Crystal Lake native to star in ABC's 'Missing'

Nick Eversman was failing his classes at McHenry County College when his mother took him to lunch.

"Do you want to act?" she asked him.
"Yeah, that's all I want to do," he told her.

“This is the time to do it,” she said.

Within a few weeks, he had moved to Chicago to study acting at Act One Studios and perform at Second City. In the summer of 2008, he moved to Los Angeles.

Numerous acting gigs later, the 26-year-old Crystal Lake native is starring alongside Ashley Judd as her son in the upcoming television show “Missing,” which premieres 7 p.m. Thursday on ABC.

Landing the part has changed everything for Eversman. It was a dream come true.

“I’ve always wanted to do this, but that made it really seem like this is what I do. This is my job,” he said. “This isn’t just a fun hobby or an afterschool thing or anything like that. I never really realized it had become my career until recently.”

For his parents, Dave and Donna Eversman of Crystal Lake, life has become “surreal.” And not just because of Nick.

His brother, 27-year-old Matt, has become an award-winning chef with plans to open his own Southeast-Asian style restaurant in Chicago. It’ll have Vietnamese, Filipino and Malaysian flavors “presented in a more modern, American way,” he said.

This, after an attempt to study aerospace engineering at Iowa State University. Matt eventually dropped out at age 23 to go to culinary school.

The brothers both say they put their parents through some stressful times.

But Donna Eversman doesn’t want to hear it.

“They both need to stop talking about those hard times,” she said. “They’re both very creative people that didn’t go the standard path.

“It wasn’t what was in the cards for them. We’re just thrilled they’ve both found their passions. It brings a lot of wonderful things along with it, whether it’s conventional or not.”

Are the parents proud?

“You could say that,” she said with a laugh.

They’re proud not only of their sons’ latest successes, but of the men they’ve become.

A close family, the Eversmans always had one thing: the support of one another.

Nick calls his parents his biggest fan.

“They know more than my own PR team does,” he said.

“As much as I’m really excited to be doing this, I wouldn’t be here without the community I grew up in and the never-ending support I’ve gotten along the way. ...

“I just never stopped, and no one around me ever said I couldn’t. They all said, ‘It might take awhile and this might not be the right time.’ But no one ever said, ‘You can’t.’ There were a few people who did, and I don’t remember their names.”

He does remember the names of mentors, such as Jeff King, the music teacher at South Elementary School in Crystal Lake, and Ben Stoner, an English teacher and director at Crystal Lake South High School.

He’s kept in touch with both, who recognized his talent early on.

“He just always shared the passion I had for performance in theater,” King said. “He was always the lead in the musicals I did.”

King teared up when he saw the preview for “Missing” at a movie theater. Nick had called King after he earned the part. “You’re the first person I had to call after my parents,” he told him. “It was all because of you.”

“It’s so validating as a teacher,” King said.

Both Nick and Stoner talked about the fact that Nick was only about 4-foot-8-inches tall back in high school, and how that might have prevented him from getting bigger parts back then.

“He was so tiny,” Stoner remembered. “The precise thing that held him back in high school is the exact thing that is benefitting him in L.A. ...

“He always had a really natural delivery.”

For the “Missing” role, Eversman said, he actually auditioned twice, once before a haircut and once after. The first time they told him they didn’t like his looks.

A few months later, he went back with short hair. A last-minute casting, he learned he’d won the part the day before he left for Prague for five months to film 10 episodes of the series.

“I ran into my bathroom and just kind of collapsed on the floor,” he said. “I needed to feel like some cool tile or something to wake myself up. I was pinching myself, but I was starting to create huge bruises because I wasn’t believing this. It was everything I’d worked for.”

His successes, oddly enough, have paralleled his brother’s.

The day Nick walked the red carpet for the premiere of the “Cinema Verite,” Matt won the Breakout Chef of the Year award from Time Out Chicago in 2011.

When Nick flew out to film “Missing,” Matt was approached about opening his own business.

“These wonderful things happen to us, and they just happen at the same time,” Nick said. “It’s not about rivalry. We’re both just incredibly proud of each other.”

“What’s the one thing similar between the two of us? It’s our parents,” Matt said. “A lot of credit has to go to our parents.”