Post by lemur on Jan 1, 2008 19:07:52 GMT -5
Not Quite as Neat as Niles; But David Hyde Pierce Is in Character
The Washington Post March 19, 1996 Author: Tom Shales
Truth is, most actors are really kind of boring. David Hyde Pierce is not the glorious exception. He's standoffish, aloof, a touch snooty, something of a churl, even a bit of a drip. He may have been born to play Niles Crane, fussbudgety brother of Frasier Crane, on NBC's hitcom Frasier. And fortunately, he does.
And very, very well, too. Immaculately and maybe even brilliantly. Pierce recently won a Screen Actors Guild Award for his expertly hilarious portrayal, got an Emmy for it last fall, and deserves a generous share of credit for the sophisticated sitcom's huge success. And though he may resemble Niles in some ways, they're hardly twins. For instance, Pierce is 36 and Niles, Pierce points out, is 38. Quite a stretch for the young actor, eh?
"Our taste in music is similar," Pierce says. Classical, he means. "We both play the piano. We both went to Yale. I'm definitely not as finicky, though, and certainly not as neat."
Pierce got the role partly because he somewhat resembles Kelsey Grammer, the star of the show; Grammer and Pierce play spatty siblings who are both psychiatrists in Seattle. When Pierce auditioned, Niles existed only in the minds of the producers, and vaguely. Nothing was on paper yet. Pierce wasn't asked to read any lines because there weren't any lines.
"I met with the producers and we just talked for about 45 minutes, about what the brother might be. He was going to be a Jungian and Frasier was going to be a Freudian. Things like that were tossed around. I went back to New York, and not long after that they offered me the part. And I thought, 'What part?' I hadn't seen a script.
"Now when I think about the character, it's a little upsetting, that they met with me for 45 minutes and this is what they came up with." Would Niles be a friend of his if he really existed? "I think I couldn't stand him. I remember people like him at school and never really hung out with them - people for whom their world is the only world."
Pierce is thin, slight, fair and single, and he wears jeans that, says the label, have a 32-inch waist and a 32-inch inseam. A perfect square. Born in Saratoga Springs, NY, he spent a dozen years doing Broadway and off-Broadway theater. "I was going to go to drama school after college. But I knew several live-theater people who said, 'Why don't you go to New York and see if you want to do this?'" He did, and he did.
Now he sits in the small hotel suite that cheap old NBC got for him and looks oddly wary and fretful. And a trifle tight-lipped. He certainly doesn't crank out the witty quips the way he does when he's a paid guest on David Letterman's show. Answers to some questions have to be pried out of him like the cotton from a Bufferin bottle.
At some point in the conversation, the interviewer gets tired of this and starts getting antsy. Maybe even testy.
"I feel like picking a fight," the interviewer says.
"That's all right. I can handle it," says Pierce.
"Don't you think," says the interviewer, "that this season of Frasier has been a little less wonderful than last?"
An indignant look from Pierce, as though he'd been slapped in the face with a trout.
"No! Do you?"
"Yes."
"Well! This interview is over!"
He's kidding, yet obviously ruffled. Actors expect to hear nothing but extravagant praise and unmitigated approval. Pierce demands an example of an episode that has failed to measure up to the high standards Frasier set in its first two seasons. Okay, how about the one in which Maris, Niles's unseen wife, left him? It was just repeated last week. And it was something of a letdown.
"All that smashing of crockery," says the interviewer. "We've been seeing that in sitcoms since Year Two."
"Yes, but that was very expensive antique crockery," Pierce says.
The interviewer tries to change the subject. Pierce pouts.
"Well, I don't know," says Pierce, stricken. "You've just really depressed me now."
"I'm sorry. Forget it. Do you think the characters are growing, progressing, as the show goes on?"
"I guess not," snaps Pierce. He mulls, he ponders, he regroups. Then he takes a breath.
"Well, you know what?"
"What?"
"{Expletive} you, I liked it," he says with a satisfied smile. "I'm not going to sit here and justify your problems with it. I think the expectations for an episode like that may be impossibly high. I'd bet if you went back and looked at the episode, bereft of all your unrealistic expectations -"
"I'd rather die."
Pierce never does seem to stop smarting from the tiny remark, which had nothing to do with his performance and everything to do with the writing. He thinks part of the disappointment with the episode may be that the premise was so tantalizing, the actual show couldn't measure up. And then there's the fact that Maris has never been seen. They couldn't shout at each other because then an actress would have to be hired to play Maris.
"Originally, they were going to show her - not have her seen for a few episodes, and then show her. They didn't want her to be like Norm's wife on Cheers." Norm's wife was never seen, only talked about, on Cheers, the show that introduced the character of Frasier Crane.
"Once the show was a success on its own, and they didn't have to worry about separating it from Cheers, they just forgot about showing Maris because they were having such fun writing this character bit by bit."
From the way she's been described over various episodes, Maris is thin as well as rich, very temperamental, and has Niles lodged securely under her thumb. What, one wonders, might their sex life be like? "It's sporadic, I think," says Pierce, "but apparently pretty incredible when it happens."
Could there be a touch of sadomasochism to it? "No. I don't think it's whips and chains. Maris in big black boots? No. That's your fantasy."
Now wait a minute, David, you don't have to get snotty about it!
For Pierce, as indeed for any actor, being on a hit is much more pleasurable than, well, being on a flop. He has experience at the latter, too. In 1991 he landed the role of Theodore Van Horne, neurotic and suicidal congressman in Norman Lear's short-lived The Powers That Be.
"I came out here for about three months during the pilot season," Pierce recalls, "and the very last thing I auditioned for was that show. Actually, I auditioned for the part of the press secretary. And I remember Norman saying, 'Well, that was very interesting but completely wrong. Have you considered directing?'"
He went back to New York and learned he'd been cast as the young legislator. He ended up loving the show, he says, and loving Norman Lear, too.
"It felt like a great show. The live audiences were genuinely laughing and enjoying it. I didn't recognize the warning signs of when a show is not working, when a network is not behind a show."
Such as?
"No one ever comes. No one from the network. You find that mysteriously you're on Sunday afternoon at 2. And that whole time slot thing - not getting a permanent time slot and getting moved around a lot. They don't do it to be mean. It has to do with their focus being elsewhere. You're not on the front burner.
"I think there were 7 1/2 people who saw it at all."
Pierce has been in several movies, too, the most recent being Oliver Stone's Nixon. Pierce played John Dean. "I met Dean several times. He's a real nice guy and he was very helpful with a lot of details. I think I came away most impressed with his marriage. He's still married to Maureen. They got married in the thick of Watergate, but they stood by each other. I remember my mother saying she added class to those proceedings."
And this Oliver Stone guy - is he just completely nuts?
"No. I'm not sure where that reputation came from. He was very soft-spoken and really really helpful. He's a terrific actor's director. He's very focused on every detail, whether it's how you move or the intonation of a line, but not in a way that makes you feel like you're in a straitjacket. You realize that you won't be making any mistakes because he's watching everything."
Other movies in which he had small parts: "In Sleepless in Seattle, I was Meg Ryan's brother. In Little Man Tate, I played, uh, Meg Ryan's brother," he jests. "No. But they were all somebody's something. I was Michael J. Fox's bartender in Bright Lights, Big City. That was my first part. I said, 'I'm sorry, the bar is closed.'"
Actors on hits always say everybody is a joy to work with, but Pierce makes a convincing case for what he insists is a happy ambiance on the set of Frasier. As anyone who's watched it can attest, Grammer is very generous about spreading the laughs around among the characters.
"He's no fool. He knows it's good for all of us to have multiple story lines. He doesn't need to hog the spotlight. That's not him. He's very good at what he does, so he doesn't have to worry about other people being good at what they do."
Pierce enjoys it most when he and Grammer are really cooking, really zooming along the old comedy interstate.
"There's something alchemical that happens. I discover it most often when we perform for the live audience and we get laughs bigger than anything we got in rehearsal. You have to basically surf the laugh. You're standing there, still in character, but you've got to do something until the laugh dies down, and those moments, when it's Kelsey and me, we just instinctively do something that seems to mesh and work together, and usually they're totally opposite choices but they just balance each other.
"It's nothing we've planned, because it didn't happen in rehearsal. And I don't know where the stuff we do comes from, but it's a hoot."
For all this camaraderie, one might think cast members of a hit show such as Frasier would be peeved when the star decides to sit out a contract dispute and production shuts down. Grammer threw such a fit not long ago, holding out for more money, and rehearsals ground to a halt.
"First of all, I've never seen Kelsey have a tantrum," Pierce says defensively. "So we don't really deal with that a lot." But he did shut the show down for a while? "When he was not coming in, we were not rehearsing. And he came back, so we did. We all trust Kelsey and really love him and we know that whatever he does, he does because he has to do it."
Oh shut up! There must be something Pierce will dare to disparage. Maybe Eddie the Dog, as played by Moose the Dog, whom Grammer has indicated he hates.
"No one really hates the dog," Pierce says. "Kelsey plays that up a lot, but no, we love the dog. We may possibly have a show because of the dog."
Pierce admits Eddie/Moose isn't very friendly, though. "You know, he's a star. So he keeps a distance. If you have liver treats, he can be friendly. You can scratch him, but not when he's working. You know - like the rest of us."
Are there any bad sides to the wonderful success he and his fellow actors are enjoying with Frasier? Pierce ponders that for a moment. "Um - obviously the loss of privacy." He can't seem to think of anything else. Just as well. All kidding aside, Pierce seems to deserve every nice thing that's happened to him.
"I always said I would do this as long as the good things outweighed the bad things," Pierce says. "So far, they still do."
The Washington Post March 19, 1996 Author: Tom Shales
Truth is, most actors are really kind of boring. David Hyde Pierce is not the glorious exception. He's standoffish, aloof, a touch snooty, something of a churl, even a bit of a drip. He may have been born to play Niles Crane, fussbudgety brother of Frasier Crane, on NBC's hitcom Frasier. And fortunately, he does.
And very, very well, too. Immaculately and maybe even brilliantly. Pierce recently won a Screen Actors Guild Award for his expertly hilarious portrayal, got an Emmy for it last fall, and deserves a generous share of credit for the sophisticated sitcom's huge success. And though he may resemble Niles in some ways, they're hardly twins. For instance, Pierce is 36 and Niles, Pierce points out, is 38. Quite a stretch for the young actor, eh?
"Our taste in music is similar," Pierce says. Classical, he means. "We both play the piano. We both went to Yale. I'm definitely not as finicky, though, and certainly not as neat."
Pierce got the role partly because he somewhat resembles Kelsey Grammer, the star of the show; Grammer and Pierce play spatty siblings who are both psychiatrists in Seattle. When Pierce auditioned, Niles existed only in the minds of the producers, and vaguely. Nothing was on paper yet. Pierce wasn't asked to read any lines because there weren't any lines.
"I met with the producers and we just talked for about 45 minutes, about what the brother might be. He was going to be a Jungian and Frasier was going to be a Freudian. Things like that were tossed around. I went back to New York, and not long after that they offered me the part. And I thought, 'What part?' I hadn't seen a script.
"Now when I think about the character, it's a little upsetting, that they met with me for 45 minutes and this is what they came up with." Would Niles be a friend of his if he really existed? "I think I couldn't stand him. I remember people like him at school and never really hung out with them - people for whom their world is the only world."
Pierce is thin, slight, fair and single, and he wears jeans that, says the label, have a 32-inch waist and a 32-inch inseam. A perfect square. Born in Saratoga Springs, NY, he spent a dozen years doing Broadway and off-Broadway theater. "I was going to go to drama school after college. But I knew several live-theater people who said, 'Why don't you go to New York and see if you want to do this?'" He did, and he did.
Now he sits in the small hotel suite that cheap old NBC got for him and looks oddly wary and fretful. And a trifle tight-lipped. He certainly doesn't crank out the witty quips the way he does when he's a paid guest on David Letterman's show. Answers to some questions have to be pried out of him like the cotton from a Bufferin bottle.
At some point in the conversation, the interviewer gets tired of this and starts getting antsy. Maybe even testy.
"I feel like picking a fight," the interviewer says.
"That's all right. I can handle it," says Pierce.
"Don't you think," says the interviewer, "that this season of Frasier has been a little less wonderful than last?"
An indignant look from Pierce, as though he'd been slapped in the face with a trout.
"No! Do you?"
"Yes."
"Well! This interview is over!"
He's kidding, yet obviously ruffled. Actors expect to hear nothing but extravagant praise and unmitigated approval. Pierce demands an example of an episode that has failed to measure up to the high standards Frasier set in its first two seasons. Okay, how about the one in which Maris, Niles's unseen wife, left him? It was just repeated last week. And it was something of a letdown.
"All that smashing of crockery," says the interviewer. "We've been seeing that in sitcoms since Year Two."
"Yes, but that was very expensive antique crockery," Pierce says.
The interviewer tries to change the subject. Pierce pouts.
"Well, I don't know," says Pierce, stricken. "You've just really depressed me now."
"I'm sorry. Forget it. Do you think the characters are growing, progressing, as the show goes on?"
"I guess not," snaps Pierce. He mulls, he ponders, he regroups. Then he takes a breath.
"Well, you know what?"
"What?"
"{Expletive} you, I liked it," he says with a satisfied smile. "I'm not going to sit here and justify your problems with it. I think the expectations for an episode like that may be impossibly high. I'd bet if you went back and looked at the episode, bereft of all your unrealistic expectations -"
"I'd rather die."
Pierce never does seem to stop smarting from the tiny remark, which had nothing to do with his performance and everything to do with the writing. He thinks part of the disappointment with the episode may be that the premise was so tantalizing, the actual show couldn't measure up. And then there's the fact that Maris has never been seen. They couldn't shout at each other because then an actress would have to be hired to play Maris.
"Originally, they were going to show her - not have her seen for a few episodes, and then show her. They didn't want her to be like Norm's wife on Cheers." Norm's wife was never seen, only talked about, on Cheers, the show that introduced the character of Frasier Crane.
"Once the show was a success on its own, and they didn't have to worry about separating it from Cheers, they just forgot about showing Maris because they were having such fun writing this character bit by bit."
From the way she's been described over various episodes, Maris is thin as well as rich, very temperamental, and has Niles lodged securely under her thumb. What, one wonders, might their sex life be like? "It's sporadic, I think," says Pierce, "but apparently pretty incredible when it happens."
Could there be a touch of sadomasochism to it? "No. I don't think it's whips and chains. Maris in big black boots? No. That's your fantasy."
Now wait a minute, David, you don't have to get snotty about it!
For Pierce, as indeed for any actor, being on a hit is much more pleasurable than, well, being on a flop. He has experience at the latter, too. In 1991 he landed the role of Theodore Van Horne, neurotic and suicidal congressman in Norman Lear's short-lived The Powers That Be.
"I came out here for about three months during the pilot season," Pierce recalls, "and the very last thing I auditioned for was that show. Actually, I auditioned for the part of the press secretary. And I remember Norman saying, 'Well, that was very interesting but completely wrong. Have you considered directing?'"
He went back to New York and learned he'd been cast as the young legislator. He ended up loving the show, he says, and loving Norman Lear, too.
"It felt like a great show. The live audiences were genuinely laughing and enjoying it. I didn't recognize the warning signs of when a show is not working, when a network is not behind a show."
Such as?
"No one ever comes. No one from the network. You find that mysteriously you're on Sunday afternoon at 2. And that whole time slot thing - not getting a permanent time slot and getting moved around a lot. They don't do it to be mean. It has to do with their focus being elsewhere. You're not on the front burner.
"I think there were 7 1/2 people who saw it at all."
Pierce has been in several movies, too, the most recent being Oliver Stone's Nixon. Pierce played John Dean. "I met Dean several times. He's a real nice guy and he was very helpful with a lot of details. I think I came away most impressed with his marriage. He's still married to Maureen. They got married in the thick of Watergate, but they stood by each other. I remember my mother saying she added class to those proceedings."
And this Oliver Stone guy - is he just completely nuts?
"No. I'm not sure where that reputation came from. He was very soft-spoken and really really helpful. He's a terrific actor's director. He's very focused on every detail, whether it's how you move or the intonation of a line, but not in a way that makes you feel like you're in a straitjacket. You realize that you won't be making any mistakes because he's watching everything."
Other movies in which he had small parts: "In Sleepless in Seattle, I was Meg Ryan's brother. In Little Man Tate, I played, uh, Meg Ryan's brother," he jests. "No. But they were all somebody's something. I was Michael J. Fox's bartender in Bright Lights, Big City. That was my first part. I said, 'I'm sorry, the bar is closed.'"
Actors on hits always say everybody is a joy to work with, but Pierce makes a convincing case for what he insists is a happy ambiance on the set of Frasier. As anyone who's watched it can attest, Grammer is very generous about spreading the laughs around among the characters.
"He's no fool. He knows it's good for all of us to have multiple story lines. He doesn't need to hog the spotlight. That's not him. He's very good at what he does, so he doesn't have to worry about other people being good at what they do."
Pierce enjoys it most when he and Grammer are really cooking, really zooming along the old comedy interstate.
"There's something alchemical that happens. I discover it most often when we perform for the live audience and we get laughs bigger than anything we got in rehearsal. You have to basically surf the laugh. You're standing there, still in character, but you've got to do something until the laugh dies down, and those moments, when it's Kelsey and me, we just instinctively do something that seems to mesh and work together, and usually they're totally opposite choices but they just balance each other.
"It's nothing we've planned, because it didn't happen in rehearsal. And I don't know where the stuff we do comes from, but it's a hoot."
For all this camaraderie, one might think cast members of a hit show such as Frasier would be peeved when the star decides to sit out a contract dispute and production shuts down. Grammer threw such a fit not long ago, holding out for more money, and rehearsals ground to a halt.
"First of all, I've never seen Kelsey have a tantrum," Pierce says defensively. "So we don't really deal with that a lot." But he did shut the show down for a while? "When he was not coming in, we were not rehearsing. And he came back, so we did. We all trust Kelsey and really love him and we know that whatever he does, he does because he has to do it."
Oh shut up! There must be something Pierce will dare to disparage. Maybe Eddie the Dog, as played by Moose the Dog, whom Grammer has indicated he hates.
"No one really hates the dog," Pierce says. "Kelsey plays that up a lot, but no, we love the dog. We may possibly have a show because of the dog."
Pierce admits Eddie/Moose isn't very friendly, though. "You know, he's a star. So he keeps a distance. If you have liver treats, he can be friendly. You can scratch him, but not when he's working. You know - like the rest of us."
Are there any bad sides to the wonderful success he and his fellow actors are enjoying with Frasier? Pierce ponders that for a moment. "Um - obviously the loss of privacy." He can't seem to think of anything else. Just as well. All kidding aside, Pierce seems to deserve every nice thing that's happened to him.
"I always said I would do this as long as the good things outweighed the bad things," Pierce says. "So far, they still do."
