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September
/ october 2006:
Fall
TV: Brad Garrett
by Gerri Miller
Series Premiere: 'Till Death on FOX, Sept. 7 @ 8:00 pm
Where do you go after nine seasons on one of the most popular sitcoms ever? For a while, it appeared as if Brad Garrett would spin Robert Barone off Everybody Loves Raymond and into a sitcom of his own, but when that didn’t pan out, Garrett says he “wasn’t looking to run back into something.” What changed his mind was the chance to play someone very different from Robert and have some creative input as an executive producer of ‘Til Death, a Fox comedy about a jaded married couple (Garrett and Joely Fisher) and their newlywed neighbors.
“He’s a flawed guy who loves his wife and doesn’t really know how to show it, a really big kid who won’t grow up. All the little schemes, all the little ideas, at the end of the day are really just for her,” describes Garrett, comparing his TV marriage to that of The Honeymooners. “From the beginning of television there have been caustic couples. The comedy comes from pathos and conflict and unhappiness, going back to the beginning of time. It’s not funny when someone gets along. We’re not reinventing the wheel here. We’re just putting our spin on it.”
The towering Garrett, trim after losing 22 pounds while doing The Odd Couple on Broadway and a movie called Music & Lyrics with Hugh Grant and Drew Barrymore (he plays Grant’s manager), was divorced last year after seven years of marriage and admits, “I’m not an easy guy to live with. I’m high maintenance, I’m compulsive, I’m impulsive, I’m very passionate, I’m insecure, I’m fickle. Other than that I’m fun,” he quips, turning serious to underline the effort necessary to make a marriage work.
“I saw my parents get married several times. My parents were great parents but they were not great together,” he notes. “It’s all about work and communication,” he says. The biggest surprise about marriage? “The hours,” he deadpans. “They’re brutal. You can’t clock out.”
Garrett, the father of two children, has vivid memories, for better or worse, of his own childhood. “My adolescence was a nightmare. I was a 6-foot 13-year-old with no athletic ability who was very awkward and shy and easy to push around. Those were painful years,” confides the deep-voiced funnyman, who towered over the rabbi at his bar mitzvah. “I was never comfortable in my own skin and that makes someone kind of want to become an actor.”
These days, “my little girl thinks I’m funny but my boy finds me pathetic,” Garrett sighs. “But he has great comic timing. That’s something you can’t learn.”
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