by Rob Lowe
He was hilarious, razor-sharp and clearly feeling the glow of becoming one of the industry’s next big things. I am always happy when, after doing this for so many years, a talent can get me feeling like anything is possible.
“I love Nip/Tuck,” I told him. “In particular I love love love the character of Dr. Christian Troy. It’s such a great part. Funny, sexy, cocky but also clearly broken inside. I love how complicated you’ve written him, the bravado barely covering the self-loathing. It’s the best leading-man part on television.”
Ryan cocked his head and gave me a look that clearly said, “Are you crazy?” A little thrown, I rattled on.
“Seriously, the dialogue you give him! My wife and I were watching last week and I told her, ‘Now that’s the kind of role I should do! Where is my version of Dr. Christian Troy?!’ ”
Ryan went pale. I wondered if he’d had a bad piece of fish. He was staring at me like I was an alien.
“Um, Rob, you do know that I wrote Christian Troy for you, right?” he asked.
“Wh-what?!”
“I wrote the part for you. I had your picture on my computer while I did it. It’s no surprise to me that it spoke to you. I designed it for you.”
I was stunned. How could this be? One of the few brilliantly written leading-man parts around and I never knew about it, read it or knew that it was written for me?
We finally figured out what had happened, and it is vintage television business 101. Comparing notes, we learned that Ryan had turned the script in to our mutual agents and told them he wanted me. My agents (doing their job) were on the lookout for only the best and biggest next step after The West Wing. And pre-Nip/Tuck Ryan was just one of many midlevel guys hoping to get a shot with their own show.
“I suppose there’s no way your agents would let you work for a tiny cable network and its low budget coming off a monster like The West Wing,” he said, and I knew he was right.
“But you’d think they’d at least give me the script!” I said, even though I knew this kind of thing happened every day.
“Yes, but you’re forgetting one thing,” he replied. “I wasn’t Ryan Murphy yet!”
* * *
Why is it that we always think the unpleasant things that happen to so many will never happen to us but expect the good things that happen to so few will absolutely happen for us?
It’s not like I didn’t have experience with this phenomenon. Yet I still thought the politics of show business would never ding me. Conversely, I also thought that if I were in the same position as others upon whom fortune smiled I would be rewarded in kind.
I remember one day on The West Wing, standing with my pal the late John Spencer, who played Leo. The previous week, the show had won a then-unprecedented number of Emmys in its first season and was exploding in the zeitgeist. The entire cast and crew had been summoned together for “an announcement and presentation” by the corporate brass. It was unheard-of to shut down shooting for such a thing, and with our Emmys and cultural domination in full flower, both John and I assumed we were in for something special.
As we crammed into the Roosevelt Room set waiting for the executives to arrive, everyone buzzed about what this “presentation” would be. Recently Paramount had given Tom Cruise a Porsche for some movie that performed well for them. The “Friends” were all being paid crazy money, and the cast of Will and Grace (on our same network) had all been given matching black Porsches. Our West Wing producer John Wells had famously given a number of actors and some of the crew on ER, which he also produced, each a check for a million dollars. Even midlevel shows were rewarding successes. Just that month, the star of another NBC show called Providence, Melina Kanakaredes, had been presented with a brand-new Range Rover. It was an era of show-business excess and was completely outrageous, but if it was happening to shows much less successful than The West Wing, both John and I thought, why not us!
After waiting for quite a while, eating up valuable shooting time, the actors, producers and crew were getting antsy. Mercifully, I overheard a mysterious young man in a suit and a Secret Service–type headset say, “Traveling! They are traveling!” as a fleet of junior executives made ready for the honchos’ imminent arrival.
“Whaddaya think we’re getting?” said John with that beautiful, mirthful twinkle that I miss so much. “Ya think it’s a car? I heard the ‘Friends’ all got cars!”
“How cool would that be!” I replied.
We looked at each other and giggled both in excitement and at the absurdity of it all.
Then a hush fell over the room as the top executive made his entrance.
“Thank you all so much for taking time off from shooting today. You, the cast and crew of The West Wing, last week won more Emmys than any television show in its first season in history. This show is the best example in our long corporate history of who we are as a company. Your excellence, your intelligence, your humor and your wide and growing audience make all of us, and our shareholders, unspeakably proud. We only thought it fitting that we present you with a token of our gratitude and a physical acknowledgment of each of your exemplary work.”
Proudly, he gestured to an aide, who stepped outside and returned wheeling what looked to be a room service cart with a sheet over it.
“I don’t think it’s a car,” said John under his breath.
“So, from all of us, to all of you . . . Congratulations, West Wing!” said the boss as he whipped the sheet off with a flourish. “Enjoy!”
Sitting on the tray was a single-serving espresso maker.
At first we all thought it was a gag. It wasn’t. The room stared in disbelief. The brass filed out as if they had delivered gold bullion.
“Do . . . do we all get one of those?” a crew member said finally.
“No, this is for everyone, we will place it on the food table where everyone can enjoy it!” said the Secret Service suit.
And that’s exactly what happened until a week later, when it broke. When we looked to return it we discovered it was rented.
* * *
The truth is there is no perfect industry. There are great people and great opportunities for all of us in whatever line we are in. Also, I love the entertainment business. In many ways, it’s all I’ve ever known, and originally, it was all I ever wanted. The trick is to keep looking forward. You have a hit, you move on, you have a flop, you move on even faster.
One day I received a phone call from Les Moonves, the president of CBS. Les is the king of network presidents. There is no one more successful and I’d always hoped to be in business with him.
“Rob, those guys at NBC should never have pulled Lyon’s Den. It was really good and getting better and they should have been thrilled with those numbers,” he told me.
“Thanks, Les, that means a lot coming from you,” I said, and it was true.
“Anyway, I’m sending you a show we’d love you to star in. It could be great and we’d love to have you in the CBS family.”
I was flattered; CBS, under Les, was the biggest network around. His dramas, like the CSI franchises, NCIS and Without a Trace, were huge moneymakers and huge hits. Maybe this was the opportunity I had been looking for.
The show in question was called Dr. Vegas. In spite of the fact that I hated the title and with Les’s words ringing in my ears, I told my agents and managers I was interested. Although it wasn’t “on the page,” as they say, buried within the concept I saw an opportunity to make something much more edgy and raw. The setup was this: I would play an in-house Vegas casino doctor. He’d work for a larger-than-life casino mogul and battle a bad gambling habit. On any given week he would tend to a litany of interesting characters that inhabited the flashy/glitzy/high-stakes/sad/desperate and wild world that is modern Las Vegas. As I write this now, that still sounds like a promising world for storytelling!
I wanted to steer the tone away from the cheesy, old-school Vegas tropes. No showgirls and mob guys. I hoped to do stories about kids on ecstas
y and the (then-new) explosion of cool nightclubs and big-name promoters. Sure, we would do traditional stories about boxers and ringside medical high jinks, but I also wanted to explore the real Vegas of average folk who live totally outside the neon, who get paid to work in the bedlam of the Strip but never actually go out there themselves. Or, if we were to do a story about a call girl, instead of setting it in some hotel penthouse, make it about her daily life living in a condo way off the Strip. I wanted a Vegas we hadn’t seen before. I wanted it to be real.
I wanted to do to the genre what Nip/Tuck did to doctors. Probably still smarting from that missed opportunity, I wanted to make this my Nip/Tuck on the Strip, with all of its black humor and edge protruding through the sex, fun and glamour.
After a week of negotiating, my deal was done, although not yet signed. It was then that I got an urgent phone call from the producers of a potential new show for ABC called Grey’s Anatomy.
In spite of having a deal in principle on Dr. Vegas, I agreed to meet the people making Grey’s Anatomy. I had read it and loved it—the writing was crisp, real and very entertaining—and it’s always a good idea to hear out talented people.
“We would be thrilled if you would play Dr. Derek Shepherd,” they said right off the bat.
I told them about my negotiations on Dr. Vegas. “I’m pretty far down the line with them,” I said.
“But you’d be so great in this!” they said.
It was a fantastic role, and I could easily see myself doing it and having a blast. I was positive and enthusiastic with them but noncommittal.
I was torn. Grey’s was a much better script; in fact there was no comparison. But Dr. Vegas had potential to become something more original than a hospital soap. I asked my manager how ABC felt about the show and my joining it. The network never responded. On the other hand, at CBS the attention was relentless.
“I understand they want you for some show on ABC,” Les said the next day. “Let me tell you how it is. ABC is the lowest-rated network on television. They haven’t had a new hit in years. They haven’t launched a successful new drama in eleven seasons! What makes you think this show will be any different?” They were all true and important points.
“At CBS we have all the top dramas and have new ones that break out every year. We make hits and we know how to sell them once we do. You deserve to be with us.”
Les was too much of a gentleman to mention that we also had a deal in spirit, although it would hardly have been the first time one went south at the eleventh hour: “Let’s make a show!” he said.
In life you have to put yourself in the best position to win. A great playbook means nothing if you don’t have the right people to execute it. Also, I’ve always subscribed to the theory that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again while expecting different results. Year after year after year, all of ABC’s new dramas flopped. CBS was on a hot streak that continues to this day. Although Grey’s Anatomy was a far better script, I chose Dr. Vegas. The odds were just too stacked.
Unfortunately, I had just eaten what my pal Mike Myers would call a “wish sandwich.” Which is to say that in lieu of something tangible (and edible) I instead chose a “vision,” a “promise” of what could and should be, “potential” and “hope,” something I “wished” to transform into something better, and swallowed it whole. I hadn’t yet learned that even if you are lucky enough to have collaborators who are creatively on the same page, it is extraordinarily difficult to take the seeds of an idea in a script and grow them into trees. And it’s almost impossible to convince anyone to cut down the big themes they’ve already written to make room for your saplings. But I thought I could. I “wished” I could. I was convinced I could take what I saw in my head and make it real. Time would tell.
The first order of business was casting.
More than anything else, I wanted to bring edge and real dramatic stakes to the show. I wanted to get rid of the “soft” elements, of which there were many. I hoped to accomplish this two ways: by staying away from story lines that had no real, believable jeopardy for the show’s characters and by casting actors who had true depth. For the costarring part of the casino owner, I wanted the not-yet-commonly-known-as-bat-shit-crazy Tom Sizemore.
This was before his numerous drug busts and scrapes with the law, before the reality TV show and fourth, fifth and sixth chances. He was still “Sarge” from Saving Private Ryan. He was the stud actor from Michael Mann’s Heat. He was the new Gene Hackman, but with sexual danger. He was the exact flavor I was looking for as a template for the show’s tone. A dangerous, great actor with charisma.
No one liked the idea. In fairness, Tom had just had a failed show on CBS and there were rumors of misbehavior. There was a push for Joey Pantoliano, whom I loved in The Sopranos.
It doesn’t matter if you’re a lawyer, a soldier, a dude at a bar trying to close with a girl or an actor producing a TV show: You’ve got to know when to fold your hand. Keeping your capital and living to fight the battles you might actually win is critical.
“I’d love to work with Joey,” I said. I knew he could go as dark as I wanted and, unlike Tom, could handle a joke if needed. Also, I knew he was one of the great pros in the business.
Joey was cast.
For the part of my nurse and will-they-or-won’t-they love interest, we all agreed on Amy Adams after seeing her in Catch Me If You Can. Clearly, she was a substantive actress, beautiful but not in a TV way and very, very smart. And together, she and I had the one thing you can’t fake: chemistry.
The last remaining lead role was the casino host, a character who would be the “fixer” for any of the hotel’s issues.
“What about Sizemore for that?” I asked. “C’mon, guys. He’s one of the greatest character actors of our generation!” I said, pushing.
No one disagreed, but still they thought Tom was a huge liability. Maybe being fourteen years sober at the time had something to do with my confidence that I could be a positive influence if needed.
“I will be all over him. I will keep him together,” I said. I also believe in redemption and the importance of second chances. And I hate whisper campaigns about any actor’s being “difficult.” In my experience it’s usually the other way around. The “troublesome” performer is often just doing whatever it takes to protect their work or the project in the face of nincompoops and others who don’t give a shit. It’s the actor’s face on the screen, after all.
Begrudgingly, an offer was made to Tom Sizemore. When they couldn’t come to terms, I paid for the difference out of my own salary. Finally Tom was in.
Soon, I would learn the veracity of the clichés “Be careful what you wish for” and “No good deed goes unpunished.”
One day, in the production office, I noticed a stream of stunning, leggy blondes filing in and out of the casting department.
I discovered, to my horror, that without informing me, there had been a mandate to “sex up” the cast. A new character, a hot, blond waitress, had been created to fill the quota.
I was upset. I was the lead actor, I was a producer and at some point, clearly, I would be playing footsie with this new hottie. How could an entire story line and character have been created without my being in the loop?
I had to stand up for myself and the vision of the show I thought we’d all agreed on. “I have Amy Adams as a love interest already!” I pointed out.
“Amy Adams is not sexy enough to be the love interest,” I was told.
What makes an actor a star is among the more subjective concepts one can debate. I believed that Amy was not only a star but perfectly capable of being anyone’s love interest. But there was no way to prove it. So, again, I backed down, knowing I couldn’t win and not wanting to be a lone dissenting voice. At that point in my career, I was still operating under the theory that if you gave in to “the powers that be,” down the road you would in return have some goodwill to use as collateral.
&nbs
p; And so our cast had a surprise late addition. Sarah Lancaster, a beautiful and kind twentysomething, became the show’s last lead part.
We began shooting Dr. Vegas at two A.M. in the casino of the Green Valley Inn. We would start at that time every day and finish at two P.M., maybe the worst hours imaginable. You couldn’t sleep, couldn’t eat. But it was the only way to use their casino.
After the first week the director was fired. When we got to our second episode a new head writer was brought in. Again, the early warning signs were everywhere. But I was glad that my bosses were on top of it and willing to make changes to improve the show. There was no laissez-faire self-delusion this time.
As with The Lyon’s Den, I really enjoyed the crew and our great cast. Joey Pantoliano, or “Joey Pants,” as he is known to everyone, is one of the great characters in Hollywood. From The Matrix to The Fugitive to The Sopranos, he’s got great chops and anyone you ask loves him.
Recently, Joey had taken to using an earpiece when acting, à la Marlon Brando. He implanted a tiny transmitter into his left ear, into which his lines were read by an assistant sitting offstage. A hidden microphone in his costume relayed the dialogue spoken to him to the assistant so she knew when to prompt Joey. Sometimes I would forget he had this contraption on.
ME: Hey, Joey, how was your weekend?
JOEY: Good, man. Took it easy, rested. My wife and I caught up. What did you do this—
(Suddenly into his chest)
No, three P.M. doesn’t work for me. What? . . . No . . . I said three P.M. That’s right . . . okay . . . let me know.
(back to me)
Sorry, anyway, what did you do this weekend?
If you didn’t know that he was wearing an earpiece and talking to his hidden assistant, you might think he had Tourette’s syndrome. But Joey was a team player, always working to be his best, never phoning it in and always bringing his wonderful mix of humor and danger. He was a great arm to lean on, especially when the shit hit the fan once again, this time over Amy Adams.