Jeff Hiller stopped to clarify what he meant when he said that he had been an actor before being cast in the HBO dramatic comedy “Somebody Somewhere.”

He hadn’t been a prop, of course — although that was the first word that came to mind. It’s just that his roles did not always reach the level of having names. In “30 Rock” he played one character named Stewart. Another was called simply Hotel Clerk.

So when the star of “Somebody Somewhere,” Bridget Everett, emailed Hiller asking him to audition for the role of Joel, her character’s best friend and a member of the main cast, of course the answer was yes.

“It’s not the same when you actually get to dig into a character and really explore,” Hiller, 49, said over onion rings last week at Betty on Manhattan’s Lower East Side (“Dimes Square adjacent,” as he put it). “So this is the first time for that.”

It also, last month, earned him his first Emmy nomination, for his work in the third and final season. The ensuing weeks have been a whirlwind of people from his past and present, telling him they’re proud, along with a string of media engagements.

He joked that it was too early (3:30 p.m.) for him to have a cocktail. Anyway he had to go home and get ready for a photo shoot that would include his dog, YvonneDeCarlo.

In a sense, playing Joel could not have been a more perfect “first time,” Hiller said. When viewers initially meet him, Joel is a quiet co-worker at the grading center where Everett’s character, Sam, works after moving back to her hometown, Manhattan, Kan. Joel remembers Sam from the high school show choir. Sam doesn’t remember him. “It’s all good,” Joel says. “A lot of people don’t remember me.”

Even from the initial script read, Hiller found the parallels between his life and Joel’s to be plentiful, even uncanny. Joel is a religious middle-aged gay man who leads a secret nighttime cabaret at his local church, disguised as “choir practice.”

Hiller grew up in San Antonio, where attending church — and singing in an actual church choir — was an integral part of his week, too. He attended a religious college in a town of less than 40,000 people, and he wanted to be a pastor. But he knew that because he was gay, his Evangelical Lutheran church would not have allowed it. (He made clear that the prohibition no longer applies.)

“I grew up in the church; it was really, like, the only safe space for me,” he said, adding: “But also, if I’m being completely honest, you got to perform once a week.”

The script had more parallels: Joel makes a vision board of push-pinned pictures of the Eiffel Tower, a Vitamix and a family with six kids. Hiller had made his own board before he was cast (“because Oprah said to do it,” he said, “and I do what Oprah says”). He also aspired to owning a Vitamix and put one on his board.

Then there was the car Joel drives, a Buick LeSabre, a model Hiller owned after college. Joel gets a stress rash. Hiller once had one too.

“That was weird,” he said. “That was really weird.”

Hiller gave up on the idea of seminary and after college moved to Denver, where he did social work in H.I.V. prevention and youth homelessness. He set his sights on New York, where his averred plan was to pursue a master’s degree in social work at New York University — “I was too embarrassed to admit that I wanted to be an actor,” he said — and moved here in 2001, fully intending to enroll. He even made a deposit.

He never started the program.

Over the next two decades in New York he worked temp jobs and side gigs to pay the rent while picking up roles in television and theater. He met the artist Neil Goldberg in 2008, and they married and moved to the Lower East Side in 2013. Along the way, he got to know Everett, who was doing cabaret at Joe’s Pub. He eventually performed there with her sometimes.

“Oh my god, Bridget Everett knows who I am!” Hiller recalled thinking at the time.

By the time Hiller turned 40, the biggest credit on his résumé was playing a computer tech on “Law & Order,” he said, laughing. (This one had a name, at least: Stan.) In his journal he still dreamed about starring in a larger role — specifically in a half-hour comedy on a major network like HBO, one that required some real acting. At the same time, he wondered if it was time to move on.

“I kept being like, ‘Is this embarrassing that I’m still following this dream?’” he said. “That was really the only time when I was like, ‘Should I give up?’ Other than that, I just kept going.”

Then Everett called about “Somebody Somewhere.”

For the first two seasons of production, Hiller lived in an Airbnb with Everett and another cast member, Murray Hill, who plays Fred Rococo, a quiet soil scientist. The house, just outside Chicago, where the series was filmed, looked like a “Real Housewives reject,” Hiller said, complete with three bedrooms, three bathrooms and three full kitchens.

“Every single day we were like, ‘Can you believe this is happening?’” he said of his work on set. “It wasn’t ever like, ugh, I don’t want to work tonight. It was always a thrill.”

Hiller was on the phone with his sister, who remains in Texas, when his agent called with the Emmy news. He had read lists of potential nominees but never saw his own name, so he didn’t take the call. Then his manager called, and Hiller’s first thought was that he was in trouble, not guessing that the news was good.

He screamed. He called his sister back and they screamed together. The next call was to Goldberg, who also screamed.

“None of us were expecting it,” he said. “It was just so completely shocking.”

When the Emmy ceremony takes place on Sept. 14, Hiller has asked Goldberg, whose birthday is the next day, to accompany him. Hiller laughed, saying that as a present, maybe they would get to meet Pedro Pascal. The ceremony will be a celebration for Hiller, regardless.

“I made this happen; I manifested it,” he said. “But also I know so many other people who also do that and haven’t had this, and so I recognize I got lucky. Show business is not fair.”