Post by lemur on Jan 1, 2008 19:12:13 GMT -5
The Orange County Register
April 24, 1997 Author: Littlefield, Kinney
In our fourth season of acquaintance, Niles still beguiles. And so does David Hyde Pierce.
Pierce, 38, plays priggish psychiatrist Niles Crane to perfection on NBC's acclaimed Frasier. Niles is, of course, the brother-from-the-same-planet of snooty psychiatrist Frasier Crane (Kelsey Grammer). While Grammer is Frasier's essential comedy engine, Pierce is its final, delicious, perfectly timed turn of the screw. Both have won acting Emmys for Frasier, which copped best comedy Emmys in 1994, '95 and '96. With remarkable consistency, Frasier remains the wittiest comedy on TV.
"Karma would be the correct answer," Pierce says of Frasier's excellence. "My chemistry with Kelsey is very hard to define. It's certainly not anything conscious. I think of it almost as acrobats. We know we can try anything, and the other one will be right there for us."
But Niles is not Pierce's whole story, as the thoughtful, wryly intelligent actor knows full well. Certainly Pierce distanced himself from Niles in Oliver Stone's 1995 film Nixon, in which he played presidential adviser John Dean with smooth gravity.
And Pierce can also go worlds wackier than his tightly lidded shrink.
He lets the cat out of the bag - way out - on Sunday, when he voices wily feline Puss in an animated version of Puss in Boots on the HBO series Happily Ever After: Fairy Tales for Every Child. Sophisticated kidshow Happily Ever After reinterprets classic tales from ethnically diverse points of view. Pierce's wild rendition of the song 'I Wouldn't Lie to You' - a husky, crazy, fur-fluffing turn - is the cat's meow.
In fact, Puss' is Felines, Part Deux for Pierce, who did a hilarious cameo as a Cats-obsessed Internal Revenue Service agent on NBC's Caroline in the City this season.
Now "neither of my two dogs is speaking to me," Pierce says of his witty kitty role on HBO.
"Actually, HBO called me specifically for the role of Puss. They said it was for this very ethnically diverse fairy tale - which of course made sense for me," Pierce joked, in his typical throwaway style, of being a standard-issue, mainstream white male. Anyway, that song was very cool. The composer coached me through it, and he really wanted that husky, crazy voice. That was part of the fun - that it was not a character most people would cast me in."
Do we sense a tinge of anxiety here about being typecast?
"Actually I'm obsessed with it. Naturally, the parts I'm offered are ones that tend to be like Niles."
Frasier has put Albany-born, Yale-educated, stage-trained, classical music-loving Pierce on the Hollywood map. But the road has occasionally been rough. Grammer once halted production on Frasier when he walked off the set in a salary dispute. Earlier this season, Grammer wrecked his car and took a hiatus to enter rehab at the Betty Ford Center. A month or so later Grammer returned to the show.
And typically, Pierce has not a bad word to say.
"I can honestly say Kelsey was our main focus and main concern," he says after a long silence, as if pondering the most honest but tactful route. "But it's such water under the bridge now. Those days are over. And things are better now than they've ever been."
How so?
"It's just that Kels is so healthy and happy."
For Niles, the coming end of Frasier's fourth season holds "several surprises - that's all I can say."
Beyond that, he thinks the running gag of Niles' shrewish, estranged wife, Maris - whom we never see - will play forever: "As long as the writers don't go to that well too often."
Pierce's favorite Niles escapades? There were two this season, both involving the sophisticated physical comedy that Pierce loves.
In 'Mixed Doubles' he played mirror image to a Niles look-alike (Kevin Farrell) who dated Niles' unrequited love, nubile physical therapist Daphne Moon (Jane Leeves).
"He (Farrell) had sent his photo in to the show earlier, saying he looked like Niles."
Eerily, that's how Pierce got the Niles gig. A casting director showed his mug to the producers of Wings, who were developing Frasier at the time. Clearly, Pierce resembled Frasier star Grammer, from thinning gold hair to haughty high brow. The part of Niles was written for Pierce, and the rest, as they say, is comedy.
But let us not forget the bird.
"Its real name was Cookie, but its character name was Baby," Pierce says of Niles' new feathered pet, which ruined his first dinner party as a Maris-less single guy in 'To Kill a Talking Bird'. Insecure and terrified, Baby nested on Niles' pate for the evening and wouldn't let go.
"I had the flu when we shot that episode. Actually they built an incredible hairpiece extension for the back of my head, so the bird could hold onto my head without digging in. I'm not particularly a bird person, but you become one instantly because they're so affectionate. They cuddle up and" - here Pierce does another signature throw-away - "slowly pull the hair right out of your head. Which is the last thing I need," he says, a reference to his receding topknot.
Pierce is a normal, chip-right-in, civic-minded guy. He's helped bang nails for the nonprofit housing organization Habitat for Humanity. He's gone on AIDS walks. Recently, celebrity or no, he didn't try to weasel out of jury duty, "because I wanted to do it." Strangely, he was assigned to the high-profile "wrong turn" murder case, in which an L.A. family was ambushed by alleged gang members on a dead-end street. He was videotaped entering the courthouse by local TV news and was pulled from that particular case.
In all, Pierce is a guy who likes to engage life, who takes the long view. To that end he's thinking beyond Frasier - although the hit series will clearly continue for some time. In the interim, Pierce is starting to do commercials, as other top TV stars from Paul Reiser to Candice Bergen and Dennis Franz have done.
"The last couple of years I've been doing commercial voice-overs. My face is on TV enough as it is. I voiced a Lipton iced-tea commercial that disappeared almost immediately. I played a really snooty talking box of tea. And I've done some regional things - a chicken commercial and one for a transit system. It gives me the chance to play different characters. I use more of my voice than when I'm doing Niles. For voice-over you have to energize your voice more. But I still value subtlety and throwaway delivery. That's the kind of humor I like to do - not hitting anything too hard, letting people be surprised by the laugh rather than pointing the way to it."
Watching fabulously funny Niles, it's hard to imagine Pierce doing anything but comedy.
But Pierce holds closely the dead-serious role of John Dean.
"It's stayed with me because I met Dean. He seems totally at peace now, I think partly because he came clean about Nixon and Watergate. The amazing thing when I was doing research was that you can find a book that says he was an innocent pawn, and also a book says he was responsible for all of Watergate. My own opinion was that he was an ambitious young man who found himself on the wrong side of the law and then tried to rectify it. And I guess I ended up seeing Nixon as tragic, in the sense that we are all to some degree victims of circumstance."
Clearly, Pierce is doing what he can to avoid becoming a victim of Hollywood circumstance. He stays as private as possible.
"I don't have a personal publicist; that's the first thing. My hope is to do the work and lead a normal life. And I can have a reasonably normal life. I'm not a mega-star like Tom Cruise or Madonna. I don't go unrecognized, but I can go undisturbed. I was just skiiing in Utah and I hadn't shaved for four days and had on a hat and ski clothes, and people were going 'Hey Niles!' from the ski lift. But it was respectful. I think that has to do with the nature of the show. I think it's because our characters are written and played with good intentions. Also, in a way, because Niles and Frasier are such odd characters - so effete and overcultured and unaware - it makes it easier for people to identify with them. You can recognize those traits in yourself and still say 'At least I'm not as bad as they are'."
You'd think Pierce would have few dream roles to fulfill, with neurotic Niles and loud-mouthed cats and talking tea boxes in his portfolio.
Oh, no.
"I've really always wanted to get killed in a movie. As a little kid I used to die over and over and fall down the staircase at my parents' house. My parents were so patient, God bless 'em. They'd hear a 'thumpa thumpa thumpa' and know it was just me falling down the stairs. Actually I'm sure I'm going to have just terrible body damage someday. When I look at that staircase I just know it. And of course people have always told me I'd make a really great psycho-killer - God knows why."
(c) 1997, The Orange County Register (Santa Ana, Calif.).
Visit the Register on the World Wide Web at www.ocregister.com/
Distributed by Knight-Ridder/Tribune Information Services.
April 24, 1997 Author: Littlefield, Kinney
In our fourth season of acquaintance, Niles still beguiles. And so does David Hyde Pierce.
Pierce, 38, plays priggish psychiatrist Niles Crane to perfection on NBC's acclaimed Frasier. Niles is, of course, the brother-from-the-same-planet of snooty psychiatrist Frasier Crane (Kelsey Grammer). While Grammer is Frasier's essential comedy engine, Pierce is its final, delicious, perfectly timed turn of the screw. Both have won acting Emmys for Frasier, which copped best comedy Emmys in 1994, '95 and '96. With remarkable consistency, Frasier remains the wittiest comedy on TV.
"Karma would be the correct answer," Pierce says of Frasier's excellence. "My chemistry with Kelsey is very hard to define. It's certainly not anything conscious. I think of it almost as acrobats. We know we can try anything, and the other one will be right there for us."
But Niles is not Pierce's whole story, as the thoughtful, wryly intelligent actor knows full well. Certainly Pierce distanced himself from Niles in Oliver Stone's 1995 film Nixon, in which he played presidential adviser John Dean with smooth gravity.
And Pierce can also go worlds wackier than his tightly lidded shrink.
He lets the cat out of the bag - way out - on Sunday, when he voices wily feline Puss in an animated version of Puss in Boots on the HBO series Happily Ever After: Fairy Tales for Every Child. Sophisticated kidshow Happily Ever After reinterprets classic tales from ethnically diverse points of view. Pierce's wild rendition of the song 'I Wouldn't Lie to You' - a husky, crazy, fur-fluffing turn - is the cat's meow.
In fact, Puss' is Felines, Part Deux for Pierce, who did a hilarious cameo as a Cats-obsessed Internal Revenue Service agent on NBC's Caroline in the City this season.
Now "neither of my two dogs is speaking to me," Pierce says of his witty kitty role on HBO.
"Actually, HBO called me specifically for the role of Puss. They said it was for this very ethnically diverse fairy tale - which of course made sense for me," Pierce joked, in his typical throwaway style, of being a standard-issue, mainstream white male. Anyway, that song was very cool. The composer coached me through it, and he really wanted that husky, crazy voice. That was part of the fun - that it was not a character most people would cast me in."
Do we sense a tinge of anxiety here about being typecast?
"Actually I'm obsessed with it. Naturally, the parts I'm offered are ones that tend to be like Niles."
Frasier has put Albany-born, Yale-educated, stage-trained, classical music-loving Pierce on the Hollywood map. But the road has occasionally been rough. Grammer once halted production on Frasier when he walked off the set in a salary dispute. Earlier this season, Grammer wrecked his car and took a hiatus to enter rehab at the Betty Ford Center. A month or so later Grammer returned to the show.
And typically, Pierce has not a bad word to say.
"I can honestly say Kelsey was our main focus and main concern," he says after a long silence, as if pondering the most honest but tactful route. "But it's such water under the bridge now. Those days are over. And things are better now than they've ever been."
How so?
"It's just that Kels is so healthy and happy."
For Niles, the coming end of Frasier's fourth season holds "several surprises - that's all I can say."
Beyond that, he thinks the running gag of Niles' shrewish, estranged wife, Maris - whom we never see - will play forever: "As long as the writers don't go to that well too often."
Pierce's favorite Niles escapades? There were two this season, both involving the sophisticated physical comedy that Pierce loves.
In 'Mixed Doubles' he played mirror image to a Niles look-alike (Kevin Farrell) who dated Niles' unrequited love, nubile physical therapist Daphne Moon (Jane Leeves).
"He (Farrell) had sent his photo in to the show earlier, saying he looked like Niles."
Eerily, that's how Pierce got the Niles gig. A casting director showed his mug to the producers of Wings, who were developing Frasier at the time. Clearly, Pierce resembled Frasier star Grammer, from thinning gold hair to haughty high brow. The part of Niles was written for Pierce, and the rest, as they say, is comedy.
But let us not forget the bird.
"Its real name was Cookie, but its character name was Baby," Pierce says of Niles' new feathered pet, which ruined his first dinner party as a Maris-less single guy in 'To Kill a Talking Bird'. Insecure and terrified, Baby nested on Niles' pate for the evening and wouldn't let go.
"I had the flu when we shot that episode. Actually they built an incredible hairpiece extension for the back of my head, so the bird could hold onto my head without digging in. I'm not particularly a bird person, but you become one instantly because they're so affectionate. They cuddle up and" - here Pierce does another signature throw-away - "slowly pull the hair right out of your head. Which is the last thing I need," he says, a reference to his receding topknot.
Pierce is a normal, chip-right-in, civic-minded guy. He's helped bang nails for the nonprofit housing organization Habitat for Humanity. He's gone on AIDS walks. Recently, celebrity or no, he didn't try to weasel out of jury duty, "because I wanted to do it." Strangely, he was assigned to the high-profile "wrong turn" murder case, in which an L.A. family was ambushed by alleged gang members on a dead-end street. He was videotaped entering the courthouse by local TV news and was pulled from that particular case.
In all, Pierce is a guy who likes to engage life, who takes the long view. To that end he's thinking beyond Frasier - although the hit series will clearly continue for some time. In the interim, Pierce is starting to do commercials, as other top TV stars from Paul Reiser to Candice Bergen and Dennis Franz have done.
"The last couple of years I've been doing commercial voice-overs. My face is on TV enough as it is. I voiced a Lipton iced-tea commercial that disappeared almost immediately. I played a really snooty talking box of tea. And I've done some regional things - a chicken commercial and one for a transit system. It gives me the chance to play different characters. I use more of my voice than when I'm doing Niles. For voice-over you have to energize your voice more. But I still value subtlety and throwaway delivery. That's the kind of humor I like to do - not hitting anything too hard, letting people be surprised by the laugh rather than pointing the way to it."
Watching fabulously funny Niles, it's hard to imagine Pierce doing anything but comedy.
But Pierce holds closely the dead-serious role of John Dean.
"It's stayed with me because I met Dean. He seems totally at peace now, I think partly because he came clean about Nixon and Watergate. The amazing thing when I was doing research was that you can find a book that says he was an innocent pawn, and also a book says he was responsible for all of Watergate. My own opinion was that he was an ambitious young man who found himself on the wrong side of the law and then tried to rectify it. And I guess I ended up seeing Nixon as tragic, in the sense that we are all to some degree victims of circumstance."
Clearly, Pierce is doing what he can to avoid becoming a victim of Hollywood circumstance. He stays as private as possible.
"I don't have a personal publicist; that's the first thing. My hope is to do the work and lead a normal life. And I can have a reasonably normal life. I'm not a mega-star like Tom Cruise or Madonna. I don't go unrecognized, but I can go undisturbed. I was just skiiing in Utah and I hadn't shaved for four days and had on a hat and ski clothes, and people were going 'Hey Niles!' from the ski lift. But it was respectful. I think that has to do with the nature of the show. I think it's because our characters are written and played with good intentions. Also, in a way, because Niles and Frasier are such odd characters - so effete and overcultured and unaware - it makes it easier for people to identify with them. You can recognize those traits in yourself and still say 'At least I'm not as bad as they are'."
You'd think Pierce would have few dream roles to fulfill, with neurotic Niles and loud-mouthed cats and talking tea boxes in his portfolio.
Oh, no.
"I've really always wanted to get killed in a movie. As a little kid I used to die over and over and fall down the staircase at my parents' house. My parents were so patient, God bless 'em. They'd hear a 'thumpa thumpa thumpa' and know it was just me falling down the stairs. Actually I'm sure I'm going to have just terrible body damage someday. When I look at that staircase I just know it. And of course people have always told me I'd make a really great psycho-killer - God knows why."
(c) 1997, The Orange County Register (Santa Ana, Calif.).
Visit the Register on the World Wide Web at www.ocregister.com/
Distributed by Knight-Ridder/Tribune Information Services.