Friday Questions

If you’re vaccinated I’d love to answer your Friday Question.  Here are this week’s:

Brandon in Virginia starts us off.

In watching a lot of MeTV over the years, I noticed Paramount and MTM used supporting cast members or character actors on other shows a lot. Off the top of my head, Tom Hanks did Taxi, Happy Days, and Family Ties a few months after Bosom Buddies's cancellation. Another is Christopher Lloyd as an artist on Cheers.

Were actors simply kept in a "database" for different shows, or did producers keep actors like Tom in mind, since they were probably on the same soundstage at Paramount?

Not so much a database as the writers from all those various shows knowing each other.  We all had a pipeline and would pass along names of actors who worked out well for us.  

We also admired each other’s shows so watched them ourselves.  And we’d make note of a guest actor who really impressed us.

In the case of Christopher Lloyd doing CHEERS, the Charles Brothers and Jimmy all worked on TAXI and knew him.  So, in that case, they just picked up the phone.  

From Call Me Mike:

After recently watching a "very special episode" of WKRP in Cincinnati, "In Concert," which addressed the Who concert disaster of 1979 and the dangers of festival seating, I realized Cheers never really did an issue episode such as that. Were you ever asked to write one? Did the network ever push for it?

CHEERS was not an issue-oriented show.  I guess you could say “Boys in the Bar” was an issue episode, but we made no big deal of it.  

We were more interested in relationships.  Besides, there was Normal Lear to do all the issue shows.  It’s not like we needed to fill a void.  

To their credit, NBC never pressed us.  In fact, they totally left us alone in regards to stories.  And in those days, stories did not have to be approved by the network.

Those “very special episodes” always sounded incredibly pretentious to me.  And most of the time it was the networks who branded these episodes as “special,” not the show runner.  

Kyle Burress asks:

During the course of your career what actor/actress that you worked with surprised you the most by their performance? Who far exceeded your expectations? On a similar note, who do you think grew and developed the most over the course of time that you worked with them?  

We knew Nancy Travis was good but were blown away by how spectacular she was.  

The actress who developed the most would be Kirstie Alley, but part of that was our fault.  As originally conceived, “Rebecca Howe” was a martinet.  It was only when we discovered she was funny when she was a mental wreck that her character really took off. And she just got better and better.  

And finally, from Puck:

What is the most egregious unprofessional behavior you've seen from an actor, both a regular and guest star? How did you as a writer/showrunner/director deal with those kinds of situations?

Hard to top this one.  On CHEERS a guest actor freaked out after the dress rehearsal, got in his car, drove off the lot, and never came back for the filming.   I don’t have to tell you that was the last TV acting gig he ever got.  Remember that pipeline?

We recast the role and filmed those scenes the following week.