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"Huggy" guy says cheers to nice with new role as Becker
CLAIRE BICKLEY
The Toronto Sun
HOLLYWOOD - So what's a swell save-the-whales kind of guy like
Ted Danson doing in a role like Becker?
"I obviously need Becker for my image. Desperately," Danson jokes of being cast
against type as a scathingly opinionated, politically-incorrect doctor in the sitcom that
premiered last week on CBS.
Becker runs a clinic in the
Bronx, diagnosing patients. He runs his mouth everywhere, diagnosing humanity.
When a panhandler approaches him for spare change, he goes on the attack.
"You mean extra change,
money that if you weren't here, I'd just throw away?"
He rants about TV talk shows, euphemisms for
used cars, ailments he sees as self-inflicted. He's rude to the nice woman who runs the
diner (Terry Farrell), harsh to the blind man who hangs out there (Alex Desert), dumps
work on his nurse (Hattie Winston) and just plain dumps on his new eager-to-please nurse's
aide (Shawnee Smith).
When a neighbour plays Indian
music while Becker's trying to review medical charts, he sticks his head out the window
and yells, "Hey, foreign guy... turn it off or I call immigration."
None of which most of us could normally imagine
coming out of Danson's mouth.
Which is true enough, because the character is
a fictional version of the show's creator, Dave Hackel, a sitcom veteran who produced Dear
John, Wings and Frasier and grew sick of having comedy taken too seriously.
The National Association of
Massage Therapists complained about the way their trade was portrayed on one of his shows.
An embassy phoned to beef about a mail-order bride reference on another.
"These are jokes. These are
observations," Hackel protests.
"So what I finally decided was that I was
so frustrated with it that it was time to just write about everything and let the chips
fall where they may."
How emotionally disparate are
the producer and his star in real life?
"I'm a very huggy guy," complains
Danson. "This guy won't hug me."
That familiar, likable image
Danson has is the spoonful of sugar meant to help the audience get Becker down.
"I think you can make use of that 11 years of Cheers to go even further in the
direction of Becker," he says.
"You'll probably sit around for at least
the initial part going, 'Ah, even if I'm being offended or scared a little bit right now,
I thought he was a nice guy, so I'll hang out."
The actor who describes
himself as very un-Becker-like - "Every day of my life, I'm trying to please as many
people as possible" - is enjoying not playing so nice.
"I'm very excited about not being
politically correct. I spend a great many hours a day being politically correct. It's
great to go to work and be a schmuck."
Off-set, Danson's prominently aligned with liberal do-gooding. He's a Friend of Bill (Clinton) and a founder of the American Oceans Campaign.
He donated the money he earned for his brief appearance in Saving
Private Ryan to a Holocaust remembrance foundation.
For his wife Mary Steenburgen's birthday, he had an old-fashioned stone
wall built for their garden.
Everybody say awwww.
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