It’s a busy week for Progressive Television so how about a few extra blogs this week? Why not? Check back for special Wednesday and Friday postings this week with a plethora of great interviews and TV coverage in the coming few days. Besides today’s interview with Rescue Me’s Steven Pasquale, I also talked to Karim Zreik, the Co-Executive Producer of CBS’s new series Harper’s Island as well as Gary Lennon, one of the writers on the new ABC series The Unusuals. So, keep checking back this week for more Progressive Television.
A series that easily has a spot on my All Time Best TV shows is Friday Night Lights. As it’s third season wraps this week on NBC, the show has been picked up for not one but TWO more seasons. In a partnership with DirecTV, the show will continue to air in the fall exclusively on DirecTV and then air in the Spring on NBC. How’s that for incentive to switch over to DirecTV?! Congratulations Friday Night Lights!
Also, a reminder that you have until Friday to enter the drawing for the three Spellman novels of Lisa Lutz. Courtesy of Simon & Schuster, you can be the proud owner of The Spellman Files, Curse of the Spellmans and the just-released Revenge of the Spellmans. All you have to do is send me an email at jim@progressivepulse.com and you’re entered. Deadline Friday August 10th at midnight, EST. Good luck!
Steven Pasquale is a very busy man. Besides the fifth season of FX’s Rescue Me kicking off Tuesday night, he is currently
appearing on Broadway in Neil LaBute’s reasons to be pretty and, as if that weren’t enough, the release of his first CD, Somethin’ Like Love hits stores this month. Somehow, Pasquale found time to talk to me last week about his myriad of projects as well as how he went from TV to Broadway to taking on the American songbook.
Jim Halterman: When I first inquired about the interview, it was just about Rescue Me and as I found out more, you have your hand in a lot of pots right now including the CD. As masculine as I can make this sound, you have a lovely voice.
Steven Pasquale: Thank you. It’s certainly not the Rescue Me demographic that I’m aiming for with the album but it’s fun to have people make the discovery.
JH: So let’s talk about everything.
SP: Great!
Download At iTunes:
JH: Let’s start with the CD. How did it come about?
SP: I don’t know if you know John Pizzarelli, he’s a true blue New Yorker, one of the great jazz guitar players in the world, and I met his wife Jessica Molaskey doing a play at Lincoln Center and we became fast friends. I went to see John play live and had an epiphanic experience and thought if I ever had the wherewithal I ‘d want to do an album with him playing all the music because I think he is so brilliant. So, five years later, they ran into my wife and said they still think about that idea; kind of an ode to Chet Baker, something unabashedly romantic and old fashioned and would I still be interested and I said yeah. He’s such a brilliant musician as is his band so we got together three or four times, we spent 10-12 hours and the album was done. Usually that takes six months, ten months but when you’re working with someone that proficient, the jazz is great and hopefully the singing is up to par.JH: How did you go about picking the great standards? It must have been a challenge.
SP: I’m just a huge fan of the American songbook and Ella Fitzgerald, Billie Holiday, Bing Crosby, Etta James, all the great old-fashioned stuff. I feel like music has taken a violent, wrong turn in the last fifty years so, you know, that kind of World War II generation stuff that would come on the record player and make you get homesick. I’m a big Frank Loesser fan, George Gershwin, Richard Rodgers, of course, and then John and Jessica wrote a song that is on there, Somethin’ Like Love, which is the title track and a great original tune. I’m just a huge fan of the genre.
JH: When you approach these songs, especially when you know the original versions so well, how do you make them your own without straying too far from the heart of the song?
SP: Fortunately I have such an extensive collection of those great old singers so there isn’t necessarily one that feels like “the” version. I never feel like I’m emulating one or the other. I mean, “My Funny Valentine” is a little bit of an ode to Chet Baker but other than that I just happened to know the songs real well because I have so many different versions of so many different jazz singers.
JH: So, are the guys on the show giving you some ribbing about the type of songs you’re doing?
SP: I haven’t slid Denis [Leary] a copy of the CD because I didn’t want to open myself up to that one but, for the most part, they’ve been really supportive. They’re my biggest fans over there but it hasn’t been a super topic of conversation out of fear but when it has come up they’ve been ‘let us know if there’s a gig around town, we’ll bring our girlfriends and wives’; a truly supportive bunch, for sure.
JH: Shifting gears to Rescue Me, I’m a big fan of the show and yours. Sean has a good story this year because he has some big health issues that come up. Is there going to be a chance for you to play some heavier drama or is it going to be kept light in tone?
SP: I think when the idea originally came up, we thought it would be a nice opportunity to have a dramatic arc for me but then once we got into the playing of it the drama of it lasted a very short time and it became ‘how can we make this ridiculously over-the-top situation comic relief for us? And so they introduce a new character who sort of comes to take care of me in my sickness and then you have your Rescue Me spin-off just waiting in the wings. [laughs] So we sort of made a meal out of all that comedy but there is a moment where you sort of feel like there’s something very serious going on with Sean.
JH: You’ve had so many great storylines on the show, do you have a favorite?
SP: Oh, God. I think anytime that the guys are in their firehouse kitchen are my favorite things to participate in. I think that is what separates us from other shows and this season we have a new location – a bar – where we can be together and be all ball-busty and have the testosterone-driven scenes, which can supplement the kitchen scenes. Anytime that the guys are all together is fantastic.
JH: Is Sean going to have any more romance going on this season?
SP: Of course there’s not. Are you kidding? Do you think anybody other than Denis would be allowed a beautiful woman on this show?
JH: I did notice that…
SP: It’s never the young guys. Always he and Lou (John Scurti) get the girls.
JH: Yeah, I wondered why the best looking guys on the show are just hanging out in the kitchen?
SP: You know what? I would love to ask [Denis] that myself but I love my job too much. I don’t want to trip into a bucket of fire.
JH: How does it feel being on cable? You guys couldn’t do what you do if you were on the broadcast networks?
SP: It’s the best situation possible to be in for someone who loves acting. I wouldn’t want to make a blind statement but, after working for cable, I would never work for network television again. That can really feel like you’re in prison. And your days are incredibly long and you’re beholden only to the advertising dollar and on cable they really let us do our thing…not to mention you’re only working six months on, six months off so you can take a vacation, you can get another job, it’s a perfect situation for me. Cable is where it’s at.
JH: I definitely watch more cable than network these days.
SP: Lost is the only thing I watch on network TV. Everything else is cable.
JH: Have you done any firefighter research or was that only done in the beginning?
SP: We don’t care about that anymore. [laughs] I mean if we’re running into a fire and we’re holding an ax, one of the firemen that play our background extras will yell out “Don’t hold the ax like that! You look like an actor!” But other than that, no, we had a crash course in firefighting and now we’re much too snobbish and fancy Hollywood actors to be bothered with doing more research.
JH: Let’s talk about the Broadway play “reasons to be pretty?” How’s it going?
SP: We’re really excited. Neil LaBute, our playwright, has never been on Broadway so it’s his debut. We’re really, really excited. It’s one of the most relevant plays I’ve ever seen or been a part of so I’m really excited about it. Young people in particular are coming, which is interesting because we’re getting a lot of young people on dates because it’s about relationships so we have a lot of young energy in the theater. It’s just refreshing.
JH: How did you get involved in the play?
SP: Terry Kinney, who co-founded the Steppenwolf Theaters in Chicago and is one of the great personalities in the landscape of the American theater, is a friend of mine because we did a play years ago. We did this play downtown off-Broadway and when they were making it to Broadway, he called me and said I want you to do it. So I thought, well, Neil LaBute plus Terry Kinney. I get to scream and there’s blood.
JH: Can you talk about your character in the play?
SP: I play Kent, who is the classic LaBute asshole friend a la Aaron Eckhart in In The Company of Men…
JH: …or Jason Patric in Your Friends and Neighbors.
SP: Yeah, yeah. There’s always that person in his productions and that’s me; kind of a compilation of all those pricks over the years. So Kent is the tyrannosaurus of those LaButian friends. He’s a real monster but I dig him. He’s really funny.
JH: Definitely very different frm Sean on Rescue Me.
SP: Yeah, completely. Five years of playing the dumb guy I’m ready to form a complete sentence.
JH: I know LaBute’s work and his dialogue can be quite button pushing for a lot of people. How did you feel when you first read the play?
SP: I think it’s his best play and I did Fat Pig, which I also loved. But I’m just a huge fan of his dialogue and the rapport he creates between men and women. This feels like his most complete play as a whole. It moved me when I saw it and I’m an artist so nothing makes me uncomfortable in terms of the material but I can see why people get a little ants in their pants when Neil throws around some of the language that he uses but it’s so great to chew on that language from an actor’s standpoint.
JH: Your wife (Laura Benanti) won the Tony for Gypsy. I saw the play last fall and she was phenomenal.
SP: She’s the most talented person in this universe..
JH: I had seen a few productions of Gypsy and thought she did a great job.
SP: She and Boyd Gaines made that a play about three people instead of just one iconic performance, which is the first time that had happened. (Pasquale, left, with ‘reasons to be pretty’ costar Thomas Sadoski)
JH: It was very balanced between the three without being forced.
SP: Patti [LuPone] was very gracious to really share the stage with them because it can easily become the Hamlet of female musical theater roles and this production and they really made it feel like a play about a family.
JH: Do you think doing theater work makes you a better actor for film and television?
SP: Absolutely. 1000%. Are you kidding? I don’t think you can claim to be a lover of acting unless you do theater. It’s an editors and director’s medium being on television and film. I can do it a hundred different times and they’ll just pick the best one. On stage, there you are telling a story for the audience and there’s no buffer, there’s no music, there’s no editing, so it’s the only place where you can get better in my experience.JH: I did theater back in college and I’ve always thought it made me a better writer.
SP: I feel so strongly about that. I really enjoy working in front of the camera and I like the sort of specificity of that skill but I think I only get better when I’m on stage.
Rescue Me’s new season kicks off this Tuesday at 10/9c on FX. “reasons to be pretty” is currently playing at the Lyceum Theater in New York City. “Somethin’ Like Love” drops everywhere on April 21st but, you can download now at iTunes: