LEWISTON — Queried at random halfway through the interview, Matt Delamater’s face alights with shared fan-boy camaraderie at which Brad Pitt character he’d most like to have a drink with. 

“‘Fight Club,’ definitely,” Delamater said, grinning. 

The question is not an icebreaker — Delamater has been chatting easily at Forage Market over a baguette — but the reaction is evidence that his belief that despite his ascending acting career, host on Maine Brew TV and most recently a role on an upcoming NBC series that’s taken him to New York City, he has every reason to keep his feet on the ground.

“I always say: ‘no delusions of grandeur.’ I’m passionate about this thing, let’s try it, see what happens, and be grateful for the opportunity. You never know. There’s so much you can’t control,” Delamater said.  

As “Russell” on the NBC show “Odyssey,” Delamater makes his first prime-time television appearance as a political activist in the murky world of corporate espionage, military secrets and international conspiracies. The show follows the dangerous life of a female soldier who stumbles onto a devastating secret of a major cover-up, and the efforts to connect the dots. It premiers at 10 p.m. April 5.

“I think that global corruption is always timely,” he said. 

Delamater’s roots stretch into rural Western Maine. The son of a former banker, Delamater, 34, of Portland, grew up in Oxford playing sports at the high school. Wife Emily Delamater is another native, whose mother, Ann Carter, runs Carter’s X-C Ski Center in Oxford and Bethel.

Always slightly awed by acting, it took him time to make it to the stage. But his first performance in “The Music Man” for the Oxford Hills Music and Performing Arts Association got him hooked. 

“I loved it, getting to go to rehearsal every day,” he said. “It never seemed like work.”  

He doesn’t make a living from acting — few in Maine do, he said. He doubles, or depending on the count, triples as a mortgage loan officer when he’s not wearing his hat as a photographer. 

As the host of Local Brew TV, which he calls a “passion project,” he goes inside microbreweries and shepherds along their narratives. The idea is to be more storyteller than an actor with a persona, less connoisseur and more average Joe. 

“It’s a labor of love,” he said. “Beer right now has a rock star element to it, a sexy culture to it, because it’s fun, people enjoy it and the tasting-room environment is cool. But at the end of the day, people put a lot of work into making a good, consistent product.” 

A few years ago, he said, he made the decision to pursue acting more steadily, changing companies and his day job for the freedom to travel to auditions in Boston.

His role in the NBC series is small — “I’m sure if the producers were reading this, they’d say, ‘Who is Matt Delamater?'” — but it marks positive returns on a concerted change he made a few years ago to delve into acting.

“I was familiar with the film process but … mostly I was trying to act like I knew what I was doing, trying not to walk into doors or (thinking), ‘That’s Jim True-Frost from (the TV show) ‘The Wire.’ Don’t ask for his autograph,” he joked.  

While driven toward goals, he said he’s grateful to simply have a role, whatever its size. 

“I always want to be the worst actor in the room,” he said. “I want to learn at every opportunity. I take (every production) as a master class, because I don’t have time to go back to school or take classes.”

In local performances, Delamater has had roles in the horror movie “Hanover House,” the comedy “Richard3” and most recently, alongside household names such as Jason Sudeikis, in the upcoming “Tumbledown,” set in Maine and filmed in Massachusetts.  

“I consider acting an adventure,” he said. “I get to go on this crazy trip and then come back to reality.”