Easy Street (the Hard Way): A Memoir (26 page)

I didn’t know her beforehand and only met her when we both got cast for the show. And we had done a little bit of having some dinners together, having a few drinks together in the run-up to doing the pilot. But my knowledge of her was very superficial prior to this first day of filming. So we were walking arm-in-arm together, as if already a couple, even though we just met. And you could tell that there was gonna be this chemistry. I could tell immediately, just by the way she was just kinda looking at me in awe. And of course, if you remember what Linda Hamilton looked like on the show . . . not too shabby either—she was clearly among the most beautiful things I had ever set eyes on. I mean, not in Opal’s category, but then, who is?! (Don’t want to be sleeping on the fuckin’ couch for the rest of my fuckin’ life!) But Linda’s beauty was quite unconventional, and although she was drop-dead gorgeous, a lot of it had to do with what was shining through from within. It was an accessible kind of beauty, which made our coming together even more within the realm of believability. Quite brilliant casting, if ya ask me.

However, I might’ve known the experience would be, well, unique, for lack of a better word, when, on that very first stroll, as Linda and I greeted each other on the set for the very first time, she leaned real close and whispered into my ear, “I don’t know about you, but for me, it’s two years and out!” And as I violently fought the impulse to blurt out loud how weird a thing that was to say even before we’ve even rehearsed our first scene together, instead my response was, “My, what a nice-looking crew!” Of course my inner monologue was a little different:
Two fuckin’ years? Whuddya, nuts? We ain’t gonna finish the pilot before they realize they made a horrible mistake!
I mean, television hadn’t been known back in the day for doing much other than what it did best—sitcoms, cop shows, doctor shows, shows about private dicks, and variety shows. There simply was no precedent for something as ethereal as
Beauty and the Beast
. And I couldn’t see any reason for them to start now.

Anyway, once we got through with the peppy banter, we got on with the business of the moment. The first scene Linda and I were to do together happened to be the last scene of the pilot: everything has transpired, and I am now walking her to underneath the building where she lives, which is as far as I can take her. We have a beautiful exchange and part ways, an iconic moment that became a lasting image throughout the run of the series. Our good-byes include her saying, “I owe you everything,” and me responding, “You owe me nothing.” We do take one; she says, in a normal voice, “I owe you everything,” and then I say in a whisper even I couldn’t hear, “You owe me nothing.” That would be the first line I ever uttered as Vincent. Out of the corner of my eye I see the sound guy in full panic, turning dials and levers, breaking out in a sweat. We finish the take, and this same fellow, Pat, a veteran sound guy with longstanding credentials, awkwardly approaches me, not knowing how he is going to ask the question, one that I knew was coming: “Uh, sorry Ron, I hate to ask this, but, uh, boy, this is really difficult to ask, but, uh, do you think you could possibly give me a little more?”—volume, that is!

I thought for what must have seemed like an hour to poor Pat, beads of sweat forming on his brow, and said, “Jeez, sorry, Pat, but I don’t think I can!” Pat hurried away, mumbling to himself, like I just gave him a terminal diagnosis. We finished with the scene. And the one after that. And three years later, when we finally got canceled, Pat was the only original crew member who was still on the show. I guess he figured it out. I have no idea how, ’cuz the Beast, even to
my
surprise, spoke so quietly, even I couldn’t hear the sound of my own voice.

Finally, the pilot was finished. We packed up our gear, went home, and waited around for a few months. In May of that year CBS, as well as all the networks, went to New York for the Upfronts, where they announce their slate of shows that will appear in the fall. I have no idea why, I have no idea how, but
Beauty and the Beast
made the cut. We were, indeed, on the fall schedule. All because a guy named Erwin More ignored me when I ordered him not to send me the script.

(CHAPTER 14)

Beauty in the Beast

It was huge.
Beauty and the Beast
was gonna be on CBS, 8 p.m., Friday nights—prime time, baby. And being one of the title characters for the first time, I was in a position that, if I go, so goes the show. Because prior to that, I never thought of myself as anything other than a character actor, somebody who provided a bit of color in the overall piece, but carrying the show was never in my pay grade—that is, until
Beauty and the Beast
. So it was a real sea change. It was a tremendous transition and affirmation in so many ways. I had to pinch myself to see if it was all real. Prime time network television—highly coveted. How long the gig would last, nobody knew, but what I did know was that this was different from anything that had ever happened to me before. I was thirty-seven years old. And after twenty years of being on stage, finally, not only would I be seen by all of America, but I would also get paid for the privilege!

Our debut brought with it surprisingly good notices. Critics were taken by the show’s exotic nature and originality. It was not comparable to anything that had ever existed on television before. Not only did the critics single us out; we also got a lot of love from the artistic community at large and, more importantly, from the viewers themselves. We were never in the top ten; it wasn’t getting that kind of love because we were never that kind of a mainstream show. But there was
a seriously devoted fan base, which exists to this day. Too esoteric to be a top-ten show, we always managed to dwell respectably in the twenties or thirties. And as more episodes aired, more phenomenal notices from all the right kinds of publications started to come in: the
New York Times
wrote love letters to it, as did
Newsweek
and
Time
. All the things you would hope to get, we were getting. So when the show got that order for the back nine episodes, it wasn’t as much of a surprise as everything else had been.

TV works like this: After the pilot is picked up, the network only commits cautiously, and if it’s getting sufficient ratings, they give you what’s called the back nine, so thirteen becomes twenty-two, which is a full season. When they green-lit our back nine, we had probably already aired five or six episodes. Because you’re so far ahead when you’re in production than the airing, you’re always five or six episodes ahead, so they make the decision to give us enough lead time to write the last few shows. The first weeks of airing is a very dramatic time period, because the reviews come out, the ratings come out, and you start to see whether people are maybe going to start getting big press, maybe a couple of mentions for awards. You have the Golden Globes coming out in January, the show airs in September. The Golden Globe chatter starts around November, December. If you start getting mentions of things like that, you know the deck starts getting stacked one way or the other: you’re either looking like a hit or a goat.

Who would’ve thought a show about a woman who works for the district attorney’s office in New York City, who gets mistakenly beaten and left for dead and is mysteriously carried off to some bizarre lair underneath the city and nursed back to health by a creature whose very existence is an impossibility, would work? It was just way too exotic for television, but the chemistry between the two forbidden lovers, beautifully rendered by Ron Koslow and his magnificent staff of writers, really drove it. A writing staff, I might add, that included George R. R. Martin (
Game of Thrones
), Howard Gordon, and Alex Gansa (
24
,
Homeland
). There was an array of elements regarding the success of the show that were really foreign to me. For although I had experienced
short-lived momentary visits into and out of the limelight, this was on a scale I was totally unfamiliar with. This was mainstream success, and when it came, what struck me most dramatically was how unprepared for it I was, how it was something I would never have allowed to enter into my consciousness, so I would have remained completely unentertained. What this strange wonder stirring inside of me was is something I will discuss, but one thing is for sure: success felt way different from failure, but it was also way more complicated to navigate, especially when one is hardwired to always stay a part of the pack.

When one, as a graduate of the school of aiming low, is educated to always be waiting for the other shoe to drop, it’s not surprising when he starts questioning the degree to which all this newfound success is truly earned or how much is just a mistake, how much is just dumb luck—they got the wrong guy, and this will come crashing to an ugly end.
Beauty and the Beast
was probably the quintessential example of that because I was given a character who represented my very own mission statement concerning my incredible longing and yearning to heal a very open wound that I secretly lived with. So to win the opportunity to play a character who was a distillation of all that discomfort, who would almost allow for an exorcism of it, who would provide my very own catharsis to take place in front of 20 million people, this all seemed way too good to be true.

Then there are all the other things that change. You go from being a guy who never had two dimes to rub together to, all of a sudden, having to think about who’s gonna advise you on how to deal with that rather robust steady income that suddenly appears. Now you can afford a
nice
car, can maybe even wanna start thinking about buying a house. You ask around about who’s the right lawyer, start thinking about getting a publicist, about a whole lot of shit you never thought about before. So I jumped in rather small: I bought my first car. I see this gray Jaguar XJ6 for sale on the side of the road and say, “Fuck it, I’ll buy it.” Now, don’t get me wrong—it wasn’t a
new
Jaguar. I still had that Depression-era sort of mindset my folks passed down to me. No, this baby was two years old and had twenty-five thousand miles on it.
But it was like, holy shit, I never met anyone personally who drove a Jaguar. That shit was for other fuckin’ guys.

During the first season, even though I hadn’t been nominated, the Hollywood foreign critics asked me to be a presenter at the Golden Globes. That was kinda like the first time the world would get to see the guy behind the Beast makeup, what he really looked like as his mild-mannered self. So when my time came, they plucked me out of the audience, escorted me backstage, threw some makeup on me, and, while they were instructing me on how to enter the stage and read off the teleprompter, I felt a tugging on my jacket. I turned around, and it was Sammy Davis Jr., who went out of his way to introduce himself and tell me how he was a big fan of the show. Eventually this turned into an amazing friendship that I’ll get into detail later. That meeting, though—like, the man himself—was too good to be true. Whoa . . . this new gig of mine was getting me more and incredible fringe benefits. Sammy fucking Davis! Just before I walked out onto the Golden Globe stage I looked heavenward, and there was my old man smiling ear to ear.

This whole deal made for a serious fuckin’ high ’cuz, although I always hoped to one day get a chair at the big table, I never had any real plan of seeing it through. But here I was, feelin’ like I was in this very select club that not a lotta guys get to join. And even though I finally got a coupla bucks, people wanna give me shit for free. They wanna know what I think and have me at their restaurant or club. And on top of all of it all, I’m plying my craft on the regular, playing a character I was so honored to play that I’da done it for free. Well, maybe not that last part, but you know what I mean.

And then, holy shit, we got picked up for a second season, and
boom
, I got nominated for a Golden fucking Globe. And the night comes and,
boom, boom
, I fucking won. And I got nominated for a People’s Choice Award, and, goddammit, I won. And I got nominated for my second Viewers for Quality Television Best Actor award, and I won. And I got nominated for an Emmy, and . . . well, I didn’t win. But hey, things are
just flying at me. And little by little, fantasy is beginning to overtake reality. But let’s back up a minute, ’cuz, well, it’s worth it, goddammit!

The Golden Globe Awards are hosted by the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, now in its seventy-first year, and it remains a well-attended celebrity ceremony each January. It’s a huge Hollywood event and the first of the trifecta of the three most major and respected showbiz awards. And unlike the Oscars and the Emmys, the Globes award excellence in both movies and television. So in a way it’s larger in scope than the others. Either way, they all have one thing in common: hype. ’Cuz the nomination for these statues and, even more, the winning of these statues represent big bucks for the entire food chain. Publicists get busier, agents and managers start positioning their clients for bigger pieces of the pie, and lawyers are sharpening their fangs in anticipation of greater leverage. And then there’s Dior, Hugo Boss, Armani, Van Cleef and Arpels, and so on and so forth. And the networks are lookin’ at big event–type ratings and the prestige that comes with airing these shows. This stuff is
way
more than just a big party. Although, don’t get me wrong—it’s that too. And all three safeguard their nominee selections with fanfare and secrecy, as if they were guarding the code to launch a nuclear missile attack. There’s buzz of who might be nominated, with bookies making odds and critics offering their likelihood of shoo-ins.

For the decades before, when I watched the program from my tenement apartment couch, I always wondered how the inner workings of such ceremonies operated: How did nominees feel when the camera panned on their face as their names were read? What was whispered in the ear of the presenter when the winner was called to the stage? From the moment I was nominated I was certain my chances of winning lay somewhere between none and most assuredly none. And sure enough, when Opal and I were ushered to our seats, it was clear that the guys planning the event were in total agreement. ’Cuz the only thing behind us was a wall. And just behind that wall were the restrooms. It brought me back to the nosebleed bleacher seats my
old man and I used to get at Yankee Stadium. But hey, I ain’t complainin’—at least I made it into the program. Most people, when they watch these awards programs, want to know whether the nominees prepare speeches or do they feel it might be a jinx if they do so. I was on the fence about that, but many actors are superstitious and have certain rituals, as I’ll get into in a later chapter. As for myself, I wrote down nothing.