He doesn’t let anything get past him

ATO ESSANDOH manages to make quite an impression in his three short scenes in the new Uma Thurman-Meryl Streep comedy, “Prime,” which opens Oct. 28.

As Damien, the officious doorman at a newly divorced woman’s (Thurman) New York City apartment building, Essandoh guards the front desk with the tenacity of a Buckingham Palace beefeater, especially when her much younger suitor (Bryan Greenberg) arrives for a date.

“It’s a cool challenge -- you are showing up on set, and obviously Uma Thurman and Bryan Greenberg have been doing the movie for a few weeks and they know the tone of the movie,” says the engaging 33-year-old actor. “You have to be inserted really quickly. So the challenge is getting up to speed immediately on your own.”

Thankfully, he says, writer-director Ben Younger was more than willing to let him improvise, and his elaborate costume pulled him into character.

“The uniform accentuated my stature and how I should walk and carry myself,” says Essandoh, who is 6 foot 3. “It was sort of an ‘Officer and a Gentleman’ kind of thing.”

Essandoh is also a playwright -- his first work, “Black Thang,” was published in the anthology “Plays and Playwrights 2003” and staged off-off Broadway.

“I am always running into people who have picked monologues from the play and are using them for auditions,” he says. “It’s really cool. Apparently they do get jobs. I am looking for my cut.”