Maybe We'll Have You Back: The Life of a Perennial TV Guest Star (24 page)

Saget eventually backed off with the on-the-set revisions. He was in fact a great guy, but seemed to suffer from Attention Deficit Disorder. He couldn’t stay still. If someone would enter the set, he’d practically stop the rehearsal and work whoever it was that entered as if he were a talk-show host. If he wasn’t trying out material on everyone for his stand-up act, it was because he was exhausted from being up late the night before doing a charity event. He admittedly could not turn any of them down.

Before Friday’s tape night, Saget confessed that he was nervous that an annoying friend of his might come to the show and he didn’t want such a distraction.

“Yeah, I’m nervous. Yeah I get intimidated,” he admitted. “I’m just like you. I’m no different than you.”

“Yeah, except for the fact that you’re a multimillionaire with twenty years of primetime network series combined and you have three kids, and homes in three different states, and you’ve always had girlfriends.”

He thought about it a moment.

“Okay, not
just
like you,” he conceded.

30

I AIN’T NO SCRUB

T
he difference between my table read at
Dharma & Greg
and the first-year show
Scrubs
was that this one was on the upward curve, and the mood really reflected that. Before the table read got started, the actors were horsing around with each other and they knew they were in a good spot. As usual, the showrunner (creator Bill Lawrence) made some announcements, but it was apparent he wasn’t stretching to pull something positive out of a tenuous situation like I had seen on some other shows. On
Raising Dad
they were excited when they moved from 104th to 100th place in the ratings.

Scrubs
was a show about a first-year intern, J. D. (Zach Braff), working at a hospital. It had a unique mixture of dark comedy, tragedy, and offbeat fantasy sequences. When I appeared on it in 2001, it was critically acclaimed and soaring in the ratings. Everyone was especially excited when Bill Lawrence said at the table read that NBC announced earlier than it usually does that they were already picked up for the next season. He said that they’ll all probably get a basket with lots of great gifts. And they applauded, so I and the other guest star actors applauded too.

They all knew that they could count on the show going at least two more years. NBC was heavily promoting them. They were going to run all of their episodes over a week’s course to push it down everyone’s throats. There was even talk that the next season it would get the coveted Thursday night spot after
Friends
, and it did.

It was an especially upbeat table reading, but it felt sort of like when I go to my friend’s house every year for Thanksgiving. The family makes their thanks for something they got that year: “Let’s be thankful we got that inheritance from Uncle Ricky and can now add that extra wing to our house,” and everyone nods in agreement. The family is so contented and comfortable with everything and then I have to go back home to my small, rented apartment. I don’t mean to complain, but after years of seeing the life the regulars have, I can’t help but feel that would be nice.

And I do realize it works both ways. Some of my “friends” think I’m living the life. A friend from my stand-up comedy days who has a lot of money from an inheritance was in town visiting. These other guys from the old days convinced him to not take me out to dinner along with them because they thought I didn’t need a free meal as much as they did, since I was always working. I briefly dated this actress whose only roles were in the videos
Buck Naked Tennis
and
Buck Naked Line Dancing
. They are exactly what they sound like. She played tennis and danced, naked. We’d watch them together, and when there were segments where she was being interviewed on the sideline, she’d leap up and down saying, “Look, I’m talking! I’m acting! I’m saying words!” But when I got a little part on
Murphy Brown
she showed her excitement for me by exclaiming and crying, “How come I never get to do anything real like you?”

Whatever insecurity I was feeling seeing yet another cast of regulars bask in the comfort of their homey situation was mitigated by the great feedback I got after the reading for
Scrubs
.

I was playing J. D.’s patient, who opted for an operation instead of taking his advice. The stars of the show told me I was good and a few even knew my old stand-up act. Okay, I used to get booed a bunch back then, but it was an ice breaker. When someone says they’ve seen me somewhere, sometimes there’s that long awkward beat before they say if they liked your act or not. One time a guy on the street passed and said, “Hey, I’ve seen you. You’re a comedian,” and he kept walking. I stood there as he passed. I almost felt like catching up and saying, “Well, was it good?” Or “What show did you see? That wasn’t me at my best.”

Right from the start I knew it was going to be an awesome job. Bill Lawrence told me we would go to rehearse, shoot a few takes, and then if I had any ideas we could mess around with the lines a little. I had never heard anything like that from a showrunner before. Usually the pace of a sitcom doesn’t permit actors on the set to contribute their own ways of altering their lines. The writers and producers are rarely present at the rehearsal process. Then at the run-through, the presentation of the show is so fast-paced; a scene is acted out and then it’s boom, on to the next scene. With a one-camera show it’s shot one scene at a time, with several cameras shooting different angles. That slower, more concentrated pace allows you the time to play around with the material.

There have been a few rare exceptions to this though. If you say something off the cuff at a rehearsal, the star of the show might pass on your suggestion to the producers and they will let you have a shot at it. But it’s hard to feel so bold and comfortable to suggest fixes on your own. It helps when the star or a writer you might know on the set sets that up for you.

On one of my appearances on
Everybody Loves Raymond
, Robert was lugging a piano into his mother’s living room and I was one of many guests not assisting him when he asked for help. A friend that was a writer on the set said they were playing with different excuses why I couldn’t help.

“I can’t. I have eczema,” I suggested. That line didn’t make the cut; actually no one’s lines made it in. That joke was axed altogether from the episode. But it was fun to participate that way.

In one of my scenes in
Scrubs
, J. D. is enraged because I didn’t trust his judgment about my condition and asked others working at the hospital if I should have surgery or not. The way the scene was written, it ended with the janitor exiting my bathroom, which revealed he was the one I listened to over the rookie intern. But during the taping, we were told to keep going.

“The janitor? Why did you listen to the janitor?” J. D. asked me.

“He seems confident.”

“That’s it. You’re not getting chicken.”

“No, I want chicken.”

I was very excited that those little ad-libs stayed in the show when it aired. After a few more scenes were filmed, we broke for lunch. I was feeling great.

Lunch was served outside. You walked up to this catering truck and had a nice choice of pasta, potatoes, chicken, or fish. I was toward the back of the line behind crew people and lots of extras who played orderlies, visitors, and patients with various bandages and fake blood all over them. I was waiting on the long line for several minutes when the wardrobe guy walked by after busing his tray of food and told me I should go to the head of the line.

“Principal cast is supposed to go to the head of the line and eat first.”

Yeah, I knew I was supposed to go ahead on the line. I did, after all, have a speaking part. And honestly, I didn’t want to wait on that long line. I was hungry and I was anxious to call my agent and get feedback about an audition I did the other day. Is Matt Damon going to wait twenty minutes for his lunch from some catering truck? It’s not just that, but the principal actors have to eat first so they can get back to makeup for touch ups or wardrobe checks. But was I hungrier than all the extras waiting on line in front of me? I wished an assistant director would just guide me to the front and I could just humbly shrug my shoulders to the disapproving looks of the extras that I passed. “Hey, it’s not me. She’s the one telling me I have to move to the front of the line.” I don’t know why that was so difficult for me. I don’t know why I even had to think about it. It made me think about where I was in my career. Maybe I had hit upon my problem! I suppose the entertainers that hit it big are the ones that say, “I am going to the top and no one is stopping me!” rather than the ones that say, “I’d like to be in showbiz, but um, I’m not in your way, am I? Sorry. Sorry about that.”

Fred, go ahead. Do you want to be more than this nervous guy no one notices? I have a speaking part. Now is my turn to be entitled. I am entitled to go to the head of the line!

Don’t be such a nebbish. Would Ray Liotta be so wimpy?

Yeah, I am going to move ahead. Maybe if I move ahead my career will take off. This will be the breakthrough that I have been looking for. This will turn it all around. After I eat my chicken and potatoes, who knows what this decisive action will snowball into. I will have it all!

So I started to make a move, but then worried one of the extras would say
“No cutting!” and then I’d just have to explain myself. Yeah, they’d understand. But why should I contribute to their already humiliating experience? Non-union extras are making sixty bucks a day, union ones about a hundred. They have to wait in that special area and once on set, walk back and forth for hours on end with fake blood all over their face. Why just push ahead of them now and remind them during their lunch break they’re at the bottom of the totem pole? Let them enjoy their free lunch. Am I like Andrew Dice Clay’s mother? (My mother would complain that his mother always pushed ahead of the others at the bakery in Brooklyn because she thought she was better than everyone else.)

John C. McGinley, one of the stars of the show, said I could sit at his table. I had been validated by some of the actors and recognized by another! And the day’s not over yet and the showrunner already indicated they should bring me back as a patient! This is the time! Why waste all the money I spent reading self-help books? I am not a bad person if I go to the head of the line.

So I did it. As I slowly crept to the front explaining “I have a part in the show. I have a colon condition. That’s my part in the show.”

“I do too!” an extra said as he pointed to the fake blood by his groin area.

“Yeah, but I talk about mine. I have lines.”

And I walked ahead.
You did it Fred! You treated yourself like you deserve things! Now maybe your career and life will take a lead from this action!

And besides, these extras would all do the same in my situation. But by the time I finally did make my move, I had wasted so much time arguing with myself, I already was near the front and I only went ahead of two extras.
Great debate, Fred.

After lunch I finished up my scenes. Zach Braff’s parents had flown in from New Jersey to watch him on a monitor from another room. Some actors were joking around and cursing and a crew member had to tell everyone not to swear because his parents were watching. The parents said that was no problem at all. You could tell they loved watching their son, they were practically lip-syncing along with him.
Oh, so this was what parental pride must look like.

It’s nice working with regular cast stars when they acknowledge how lucky they are. The expression I thought of was the one from
Murphy Brown
said by Charles Kimbrough who played anchor Jim Dial; that it was like he had won the lottery. He had been around awhile doing theater in New York and then got ten years on that show. And then I heard that expression again from a neighbor I always bumped into who got to be a part of the last three years of
Sabrina, the Teenage Witch
. He was very grateful for those three years. And you had to be happy for him. He was always nice and never had any attitude or ego about himself. It was the second time I heard that expression so it was starting to click. The lottery, they won the lottery.

And on the set, Zach Braff also said he felt like he had won the lottery. He was young and he knew he had a great thing going on. He was on a show that was going to have a nice run, and where everyone was having fun and he was making very nice money.

When I was leaving and saying goodbye to him and his other fellow lottery winners, it occurred to me
—
I worked with fun, receptive people. I was paid a week’s worth of work just for the one day, I ate that nice free meal and the producer said that maybe I might come back. But even if I didn’t, if only for today, I won the lottery too.

31

THE KING RULES

C
aroline Rhea was a bit less than welcoming to me when I returned to
Sabrina, the Teenage Witch
. I got big laughs, and I was excited after doing the table read until everyone got up from the table, and she shook her head in disbelief.

“What? What’s wrong?” I asked.

“It makes no sense you’re back.”

“What do you mean?”

“You were The Butler the first time, now you’re The Warning Man?! How could that be?”

“Make sense?” I asked. “This is a show with a talking cat and it’s all in the Third Realm, a magical place.”

“The
Other
Realm!” she corrected as she stormed away. She headed out and I was nervous. Was she going to tell the producers the mistake they made having me back? I wonder if she had something to do with the fact that there was no third visit.

But I did get invited to the 100th episode party. It was at this new club in Hollywood, seeing everyone who had anything to do with the past 100 episodes. As I passed the casting director, he looked at me and said, “Gee, it looks like they invited
everybody
to this.” I just nodded and walked on.

It could’ve been worse. He could’ve said, “They even invited idiots who don’t know what the Other Realm is!”

Another 100th episode party brought me to the brink when this woman stole my
The
King of Queens
jacket. Seeing a pattern with me and jackets?