A Tribute to Anne Beatts and her creation, Square Pegs

Back in the days when I was editing the “Icons” (classic TV) section of CBS’ Watch! magazine, I was like a kid in a candy store.  So many of the shows I had grown up adoring had been on CBS – and now, I had license to get in touch with any of those shows’ creators and/or stars, to write tributes of all my favorites, one by one.

In February of 2008, I was thrilled to get to interview Anne Beatts, to pay tribute to her 1982-83 sitcom Square Pegs, short-lived but influential on my generation of actors and writers – and everyone else adolescent at the time.  [I must admit, my writing partner Bonnie Datt and I were so molded by Square Pegs that we even wrote its characters into a spec script we wrote for Sex and the City – melding the two worlds and winning a few screenwriting awards in the process.]  The piece ran in the magazine’s May/June 2008 issue; you can check it out here: 

But Anne, who died this past Wednesday, April 7 at age 74, was way too interesting to be confined to a mere page’s worth of memories.  And so below, here is the full scope of her memories not only of creating the beloved sitcom which brought Sarah Jessica Parker to national attention, but also as a pioneering “girl writer” on Saturday Night Live.

 

 

The Square Pegs Origin Story

Square Pegs was autobiographical.  What happened was that I had been on Saturday Night Live for the first five years of that as a writer.  And then the upheaval happened.  Lorne Michaels was no longer doing the show.  Everybody left at one time.  And I had an agent, an older gentleman named Frank Cooper. He had been Frank Sinatra’s first agent – he was of that generation.  He was trying to get me some other work.  And he said, “I guess you were probably very popular when you were in high school.”  And I said, “Oh, Frank, are you kidding?  I wasn’t very popular at all!  I was a square peg when I was in high school!”  And he said, “Why don’t you write about that?”

Frank had the idea he could sell a high school show to CBS.  There wasn’t a show like that at the time.  I guess there had been Welcome Back, Kotter and Happy Days, but at the time there wasn’t a show of that nature.  And he knew that CBS was wanting to skew younger -- which was a little bit of an uphill battle.  So we went in, and I had never pitched a sitcom.  I had never written a sitcom, or spec script, or had anything to do with the word “sitcom” -- and it kind of stuck in my throat a little bit.

I went in to CBS and had thought out what my life had been like in high school, me and my best friend.  So Square Pegs was based on us; I was the Sarah Jessica Parker character, the skinny one with glasses, and she was the short one with braces.  I harkened back to us, when we were in Somers High School in the ‘60s, in Somers, New York.

I wasn’t a big sitcom watcher.  So in my concept, I harkened back to [the 1959-63 CBS sitcom The Many Loves of] Dobie Gillis.  That was a model of a high school show that I really liked.  And then when I went in to pitch, guess who was in the room?  Dobie Gillis!  Because Dwayne Hickman was an executive at CBS at this point.  So here I go in to have a meeting with Kim LeMasters who was the CBS development exec at the time, and in the room – the way there’s always 3 or 4 people in the room – was Dobie himself!  I thought at the time that this was either good or bad omen.  I guess it proved good.  Because there I was, talking how much I loved Dobie Gillis and how my show could be like that.  That was the pitch.

My agent had set up for us to meet at NBC the next day.  I was at the Chateau Marmont [hotel], getting dressed for the meeting, and the phone rang.  It was my agent and the executives from CBS.  They had some concerns and questions about the show.  And basically it was, what about sex, drugs and rock and roll?  This was 1981, I guess, because I was on SNL from ’75 to ’80. So this was the fall of ‘81. Were these girls having sex?  This was pre-Dawson’s Creek; you did not want the answer to be yes.  You wanted the answer to be no, because they wanted to do something that was basically an 8 o’clock show.  And I said no, that they weren’t– which was perfectly true.  I wasn’t telling them just what they wanted to hear, but what my vision of the show was.

[My main characters] aspired to those things, but were nowhere near reaching them.  And I quoted another archetype, another movie that was important for me, which was The World of Henry Orient.  About a little girl chasing Peter Sellers around New York -- which I later learned was actually based on the real experience of the author, with Oscar Levant, of all people.  The original book was written by Nunnally Johnson’s daughter [Nora], and she had had for some bizarre reason an insane crush on Oscar Levant, so that was why there was this concert pianist character, played by Sellers, who they were crazy in love with.

I said that’s sort of the level of sexuality these [Square Pegs] girls are operating on.  So the CBS executives got it, and they bought the show on the phone.  Sad to say, I never had the meeting with NBC, because that actually would have been a better network, probably.  Hindsight being 20/20, maybe that would have kept the show on the air longer, because they were still struggling.  It turned out it was actually one of Brandon Tartikoff’s favorite shows.  He tried to buy it as a summer replacement show, but they had already unfortunately syndicated it to USA, so that deal didn’t happen.

Cheers was on NBC, and they had lower ratings than we did that year.  But [Tartikoff] believed in that show, and kept it on the air.  Unfortunately we were on the “Tiffany Network,” and were messing with CBS’ ratings.  This in the day when there were only three networks.  We had a 23 share.  Now if you had a 23 share, you would be the queen of Hollywood.  More people saw Square Pegs than ever watched an episode of Everybody Loves Raymond, and Square Pegs was a flop.  That’s the ironic part about it!

We did special material for the Square Pegs DVD, which comes out on May 13 [2008], and I think it will do well, although that depends upon if they promote it or not.  But it might do quite well, because people who were fans might buy it now for their kids.  Because it’s been 25 years.  So I think maybe the people who were 13-year-old girls are moms now, and might say it’s great for their kids.  That’s what I’m hoping, anyway.  There could be potentially a new generation of fans.  There’s still a tremendous amount of web presence for the show, all these web sites and things like that, and places where you can download episode guides and songs.  There’s a tremendous amount of fan stuff that’s out there.

 

The Launch of SJP, and Her New Friend, Amy Linker

We tried to tie the DVD to coincide with the Sex and the City movie.  We were able to get Sarah Jessica Parker on all the extras – actually all the cast members, except Merritt Butrick, who died [in 1989] and Jon Caliri, who was unavailable.  [SJP] had done Annie, but as she herself has said, she was not the first Annie [on Broadway]; she was like Annie #3 in the production, and she wasn’t Andrea McArdle.  And so really, that had not launched her career; so yeah, we did kind of discover her.  The person who was really responsible for that was Eve Brandstein -- she was the casting director for Norman Lear -- who also could be credited for discovering George Clooney and so many others.  She put a lot of people on shows.

When I finally wrote the pilot script – it was kind of amazing because it was the first sitcom ever I had anything to do with – I wrote the script, rewrote the script, it went to pilot, and then series.  I was like “Oh, I think I’ll do this [for a living.]”  Little did I know, it was like getting struck by lightning to get that to happen.

When the show was going to go to pilot, every production company in Hollywood was sniffing around, because I had this deal and a show for which I’d just written the script completely on my own.  So I was the most popular person in Hollywood at that point.  People were sending me flowers and champagne – it was amazing.  On the strength of Mary Kay Place’s recommendation, I went with Norman’s company.  She said “If you want to have your creative vision serviced…”  That’s how Eve and I first met.  Eve and Kim Friedman, who directed the pilot, and I went on a cross-country mission to find kids for this show.  And one of the big things about Tandem, as Norman’s company was called then, was that they were willing to cast age appropriately.  Because everybody else wanted [actors] over 18.  Like in 90210; they didn’t want the trouble of working with actual, real kids.  And so that was another reason that really sold me on [Tandem] as a production company, because they did work with kids.  With The Facts of Life and so on, they were accustomed to it, and would cast age appropriately.

Sarah Jessica Parker was the first person that I ever saw for the role of Patty.  Eve brought her in.  We were in New York, and she read, and Eve was like, “Isn’t she great!”  And I was like “Yes… but she’s too pretty.” Eve had a pair of sunglasses, knocked out the lenses, and put them on her, and said, “Now have her read.”  I still wasn’t convinced.  We made her come back like 8 times to audition.  You know how it is – do you take the first apartment you see?

Obviously she was the best person -- and with the Lauren character, we had similar issues because we were meeting these chubby girls.  And we knew we could put on fake braces.  But we were still reading girls who were chunky, and couldn’t find anybody.  Then I had the idea that we could put her in a fat suit.  Because I remembered when we were doing the bees on SNL, and we had these little padded body suits for the bee characters.  In 1982, the whole thing of prosthetics wasn’t nearly as advanced as now.  But still I thought, “Why can’t we do that?”  So poor Amy Linker had to wear fake braces and body padding and still deliver a performance.  Sarah had, of course, fake glasses, and as she said, she had to dress as an Appalachian child.  She got her revenge for that later!

 

Casting the Cool Kids

Literally, we went everywhere.  San Francisco, Atlanta, Boston, Chicago.  Jami Gertz was in Chicago, and she had kind of done local commercials.  Nothing really.  And Tracy Nelson was a funny thing, because she said to me when she auditioned, “You worked with my father.”  I was like “What?” and it turned out her dad was Ricky Nelson, who had been a host on SNL.  Which made me feel a lot older suddenly.  I got a few gray hairs there, I think.

So we did really do the Gone With the Wind talent search to get these people, the embodiment of the characters as I saw them.  One reason the show worked so well, I have to credit the casting.  John Huston used to say casting was everything, and I really have to say that it is.

 

A Slice of Real Life

I think [all the characters] were high school archetypes.  That may have changed, but I suspect not all that much.  There’s the student leader like Muffy, the king and queen like Vinnie and Jennifer.  And then Jennifer had to have a friend and confidante, and I really wanted to have the show be multiracial, so it was logical to me to have an African American girl [played by Claudette Wells].  Which also was groundbreaking; not since I, Spy had there been black and white friends.  And this was 1982!  So that was important to me that there be a person of color in the show.  As there had been back where I was; Somers was a predominantly white bedroom suburb, but there were Black kids in the school.

My friend does know that Lauren was based on her – and I think she’s flattered.  I had saved all the notes we wrote to each other when I was in high school.  The one issue was whether the show needed to be period or not, like The Wonder Years, which came later.  I really wanted it to be contemporary, because I wanted to be able to do jokes about Reagan and things like that, and be “of today.”  So I borrowed the daughter of a friend of mine and her friend, who were 14-year-old girls who went to private school in Manhattan, and lived in Soho.  So I thought of them as reasonably sophisticated.  I wanted to check that I wasn’t totally off.  I remember, I took them to lunch and said, “Is there anyone in your school who is doing this?”  And they said “Oh no, only the sluts!”  And I thought, “God, things have not changed.”

And then I asked them, “Who are your heroes?” and they said Che Guevara – they didn’t really know who he was but had a poster – and James Dean.  And then I was like “Okay, I can still write this.”  But then I tried to keep my ears open to current slang, and that’s how the Jennifer Valley Girl character came about.  And that was before the song “Valley Girl;” even though the show was on the air after the Moon Zappa song came out, we had shot the pilot before that.  That was something Tracy came up with.  I remember Tracy said – she was not conventionally the pretty girl -- that she was auditioning with all these girls more conventionally gorgeous.  And they were like, “You’re not here for the Jennifer character!”  They were mean to her.  And so she figured “I’m going to get this” – this fierce resolve.  Here were the girls who had been mean to her in high school!  She ended up doing a devastating take on people she had observed.

 

 The Music of Square Pegs

The music was another thing that was groundbreaking – this was pre-Miami Vice.  There really hadn’t been rock and roll on TV since Ricky Nelson.  It was very important to me that the music be part of their world.  Johnny Slash, the anomalous character, was the way the music came into the show.  If you want to talk archetypes, there’s always the strange kid.  And he said he was “left back and laid back.”  It’s like that line in Animal House:  “Six years of college down the drain.”

I was listening to the radio, and I was going to clubs in New York, and was hearing these [New Wave] groups.  What was interesting about The Waitresses -- my friend Lynn Goldsmith is a rock and roll photographer who just put a book out.  She had taken shots of all these iconic people, like Springsteen.  She was someone I turned to for music world connections.  She told me about The Waitresses, “the perfect group for your show.”  I was like “Okay, the Waitresses.”  And then [coincidentally] I was listening to a song on the radio, “I Know What Boys Like” – [and thought] “this is the perfect group for my show!”  I said, “I don’t know about the Waitresses, but I want the group who did this song!”  So we got them, brought them out [to L.A.] to be in the pilot, and also to write the theme song. 

When they had Square Pegs on Nick at Nite at one point, they had a sequence which thrilled me, where they had people in the street, singing theme songs -- and they had people singing the Square Pegs theme song.  So I was pretty pleased.  I worked with them [in writing] it – glasses, and cliques, and so on.  I was telling them what it should deal with.

Once we did the pilot, and then it was picked up by CBS, which was also quite an amazing thing, the market research for it was not good.  It said things like “These kids should be in an insane asylum, not a high school.  They’re disrespectful of adults.”  Cleverly, Kim LeMasters kept it under his hat, because luckily for me, he had been promoted up the ranks as the show had moved along, and had more power, and was a big proponent of the show.  And ultimately [CBS senior programs executive] Harvey Shephard also became very fond of it.  His daughter, Greer Shephard, went on to produce such shows as Popular, and was a big fan of the show.

At one point, for Muffy’s bat mitzvah, it had originally been booked to be The Clash, and they fell through.  And funny, to think that The Clash was going to be on Square Pegs.  When they fell through, we had the Boomtown Rats begging to be on the show.  They sent us a side of smoked salmon.  Meanwhile, Devo was also another possibility, and they were local.  So I had to call up CBS and ask them which.  Harvey called his daughter Greer and asked her – she was in high school at the time – and she picked Devo.  So Devo was on the show.  And then they tried to cancel, and I couldn’t find out why they were cancelling; and it turned out the head Devo guy had scheduled root canal for the same week.  I remember being on the phone with him saying, “Change your appointment – you have a contract!”

 

Square Pegs on the Air

When the pilot got picked up, I had to hire a writing staff.  That was another struggle, because I remember they made me hire Andy Borowitz.  They didn’t want to have a staff composed entirely of women.  I wanted women because I was writing about girls in high school, so it seemed the writers should be women.  So the staff was women, and Andy.  He was our token male.  We used to call him Tootsie Borowitz. 

M*A*S*H was the only other single-camera show on the air at the time.  Our [Director of Photography] was a guy who had worked on M*A*S*H.  He was about 70 or something.  Emil Oster.  People were not shooting single-cam because it is more expensive; but now, everything is single camera.  Obviously there will always be multi cam shows, because comedians like to perform in front of a live audience.  I teach sitcom at USC – I work for the writing division of the School of Cinema and Television, now called the School of Cinematic Arts because George Lucas gave them a bunch of money.  I’m an adjunct professor.  And almost all the shows I’m teaching are single-camera.  Entourage, Weeds, even Scrubs or 30 Rock.  So that was another issue.  And that was another reason why – when I was in this bidding war where people were wining and dining me and wanting me to pick their production company – one of the stipulations I had had was that I wanted the show to be single cam.

I had worked on commercial parodies on SNL and actual commercials in England, which is where I had first worked in TV: 30 millimeter film, sixty-second black-and-white TV commercials in the ‘60s in London.  So it was very important to me to do [Square Pegs] in single camera, because for me it was a reality element.  I felt it should be [shot] in a real high school.  And it was shot in a real, abandoned high school, in Norwalk, California.  It had been condemned for heating problems.  It was the school where they had shot Grease 2. 

The show was supposed to be set in upstate New York, outside of New York City – a la Somers.  But it was odd, because there ended up being a Valley Girl on the east coast – because she was a transfer student.  The reason we shot it in Norwalk was to find a school that looked like one of those WGA school buildings they built during the Depression on the East Coast.  There wasn’t that kind of school in Beverly Hills.  And so the exterior shot was actually a middle school that’s over on McCadden place in Hollywood, and the interiors were all at the school in Norwalk, which was great; we would never have been able to build those sets.  We had the full cafeteria, and an auditorium and theater – it was an amazing physical plant.

What was very lucky was there was a football strike.  Football was on another network, ABC, but it was lucky for us in terms of our competition.  We were on opposite Little House on the Prairie on NBC, so that was the real ratings competition, because obviously it was a similar audience.  I never wrote the show to be a kids’ show.  I didn’t realize that, that they would say “Is it an 8 o’clock show or a 10 o’clock show?”  To me it was a show.  It was meant to be for everybody.  It was sort of ghettoized by CBS in a way I never intended to happen.

[Mondays at 8PM] wasn’t a great night or a great time slot.  But because of the football strike, we were protected for a while.  Then they moved us to Wednesdays at 8:30, and that was the death of the show.  They said “We have great new show to give you as a lead in:  Zorro and Son.”  There wasn’t a lot of competition, but in a counter-programming move, NBC moved The A-Team up to 8 o’clock, and that was the end.  Suddenly we got a 12 share – still not so shabby in today’s terms, but then it was death.  I was in New York and called up to get the overnights, and the girl told me 12, and I knew pretty much that it was over.  And then she asked me for a job, and I wanted to go, “With timing like that, stay out of comedy.”

We got cancelled after 20 episodes.  It would have been nice to get 22 or 24, but we had 20.  We had a lot of support from the network.  We had a lot of support from CBS, but not from the production company.  That show was expensive for them, and the guy who was running it, who later went back to England, just never got the show and didn’t support it.  He actually left the company after that year, because he also had allowed them to cancel Archie Bunker’s Place on his watch, and it wasn’t taken very well.  

We were on at 8, so we were trying to start the night.  We didn’t have a hammock, a lead-in.  The only lead-in we ever got was Zorro and Son, and of course that was famous [as a disaster, lasting just five episodes].  The thing about it is that if right now, you had a show that every 13- to 16-year-old girl was watching, you’d have Gossip Girl.  And you’d be a big hit. 

But here's the big difference between our show and other teen shows, like Our So-Called Life.  Our show was a comedy.  And I think that is a big difference.  If the show had been kept on the air, it had the potential to be more successful than drippy shows about teenage angst.  Our show was based on the premise that someday you'll look back on all this and laugh.

Designing Women Reboot? If so, Annie Potts Wants In

PaleyFest's Young Sheldon panelists:
(back, l-r) creators Chuck Lorre and
Steve Molaro, moderator Jessica Radloff,
stars Montana Jordan, Annie Potts,
Zoe Perry, Lance Barber and
Jim Parsons, and (front)
Iain Armitage and Raegan Revord
March 21, 2018, The Dolby Theater, Hollywood
Photo by Michael Bulbenko for the Paley Center

Last night at Hollywood's Dolby Theater, the 35th Annual PaleyFest presented two related panels, featuring the creators and stars of both the 11th season sitcom megahit The Big Bang Theory, and its freshman prequel Young Sheldon, which in its debut season ranks as the top new show on TV.

As Young Sheldon stars Iain Armitage, Raegan Revord, Montana Jordan, Zoe Perry, Lance Barber and Jim Parsons also walked the blue carpet prior to the panel (expertly hosted by Glamour's Jessica Radloff), I was most excited to talk with Annie Potts, who of course had already portrayed one of the protypical Southern women on TV on the '80s-'90s CBS sitcom Designing Women, and now was playing a slightly older model as Memaw on Young Sheldon.

Ironically, Young Sheldon is set in the late '80s, when Designing Women was one of the sitcoms ruling CBS' airwaves.  During the panel, the cast was even asked if Raegan's character Missy, always parked in front of the TV, might end up watching Designing Women, but the show's creators, Steve Molaro and Chuck Lorre, and particularly Annie, think that might be too bizarre.

But clearly, with the return of Will & Grace and the impending returns of Roseanne and CBS' own Murphy Brown, the idea of somehow rebooting Designing Women is in the air.  In fact, when I asked Annie if she had any interest in a Designing Women reboot, she noted that someone earlier on the carpet had already asked the same thing. 

So, would Annie like to juggle her current role as Memaw with a reprise of her beloved Mary Jo Shively?  "Yes, I would," the actress immediately answered.  "I'd love to!  I don't know when I'd do it, but if Linda Bloodworth[-Thomason] wanted to write six episodes or something, that could be done during a hiatus period, yeah, I'd do that!  Because I think it's important. Those were strong characters, and we got to say stuff that women haven't been able to say since. I mean, we took on Donald Trump long ago!  We were speaking truth to power."

A Tribute to WKRP in Cincinnati creator Hugh Wilson (1943-2018), Part 2

Last week, the world lost another creator of classic TV when  the writer behind the beloved WKRP in Cincinnati, Hugh Wilson, died at age 74 in Virginia, where he had lived for over a decade.  Best known for executive producing WKRP’s 90 episodes, which gained popularity in syndication after its initial 1978-82 run, Wilson segued later into film, directing The First Wives Club and the first of the Police Academy movies.

Ten years ago, in the spring of 2008, I had the pleasure of conducting a long interview with Wilson for a WKRP story Watch! magazine.  Below is part 2, talking about the writing process and cancellation of WKRP and his follow-up, Frank's Place.

Must-Hear TV:  Once WKRP was on the air, I remember as a viewer having a hard time finding it, through many different time slots.  Did you feel that CBS supported the show?

Hugh Wilson:  That’s where the story changes.  I think everybody liked the show, but it went on the air and didn’t do well.  They took it off the air for “fine tuning.”  Frankly, I don’t know what fine tuning means.  Then or now.  There were some meetings – I don’t think any changes came out of it.  And then they put it back on the air.  They hung in with it, I think, because it got very good reviews.  The problem that for some reason we couldn’t get a stable time slot, and got moved all over the place.   When your own mother is calling you wanting to know when the show’s on, there’s something wrong.

But on the other hand, there’s an odd dividend to that.  When we went into syndication, a lot of people found the show for the first time.  WKRP was bigger in syndication success than any of the MTM shows.  And it certainly wasn’t in its first run on CBS.  I had a feeling that they liked the show but also didn’t love it, and didn’t hate it.  People are surprised that we were only on for four seasons.  We stayed on the air, but never really in a stable time slot.  So there were some hard feelings about that.

MHTV:  How did you find out that the show was cancelled?

HW:  I could kind of see it coming, but we weren’t allowed to write any kind of wrap up.  We were told it had to be a regular episode, because it was still under debate whether the show was going to get cancelled or not.  And then Grant [Tinker] got a call from Harvey Shepard who was running CBS at the time.  It became a choice whether they were going to keep us, or Alice.  So we were pretty confident it would be us, but it wasn’t – it was Alice.

MHTV:  What makes the show resonate this many years later?

HW:  I think the cast was the real deal.  Hell, I wrote or rewrote most of the scripts, but I would have to say myself that it was the cast.  I do think there was a tradition at MTM at that time to really try to write good characters.  Who not only get the laughs, but get a little deeper than that.  

I knew of Howard Hesseman from going way back.  He was a member of The Committee, which was like a Second City in San Francisco.  I had been watching him, had my eye on him.  He did a lot of guest shots on other shows.  Gordon Jump I saw on Soap.  He had kind of a recurring character, but he wasn’t a regular contractually.  Loni [Anderson] I just met – she hadn’t really been in town long from Minnesota.  Jan Smithers just came in to audition.  I was aware of Tim [Reid] because of the comedy routine he and a partner used to do on variety shows.  Frank Bonner and Gary Sandy were CBS favorites.  Gary had been on a Norman Lear show called All That Glitters.  And they liked him in that, so they were really pushing hard, and I was delighted to have him.  Richard Sanders I had never seen before.  After I met him, I looked at a tape of him – Richard had I think mainly been in dramas, a pretty serious actor, which surprised me, because I thought he was funnier than hell.

What happens is the writer creates the characters on paper and the actors come in and inhabit those.  So for a while, they’re following the script.  And then as the show moves on, pretty soon the writers are chasing the actors and taking their cues from them instead of them taking their cues from the script.  That’s a nice way of working, and we were lucky to have it that way.

One more actor I should mention:  Carol Bruce.  She wasn’t in the pilot.  A woman who used to be a famous actress was -- Sylvia Sidney.  And I think Sylvia kind of thought it was beneath her, so it was fun to switch it.  Carol was great.  You know at one point she was on the cover of Life magazine.  She was a wonderful song and dance woman.  I didn’t know that until I got to know her.

MHTV:  Were there any specific bits of business the actors brought to the characters?

HW:  It wasn’t specific lines or pieces of business.  Like Frank Bonner, playing Herb Tarlek.  Just the way he would stand, and the way he looked at Loni.  You know Loni doesn’t get credit for being as funny as she is – she’s a wonderful comic actress.  But one of the things that’s funny about her is she’s so strikingly good looking.  She made the IQ go down of every male character who walked into the room.  She made all the guys funny because they pretty much lost their cool the moment they saw her.  But Bonner lost it in the most wonderful way.  You realize at some point that when you start talking about Herb instead of Frank, like he’s in Cincinnati and he’s a real guy, that’s when you feel you’re writing well, that you’ve sort of bought the act yourself.

MHTV:  The WKRP ensemble included an African-American character – was that considered groundbreaking in 1978?

HW:  I hadn’t thought of that.  Frankly I hadn’t thought of the show as groundbreaking except I knew the music was a whole new deal.  Another thing I thought was setting us apart is something I wanted from the beginning, to really be a true ensemble.  Mary [Tyler Moore Show] was a wonderful ensemble, but they came in levels.  There was Mary and Lou Grant, and then the next level.  I was trying to keep it really egalitarian.  I didn’t always pull that off.  We were always saying, “Let’s do a show this week about this character.”  And the actors, if they were pretty light one week, they wouldn’t get their noses out of joint because they knew we’d be getting around to them, to one where their character would be really heavy.

There have been some shows where the behind-the-scenes ambience was just gruesome.  We’d tape on Friday, and we’d be walking out by 9PM.  But we would hear stories of other shows, with everybody yelling and screaming and fighting.  That is really not my style, and hopefully I had an impact on the people I hired.  I think you’ve got to be careful.  If you have a show and area so blessed that it’s successful, you could be with these people for years.

MHTV:  Were you involved in the 1990s WKRP reboot?

HW:  No.  I was honored that the show was being redone, but at the same time I didn’t much like the idea.  I thought what’s done is done.  By then I had moved to Virginia.  Whereas I could get involved in a movie, in order to do television you have to live [in Los Angeles].  I just never thought it was a good idea, but bless their hearts.

MHTV:  The show and its characters had such a distinctive look, too.

HW:  From the start, Tim said, “Look, I just don’t want to be the typical black guy,” and Loni said, “I don’t want to be the typical bimbo.”  Thank God Tim got involved in his wardrobe a little bit, because I needed help there.  I knew how Herb would dress, because at the time all I’d have to do is go through the Atlanta airport, and it would be wall-to-wall polyester leisure suits.  But just within our four years, his clothes got so out of fashion that the costume people finally had to go to golf course pro shops to find that crap.  So much changed in those four years, when there was a lot going on.  Dr. Johnny Fever, he’s got a serious problem with disco.  And I think disco was kind of over by the time we finished.

MHTV:  You gave Venus Flytrap a back story – real name Gordon Simms, and being a former teacher – that was a lot like Sting’s in real life.  Was that intentional?

HW:  I’d like to tell you I was.  The name “Venus Flytrap” just got into my head, and a lot of people said, “That’s a woman’s name.”  But then Tim Reid said, “I think that’s a good name,” and I don’t think anyone ever complained.

MHTV:  Do you still hear from fans about WKRP?

HW:  It’s amazing to me today how people will come up and start quoting lines to me.  Around here [in Virginia] people will ask, “What do you do?” and I say, “Nothing.”  Then they’ll say, “What did you do?”  I’ll start telling them, and they think I’m lying.  And then they say, “My God, WKRP!” and they start telling me about the show – I don’t have to say a word.

MHTV:  Who are the fans, most often?

HW:  It’s men and women, and they’re late 30s and older.  I teach a television writing course at the University of Virginia.  And the kids say to me – this happens every damn time – after class:  “Hey, Mr. Wilson, my parents wanted me to tell you how much they loved WKRP.”

MHTV:  Does the show have a legacy?  What did it change in television?

HW:  I don’t think it changed anything.  You know, Barney Miller was a show I admired, and I loved the idea of the workplace rather than the home.  The formula usually was office/home/office/home.  If you look at any of the MTM shows that’s how it would go.  I liked the idea of making the family the office.  I don’t know thought that that was new ground.  I thought we broke good ground, but I don’t know if we broke new ground.

I went on to do Frank’s Place, and was breaking all kinds of ground there.  I had directed a movie or two by then, and when I went back to television, I shot it one-camera.  I didn’t have much of a budget but tried to make it look like a feature.  I dumped the laugh track.  I got an Emmy out of it.  It all got hung on the same washline as a dramedy, because another show came out that was just like it.  But in fact I had no idea anybody was doing what I was doing.

The way Frank’s Place came about was, Cajun food was the rage, and everyone at the Ivy was eating blackened something or other.  They said, “You’re a Southerner… Cajun food….”  I went down to New Orleans a couple of times with Tim Reid.  We really researched that pretty thoroughly and came back with something that was not what [Hollywood] had in mind.  I was more over in the black part of town, not on Bourbon St., and was talking more about a Creole cuisine than Cajun.  I made it almost entirely black.  I thought it would be funny to have the white guy as the 6^th man.  There were two white people in the regular cast.  That was amazing.  I hired one of the regulars, just a guy I met on an airplane, because I couldn’t find any actors who could do the specific New Orleans accent, to please my Southern ear.  It’s called a Ninth Ward or Eighth Ward accent.  So I hired this guy and bless CBS’ heart, they said,  “Wait a minute, one of the regulars you’re sending over for us to read, he’s never acted before in his life?”  His name is Don Yesso.  And the story was so amazing, Johnny Carson scooped him up immediately, so it worked well for us.

MHTV:  It sounds like by the time of Frank’s Place, you had some leeway.  But was there anything the network wouldn’t let you do on WKRP?

HW:  You won’t believe this based on what’s on today, but they were very, very careful about “hell”s and “damn”s.  And there could be no suggestion of drugs.  There could be something in the playing, not in any overt dialogue.  [Howard Hesseman] would always kind of play it like some kind of drug flashback, and he did talk about having flashbacks.  But we had written a scene once where he stepped out of the janitor’s closet fanning the air, right into the arms of the big guy, and that went right out.  That wasn’t even going to be discussed.  Clearly he must have had a joint in there.  I knew that wasn’t going to get in.  I sometimes think I put that in so I could get something else.  You do that – you kind of collect the chips – I caved on this and caved on that, so please let me have such and such.  It was such a different time in terms of that.

A Tribute to WKRP in Cincinnati creator Hugh Wilson (1943-2018), Part 1

Last week, the world lost another creator of classic TV when  the writer behind the beloved WKRP in Cincinnati, Hugh Wilson, died at age 74 in Virginia, where he had lived for over a decade.  Best known for executive producing WKRP’s 90 episodes, which gained popularity in syndication after its initial 1978-82 run, Wilson segued later into film, directing The First Wives Club and the first of the Police Academy movies.

Ten years ago, in the spring of 2008, I had the pleasure of conducting a long interview with Wilson for a WKRP story Watch! magazine.  Below is part 1, talking about Wilson’s transition into television, and the birth of his classic hit.

Must-Hear TV:  I’ve heard you mention in interviews that you didn’t initially set out to be in television. How did a Southern boy like you end up in Hollywood?

Hugh Wilson:  I’m from Florida, and went to the University of Florida.  After that, I went to New York and worked up north for a little bit, and then to Atlanta.  In New York, there weren’t many Southerners.  I think it kind of helped me, because it was like, “What’s this guy doing here?”  You get a little bit of a brand.  That was good.

I had been since college in the advertising business.  I was in Atlanta at an agency that no longer exists called Burton Campbell, which not big, but a very good creative agency.  I was the creative director there.  Then I left and got a job at MTM Productions, where I was able to sell some scripts to the Bob Newhart Show.  That was my first credit.  It was a great honor and was also a thrill.  I liked the show so much, and it was a big national icon of a hit.  And also Suzanne Pleshette, rest her lovely soul, and Bob Newhart were just such wonderful nice people.

MHTV:  What was it like, landing that first TV job?

HW:  Back then, MTM and Norman Lear and Bud Yorkin’s company [Tandem Productions] were sort of the Harvard and Yale of the independent producers.  Both of them had so many comedies on the air.  So it was a great break for me to get a job at MTM.  Two wonderful writers, Tom Patchett and Jay Tarses, allowed me to write on the Newhart show and then for the next two seasons, I was a staff writer on the short-lived Tony Randall Show, which was also CBS.  And then I created WKRP.  So I was very lucky, because I had only been in Hollywood for two and a half years before I suddenly found myself with a national show on network television.

I had no idea at the time what a lovely situation I was in.  It was only later in my career, when I saw how much pushing and shoving can go on, that I realized that Grant Tinker had created the most pleasant environment a writer could ever ask for.  I think what had something to do with that was that Jim Brooks was such an exceptional talent.  He and Allan Burns had created the Mary Tyler Moore Show, and of course Jim went on to become an Academy Award-winning director.  But I think Grant came to really rely on writers thanks to Jim and Allan.

MHTV:  What inspired WKRP?  Did you have a background in radio or in music?

HW:  No, but when I was in the advertising business in Atlanta, there was a bar there called Harrison’s that for some reason was kind of a media bar.  All the radio sales reps and disc jockeys and advertising people hung out there, and I knew a lot of people in radio, and I thought they were an interesting group.  When I had the idea, when I was asked by Grant, “Do you have any pilot ideas?”, I thought of a rock and roll station that was down on its luck.  And when CBS said, “Yeah, let’s look into that,” I went back to Atlanta, and my friends at the Top 40 rock station there let me come in and hang out for a couple of weeks.

I’m a big music fan, but I myself have no musical talent at all.  If I sing, people say, “You shouldn’t really do that.”  But that was part of the great fun of it.  When we were starting out, they said, “You know, it’s too expensive to pay for all the rights to al this music.”  Let’s do like they do on Happy Days, some soundalikes.  But I was pretty adamant that it had to be the real music.  So it was interesting – all the MTM shows had been shot on film, but we found that if we shot it on videotape, we could get a different kind of [music licensing] deal, like a variety show deal for the music.

At the time, film and videotape were pretty segregated:  “That’s a film lot” or “That’s a tape lot.”  So we became the first MTM show to leave the CBS Radford lot, and we went over to KTLA and were a videotape show just so we could afford the music.  We eventually moved back to the Radford lot in Studio City – that’s where MTM had most of their stuff.

MHTV:  Music was so important to WKRP.  Who chose the music for each episode?

HW:  I was picking the music, but then Howard Hesseman and Tim Reid, who were playing the DJs, asked if they could pick their own music.  I said yes, because they had excellent taste.  So unless I absolutely need a song for the story, they picked most of the music.  But it was very interesting because record labels started treating us almost like a radio station.  They would send me all this free stuff – it was wonderful.   I’d get standup posters, which I’d put in the set.  Once they saw I’d put posters on national television, I was just inundated with PR.

MHTV:  And why Cincinnati, of all places?  Why not Atlanta, if that’s what you knew?

HW:  I thought the show should be set in kind of not a big market.  That’s one reason; plus, I kind of wanted it somewhere in flyover country.   But I mainly chose the name by saying, “WKRP in Buffalo,” “WKRP in…” “Cincinnati” seemed to just roll off the tongue.  I had never been there in my life.  I’d like to tell you there was more thought in choosing it.  And then we came to really love Cincinnati, because when we went there with the cast, they treated us as if we were one of them.  They particularly liked Loni [Anderson].

MHTV:  Why CBS?  And what was the network’s initial reaction to the show?

HW:  MTM had a very special relationship with CBS, and so they pretty much took their shows there.  Later, Grant Tinker ended up taking the job as CEO at NBC.  But Rhoda, Mary and Bob were all CBS shows.  Also, CBS was, at least in my opinion, the “Tiffany Network.”  I think that was in everybody’s mind in those days.  CBS was first class, so people tried for that.

And at CBS, one of the reasons I thought I caught a break on WKRP is that, I came to discover, a lot of the people in the development department and those who had a say in new shows, had a background in radio, and so they had a proprietary love for it.  Immediately they would say, “When I was in radio…” and they’d start pitching me bits and pieces and funny things that happened to them.

In fact, the most famous show we did was a Thanksgiving show, “Turkeys Away,” where we threw turkeys out of a helicopter.  And I had gotten that from a station manager in Dallas.  He was fired and couldn’t get a job for a year after that.   I had asked him, “Can you think of any remarkable things?”  And in five minutes, he told me the whole thing.  I thought “Oh my God, this is going to be so much fun,” and realized he had just given me my Emmy.  And that episode all pretty much all came from this fellow’s lips.

Coming soon:  part 2:  the four-season life and death of WKRP in Cincinnati

Our President Is Now Officially a Cartoon

Although I'm hesitant to expose my psyche to any additional Trump-themed material, I do have to say I love the animated version of 45 on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, as well as Colbert's impression of the cretin as he reads his tweets on air (complete with "dot dot dot").

Now, Showtime is debuting a half-hour animated comedy starring you-know-who, Our Cartoon President, to debut on Sunday, February 11 at 8 PM Eastern/Pacific (this time, with actor Jeff Bergman as the voice of Trump.)  But if you'd like to get a sneak peek even sooner, check out the link below, to the show's official trailer -- and stay tuned to view a sneak peek of the pilot on-demand, on January 28 -- two days prior to what will certainly be a nail-biting State of the Union address.

SHOWTIME^® RELEASES OFFICIAL TRAILER FOR OUR CARTOON PRESIDENT

PREMIERING ON SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 11 AT 8 PMET/PT

Early Preview Of The Premiere Will Be Available Across Platforms

And On Demand On Sunday, January 28, Ahead Of State of The Union

LOS ANGELES, CA – January 6, 2018 – SHOWTIME released the official trailer for the new animated series OUR CARTOON PRESIDENT, executive produced by multiple Emmy^® winner Stephen Colbert, Chris Licht (The Late Show with Stephen Colbert) and showrunner R.J. Fried. The half-hour parody series, debuting on Sunday, February 11 at 8 p.m. ET/PT, follows the tru-ish misadventures of the 45^th President of the United States, Donald J. Trump, and his merry band of advisors and family members. SHOWTIME will give viewers an early preview of the series, making the first episode of OUR CARTOON PRESIDENT available across multiple platforms online and On Demand on Sunday, January 28. 

To watch and share the trailer for OUR CARTOON PRESIDENT, go to:https://youtu.be/260mj1dmJhU.

The new 10-episode parody OUR CARTOON PRESIDENT examines the quintessentially Trumpian details of the presidency and his most important relationships, and no one is safe – from his close family and confidants to key political figures from both parties and members of the media. In this parallel cartoon universe, the Commander-in-Chief opens the White House doors for an “all access” look at a typical day in the life of the President of the United States. OUR CARTOON PRESIDENT is produced by CBS Television Studios and executive produced by Colbert, Licht and showrunner R.J. Fried. Tim Luecke will serve as lead animator and co-executive producer. Matt Lappin will serve as consulting producer. To learn more about OUR CARTOON PRESIDENT, follow@CartoonPres and join the conversation using #CartoonPresident.

  

SHOWTIME is currently available to subscribers via cable, DBS and telco providers, and as a stand-alone streaming service through Apple^®, Roku^®, Amazon, Google, Xbox One and Samsung. Consumers can also subscribe to SHOWTIME via Hulu, YouTube TV, Sling TV, DirecTV Now, Sony PlayStation^® Vue and Amazon Channels. The network’s authentication service, SHOWTIME ANYTIME, is available at no additional cost to SHOWTIME customers who subscribe to the network through participating providers. Subscribers can also watch on their computers at www.showtime.com andwww.showtimeanytime.com.

# # #

Young Sheldon to get at least one year older

It's no surprise that CBS would renew Young Sheldon, its top new comedy, and -- at last -- a show which excels in holding on to its huge lead-in audience delivered by its thematic cousin, The Big Bang Theory.

Still, it's great to get the good news this early -- often, CBS makes even obvious hit shows wait until closer to its May upfront presentation to hear the official good news -- that my favorite new broadcast show of the 2017-18 will continue into 2019 and beyond.

Below, CBS' official announcement.

Jan. 6, 2018

CBS PICKS UP THE #1 NEW COMEDY “YOUNG SHELDON”

FOR 2018-2019 BROADCAST SEASON

Most-Watched New Comedy on Any Network in 18 Years

CBS announced today that the hit freshman comedy YOUNG SHELDON is the Network’s first renewal for the 2018-2019 broadcast season.

“YOUNG SHELDON has made a huge impact on our schedule in the short time it’s been on the air,” said Kelly Kahl, President, CBS Entertainment. “While the show’s DNA is clearly rooted in THE BIG BANG THEORY, YOUNG SHELDON has staked out its own place in the TV universe with a unique creative tone, brilliant writing and a gifted multi-generational cast. We can’t wait to see Chuck, Steve, Jim and Todd’s vision for how the Cooper family deals with Sheldon growing a year older…and smarter.”

YOUNG SHELDON is the #1 new comedy in viewers (16.17m), adults 18-49 (3.3) and adults 25-54 (4.9), and is the #2 comedy in all of television (behind only THE BIG BANG THEORY). It has the best retention for any show ever out of THE BIG BANG THEORY and has the best delivery of any new comedy on any network since the 1999-2000 television season.

The half-hour, single-camera comedy series, which stars Iain Armitage, Zoe Perry, Lance Barber, Annie Potts, Raegan Revord, Montana Jordan and the voice of Jim Parsons, follows THE BIG BANG THEORY’S Sheldon Cooper (Armitage) at the age of 9, living with his family in east Texas and going to high school.

Chuck Lorre, Steven Molaro, Jim Parsons and Todd Spiewak serve as executive producers. YOUNG SHELDON is produced by Chuck Lorre Productions in association with Warner Bros. Television.

* * *

I'm So Glad We'll Have More Time Together

When The Carol Burnett Show first aired on CBS fifty years ago today, on September 11, 1967, few of us probably could imagine a date in 2017, way into the 21st Century, or the show's long-lasting impact.

Even Carol herself was just initially thinking of the show on a short-term basis -- because the show was actually an unintended result of a little-noticed clause in Burnett’s contract for The Garry Moore Show wherein CBS promised the musical comedy actress her own program.  But from such inauspicious beginnings, Burnett and her talented ensemble cast of Harvey Korman, Tim Conway, Vicki Lawrence and Lyle Waggoner soon became a hit, averaging 30 million viewers per week and ultimately winning 25 Emmy Awards.

And now, even though The Carol Burnett Show has been off the air for several generations, Burnett told me in a 2012 interview that she still gets mail "from teenagers -- even 11-year-olds -- who write me because they've seen individual sketches on YouTube.  They're the sweetest letters, saying 'We heard about this show from our parents' or 'our grandparents. We wish we could have been there at the beginning.'"

The timing of the 50th Anniversary celebration is part of a perfect Carol Burnett storm happening in 2017, reminiscent of the big year another then-octogenarian icon, Betty White, experienced in 2010.  In July, Netflix announced a new unscripted series, A Little Help with Carol Burnett, in which the comedy legend joins a panel of 4- to 8-year old kids to give life advice.  And this past spring, Carol shot the pilot for Household Name, a multi-camera sitcom in which she plays a deliciously haughty 92-year-old movie queen living with a non-showbiz family in her Los Angeles manse; having attended the May pilot taping, I can attest that the show was hilarious, which is why it was surprising when ABC did not pick it up to series at the time of its May upfront presentation.  Still, the show is currently being redeveloped by its creator, Michael Saltzman, and the network, which was thrilled with Carol's work, hopes to pick it up in the future. 

There have been studies in the past showing that in bad economic times, comedy flourishes; and someday, I'm sure, sociologists will study 2017, and see how the anxiety of the Trump era drove us all towards the comfort of safe, nostalgic programming.  Netflix already has had several seasons of success with its Fuller House, and now this season on the broadcast networks we have upcoming reboots of '90s sitcoms Roseanne and Will & Grace.  Just the other day, ABC picked up a pilot for a new version of its 1981 show Greatest American Hero -- which wasn't even a hit in its day, but remains beloved by its fans nonetheless -- this time with a female, Indian-American lead.  Suddenly, everything old is new again.

And so this December 3, CBS is celebrating the Golden Anniversary of The Carol Burnett Show -- a little late, but perfectly timed to catch us in a nostalgic, holiday mood.  The star-studded tribute will tape next month in Los Angeles.  Below, CBS' press announcement about the special honoring their comedy icon.

Sept. 7, 2017

CBS CELEBRATES THE 50^TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE CLASSIC, AWARD-WINNING COMEDY PROGRAM “THE CAROL BURNETT SHOW”

WITH A NEW STAR-STUDDED TWO-HOUR SPECIAL

“The Carol Burnett 50^th Anniversary Special” to Air Sunday, Dec. 3

Carol Burnett, Original Cast Members Vicki Lawrence and Lyle Waggoner, Costume Designer Bob Mackie, along with Celebrities Jim Carrey, Kristin Chenoweth, Stephen Colbert, Harry Connick Jr., Bill Hader, Jay Leno, Jane Lynch, Bernadette Peters, Maya Rudolph, Martin Short and More Will Commemorate the Groundbreaking Show

CBS will celebrate the 50^th anniversary of Carol Burnett’s classic, award-winning comedy series with THE CAROL BURNETT 50^TH ANNIVERSARY SPECIAL, a new two-hour star-studded event featuring Burnett, original cast members and special guests, on Sunday, Dec. 3 (8:00-10:00 PM, ET/PT) on the CBS Television Network.

Filming on Stage 33 at CBS Television City in Los Angeles, the show’s original soundstage, Burnett will reminisce about her favorite sketches, Q&As with the studio audience, guest stars, her memorable wardrobe and bloopers, as well as the tremendous effect the show continues to have on television today as a true pioneer of sketch comedy.

“I can’t believe how fast the time went, and what makes me the happiest is that so much of the funny stuff we did still holds up today, and we can share it with generations to come,” said Carol Burnett. “What a great ride!”

“‘The Carol Burnett Show’ was a comedy showcase that was years ahead of its time. If social media existed then, clips from the broadcast would have quickly gone viral,” said Leslie Moonves, Chairman and CEO, CBS Corporation. “We are very proud of the show’s significant place in CBS’ legacy, as well as in television history, and we look forward to this primetime celebration of incredible talent, led by the incomparable Carol Burnett.”

The special will also feature original cast members Vicki Lawrence and Lyle Waggoner, costume designer Bob Mackie, as well as other comedians, comic actors and friends, including Jim Carrey, Kristin Chenoweth, Stephen Colbert, Harry Connick Jr., Bill Hader, Jay Leno, Jane Lynch, Bernadette Peters, Maya Rudolph and Martin Short, among others, who will join Burnett to discuss how the revolutionary series paved the way for them and impacted their careers.

“The Carol Burnett Show” premiered on Sept. 11, 1967 and starred Carol Burnett, Harvey Korman, Vicki Lawrence, Lyle Waggoner and Tim Conway. Airing for 11 seasons and a total of 276 episodes, the show earned a total of 25 Primetime Emmy Awards, including three for Outstanding Variety-Music/Comedy Series. In addition, the show earned eight Golden Globe Awards, including one for Best Television Show – Comedy or Musical, and Burnett received four for Best Actress – Comedy or Musical.

THE CAROL BURNETT 50^TH ANNIVERSARY SPECIAL will be produced for television by dick clark productions. Carol Burnett, Steve Sauer, Allen Shapiro, Mike Mahan, Mark Bracco, Paul Miller and Leslie Kolins Small are executive producers. Paul Miller directs.

CHEAT TWEET: Celebrate the 50^th anniversary of #TheCarolBurnettShow! 2-hour star studded special event on Dec. 3! #CarolBurnett50

RIP Bill Paxton, 1955-2017

Justin Cornwell and Bill Paxton
in CBS' small-screen adaptation
of the 2001 film Training Day.

It's hard to believe that the vibrant, talented and from all accounts good-hearted actor Bill Paxton passed away this past weekend at the age of 61, after complications from surgery.  Paxton rose to fame in film: he had a notable run with director James Cameron, in Aliens, True Lies and Titanic; he chased tornadoes with Helen Hunt in Twister;the native Texan was a gunslinger in Tombstone and Frank & Jesse; he was the piece-of-shit older brother (literally) in Weird Science.  And of course, Paxton found big success on the small screen, with his lead roles in HBO's Big Love, The History Channel's Hatfields & McCoys, and his current role as dirtyish cop Frank Rourke on CBS' recent debut, Training Day.

Training Day wrapped production of its first -- and especially now, probably its only -- season back in December, meaning that there are still episodes about to unspool, keeping Paxton's talent that much more alive through the end of this TV season.  The show debuted to only so-so ratings, and slipped thereafter, meaning it was probably a long-shot for renewal anyway.  There's been no word from CBS as to the show's fate -- contrast that, of course, to the cancellation of the network's other big midseason drama entry, Doubt, which was cancelled after just two episodes aired -- but here's hoping that, at the very least in tribute to Bill, we get to see all thirteen.  (Later this year, audiences will get to see Paxton's final film role, with the release of the sci-fi thriller The Circle, in which he co-stars with Tom Hanks.)

Last May 18 -- just a day after Paxton's 61st birthday -- I had the pleasure of interviewing him and his Training Day co-star Justin Cornwell about the upcoming show, and about how the Rourke character fit into the collection of characters in Paxton's career.  You've played a lot of bad guys, I remarked to him -- well, make that bad-ish guys.  Do you think these guys are what you'd call "justifiably bad?"

"Justifiably bad?  You bet.  To me, the characters I’ve played -- and I’ve played a few antagonistic characters – usually have more justification than the protagonist.  They have a real reason to be the way they are.  And certainly my character Frank Rourke in this, he’s been in this business a long time.  He’s a 30-year veteran.  He’s seen everything.  He’s seen stuff that would appall most normal people, who wouldn’t be able to go back to the job.  But it’s in his blood.  He’s a hunter.  I start off [Training Day] with a narration, talking about how LA has always been a hunting ground, going back to the Pleistocene days, ten thousand years ago.  The La Brea tarpits for God’s sakes!  And is hasn’t really changed.  [In playing a morally grey character in that setting], you have to have a reason for doing what you’re doing.  You’re not just the 'bad cop.'”

Having grown up in the '60s, Paxton later added, he was happy for today's emergence of "antihero" shows, and was happy to take on such a character in Training Day.  It's just one of the latest examples of a career's worth of characters, made memorable by a talented actor.

A Peek into the Future on Pure Genius

Benevolent billionaire James Bell (Augustus Prew)
recruits Dr. Walter Wallace (Dermot Mulroney) to
join the Bunker Hill team in Pure Genius.

“In a lot of the medical shows we’ve seen and loved over the years, it’s all about the problems,” says Dermot Mulroney, who plays maverick surgeon Dr. Walter Wallace in the new Thursday-night drama Pure Genius.  “Our show is all about solutions.”

Created by Jason Katims, the man behind the acclaimed TV versions of Friday Night Lights and Parenthood, Pure Genius is a cutting-edge medical drama set at Silicon Valley’s fictional Bunker Hill Hospital, which has been endowed by billionaire genius James Bell (Augustus Prew) and charged with using emerging technology to treat the trickiest of diagnoses – at no charge.  Recruited after failing to save a patient in his native Ohio with a risky operation, Mulroney’s Dr. Wallace journeys west to join Bell’s staff, which already comprises the best-of-the-best:  physician Dr. Zoe Brockett (Odette Annable), idealistic neurosurgeon Talaikha Channarayapatra (Reshma Shetty), gang member-turned-med technician Dr. Malik Verlaine (Aaron Jennings), Ivy League-educated neurologist Dr. Scott Strauss (Ward Horton) and 3-D printing programming whiz Angie Cheng (Brenda Song.)

“The show is set essentially ten minutes in the future,” explains Prew, adding that “because much of the technology it shows” – like ingestible monitors and virtual-reality patient environments, depicted in just Pure Genius’ pilot episode – “actually exists.”  In fact, Dr. Wallace himself is partly based on one of Pure Genius’ real-life medical consultants, Dr. Brennan Spiegel, a surgeon at Los Angeles’ Cedars-Sinai Hospital.  “Dr. Spiegel’s specialty is infiltrating medicine with technology, finding new ways and inventing new devices to track and monitor patients,” says Mulroney.  “I’m sure you’ll see his influence in my character, because when I met him, I noted how his body moved, and how he uses medical tools.  I tried to pick up a feel for the guy, and put it into the part.”

Amid today’s debates over privatization versus more government-sponsored initiatives like Obama-care, Pure Genius taps into “a very important part of the zeitgeist right now,” Prew enthuses.  “What if you could have the best minds in technology and medicine paired together?  How could we make the healthcare system better?  How could we change lives?  The show is about what could be, and we’re hoping to spur change.”

Mulroney, too, expects Pure Genius to bring an inspiring dose of optimism to our screens each week.  “There’s a little magic” in the show, he admits, because not all of the Bunker Hill doctors’ innovative moves are yet completely possible.  “But that’s one of its great appeals.  You’ll say, ‘Is that really happening?’ And instead of saying ‘No,’ we’ll get to say ‘Not yet.’”

Thursdays at 10 PM Eastern

Begins October 27