I have a big, long episode [in Full Circle] with Calista [Flockhart], and then my character actually carries out through a lot of it because he was a cop investigating this crime. But it is almost hard to remember, even though it wasn't that long ago. We shot it so fast. We literally shot that whole episode in one day.
There was not an episode [on Perception] that didn't deal with some form of mental illness, either my own, or I would be the first to notice if a defendant did a certain thing that perhaps he was suffering from this. And so we got to do some really outspoken stuff for what was otherwise a crime-solving show. And it was just a really good team.
Rachael Leigh Cook was my leading lady. She was awesome. We loved the show [Perception ]. Again, it was more of a TNT show, because there were crimes that got solved, which [going] back five years ago, was a mandate. But there was something innovative about the mental illness side of it.
Every actor has periods of their life that are a little less busy than others, and that was just a time when I needed that. And to be back on a sitcom stage, with Julia [ Louis-Dreyfus], was really, really fun.
Andy Ackerman directed the episodes that I was doing, and he directed a lot of Seinfeld [episodes]. And that was great.
Seinfeld [show] had been so huge for me. It was one of those things where I discovered Seinfeld really early and was making sure everyone I knew was watching it. I would tape it on VHS and show it to people that hadn't seen the show yet.
I had run into Kari Lizer at an airport, I think, and she said, "Would you come on the show [ The New Adventures Of Old Christine]?" And I said, "God. Absolutely."
[Trust Me] was TNT, and they were really supportive of the show, but in the end they just didn't feel it was their audience. I never really understood why we didn't get a longer run at it, because it was Griffin Dunne and Monica Potter. Just a really strong cast.
Whenever I see Tom [ Cavanagh] - we're good friends - we just mourn that we didn't get a longer shot.
I was playing this sort of asshole actor [in The Jenny McCarthy Show]. And we shot the pilot, and it was a guaranteed go. It was going to be 24 [episodes] on the air. No questions from NBC. And we shot the pilot, and I was in Toronto doing a movie, and I got a call saying they cut the character, that I was off the show.
In the '97 pilot season [of Will & Grace ], I got the male lead on The Jenny McCarthy Show.
[Townies] was a great springboard, obviously, because Jenna [Elfman] went from that to Dharma & Greg, and a few years later, Lauren [Graham] went to Gilmore Girls.
The three main leads [in Townies] were Lauren [ Graham] and Jenna [Elfman] and Molly [Ringwald], and then Ron Livingston was on it as well. There was a lot of people to write funny stuff for.
[Townies] was a huge cast. It was a bit ungainly, I think with 12 regular characters they had to keep writing for.
The thing you realize pretty quickly, though, is that being in front of an audience whose job it is to laugh is a big pressure if the writing is not hilarious.
I had a couple of decent laughs on Townies, but for the most part, delivering a joke that you just know is not funny is hard.
I grew up on M*A*S*H and All In The Family and Cheers. And then around this time, this would have been '95, '96, I was so into Friends and Mad About You, the idea of being on a sitcom became a very real thing that I wanted. It was not so much a relief. It was really exciting. It's an amazing thing to be in front of an audience.
As much as I loved [Al] Pacino and [Robert] De Niro and wanted to be a dramatic actor, I also grew up on sitcoms.
They're such different things [Townies and Lonesome Dove]. I certainly love them both. Certainly Lonesome Dove would be way hard now, because, I mean, back then I wasn't married.
I did five episodes of Townies as Jenna Elfman's boyfriend. I was a guest star, but it was the first time I really got to play laughs in front of a sitcom audience.
I'd done a pilot [of Townies] with Caroline Rhea [Pride & Joy] that didn't go anywhere.
When we started the show [Lonesome Dove], Suzanne De Passe - who had done the original miniseries and still owned the property and was turning it into this series - she brought in a lot of old friends - Diahann Carroll and Billy Dee Williams and Dennis Weaver. And we had an interesting collection off the top of these old seasoned actors. Billy Dee was lovely and iconic.
That was my big break [Lonesome Dove]. My first real kind of adult role on something really well-written. It was a spin-off of the miniseries, and I played Col. Mosby, a very dangerous, Southern colonel in post-Civil War, wandering the West.
Back then, all the networks were still making a movie a week, virtually. So I did five of them that year. So it was just a nonstop... '92 was a great, nonstop ride in Vancouver.
I did The Commish and an episode of Neon Rider, and then I got the series called Street Justice, which I ended up doing about 18 episodes of.
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