McKean

But these days the description fits McKean, 77, and Odenkirk, 62, in real life as they take the stage, along with Kieran Culkin and Bill Burr, in “Glengarry Glen Ross,” David Mamet’s profane play about real estate salesmen whose souls are being ground to dust by the eternal chase for dollars.

McKean has regularly graced the stage in recent decades, appearing in works by everyone from John Waters to Harold Pinter to William Shakespeare.

After less than a week of previews for his Broadway debut, he sounds a bit dazzled by the ease with which McKean and Culkin, another experienced theater actor, inhabit the stage: Odenkirk calls the pair Broadway actors while describing himself as a “nonsense actor.”

And that, McKean points out, is a rarefied world.

“It’s fun to be a part of once, but I’m an interloper as I always am, so it’s not easy,” Odenkirk says, explaining that he doesn’t expect to return … unless, he jokes, they do a Broadway version of “Brian’s Song” with McKean in the Billy Dee Williams role.