught me more than I thought I could actually do,” Paddy Wilkins said.

In “Piano Man,” Wilkins plays a character who encounters a scam piano sale and finds himself pushed to perform again. He did so convincingly enough that he won the Best Performance Award at last year’s Red Rose International Film Festival where Zaretsky also took the award for Best Director.

“That was totally unexpected,” Wilkins said. “I didn't even know it was something that I was up for. So, I have a trophy on my fireplace. It’s a conversation starterthat doesn't have to do with cancer.”

Diagnosed with stage 4 colon cancer in 2017, Wilkins underwent surgeries and had chemo and radiation that put the cancer into remission.

Over theyears, there've been little reoccurrences that have been setbacks, but ultimately cancer has given Wilkins a different lens on life, he said.

"I feel really fortunate to be here, and it’s made me kind of fall headlong into the arts in a different way. It’s kind of like ‘what are you going to do with your time now that you have a chance again?’ It changes you and it spills into what kind of artist I’m becoming.”

Wilkins has been on that artistic journey since he left Lincoln for New York, where he attended the National Shakespeare Conservatory. In 1994, he landed a role in a production by the Shakespeare Center of Los Angeles and moved to Southern California, where he worked in radio for several years along with film, theater and television.

Then, tragedy sent him back home.

His first wife died and he moved back to Lincoln with his daughter, who was 2½ at the time. They lived here for two years.

"It was a really special time for us. My daughter, she’s 21 now, and she’s nostalgic for Lincoln, she wants to go back all the time. ... That's where we feel like we're from and this is where we feel like we live.”

Returning to Los Angeles, Wilkins found a niche in the world of television commercials, appearing in ads for Apple, Geico, Dr. Pepper, Nike, Budweiser, Hyundai, American Express, Peloton, Google, M&Ms and many more.

“I was a single dad and the commercials really were great for me because I was able to spend a lot of time with my daughter,” he said. “I didn't have to kind of clock in and do a nine to five and it was sort of perfect for the situation we found ourselves in.

“Now, I've got a couple more great, beautiful kids. And I'm sort of on this path where I’m more focused on acting. I seem to be more into the craft. I’m just really immersed in it, back in class. I’m always working on things and auditioning. I’m fortunate to have this kind of craft because I can keep aging and keep working.”

In addition to acting, Wilkins is now working on an episodic TV show in hopes of it being picked up by a network or streaming outlet. It's ablack comedy about a bakery in a crematorium owned by a group of Mafia women.

In another hometown connection, Wilkins’ partner in the writing and producing is Steve Lewis, who went to Lincoln East and acted in the UNL theater program before embarking on his professional career.

“I've known him since I don't even remember when, I think I met him in high school,” Wilkins said. “We all worked at either Pickles or Twisters (Records). I was a Pickles guy, he was a Twisters guy. I think that’s when we met."

He said the pair have treated the show like a job, showing up to work every day with each other.

“We're shopping to different networks, taking meetings and all that stuff that you have to do to get a show made,” he said.

But he’ll set that aside this weekend when he brings “Piano Man” to the festival, where it will screen at 11:35 a.m. Sunday at the Benson Theatre, 6054 Maple St.

He expects the restored theater will contain plenty of his Lincoln friends and family when he appears on the screen in what he acknowledges is a big event for him and his nephew, who won't be able to be there, but who is also an important part of the film.

“It's really big because it’s bringing something home where people can actually see it in a theater, which is where it was intended to be seen, on a big screen,” Wilkins said.

"It feels really great to be able to come home and go ‘this is what I do, what I’ve been up to.'”