LAUGHS ON LONG ISLAND
James goes home for new show
With Kevin Can Wait, Kevin James has come home.
Home to the tried-and-true sitcom form with which he thrived for nine seasons on The King of Queens.
Home to CBS, where “King” enjoyed its long run and where Kevin Can Wait arrived this fall. And home to James’ native Long Island.
Though set in the New York City borough of Queens, The King of Queens was filmed 4,000 kilometres away in Los Angeles.
For his return to series television, James wanted to be true to his roots. Not even a studio in nearby Queens would satisfy him.
“I said, ‘If I can do my show on Long Island, then I’ll do it,’ ” he says.
As its robust audience knows, Kevin Can Wait revolves around a Long Island husband and father named Kevin who, newly retired from the police force, finds himself an unwitting invader on the home front.
“My wife (co-star Erinn Hayes) has already established what’s going on at home,” James says with a laugh, “and when you’re retired and back home full-time, you’re disrupting all that. You can say, ‘I’ll set the rules now.’ But the cement is dry!”
James, 51, raised in the Long Island hamlet of Stony Brook, is out to capture the feel of working-class Long Island life that, through his own disarming regular guy-ness, he embodies both on and off camera.
James has gained a measure of experience in how to be the boss yet still relax.
This is in marked contrast to the rising young standup who scored his first sitcom in 1998.
“OnTheKingofQueens,Ishowed up as this green kid who tried to control things,” he recalls.
“You get so panicked, constantly looking over your shoulder, checking if we’re gonna get cancelled.
“This time, my fingerprints are all over it — writing, wardrobe, everything — but I’m also having fun. I want this show to connect, because I love it. But I’ve done it already, and we had a great run.” Maybe history is repeating itself. CBS didn’t wait long to give Kevin Can Wait a full-season order.
James is also serving up a twist on his Everyman persona in True Memoirs of an International Assassin, his new Netflix action comedy where he stars as a mild-mannered novelist who gets mistaken for a killer-for-hire (premiering Nov. 11).
“I’m not going to play too far away from myself,” James said. “On this show, we aren’t breaking ground. I know that. I’m not trying to. But that’s not to say you slack off in the writing. I try to do great stories that we want to connect with an audience.”
Though success has carried James far from a working-class existence, he still relates to the fundamentals: He visits Target, acknowledges he could lose a few pounds and expects no red carpets, especially at home.
“With four kids and a wife, I know my place,” he says with a grin.
Knowing his place helps account for James’ appeal, especially in the face of such dismissive reviews for Kevin Can Wait as “squarely conventional, comfortably mediocre” (Variety), “a backward-looking relic of a bygone age” (Hollywood Reporter) and “anemic” (New York Times).
“When the critical love is not there, how do I feel? I can’t say I’m guided by that,” James insists.
“The critics did the same thing when The King of Queens started, and nine years later I could say, ‘Hey, guys — how’s it goin’?’
“Besides, I like that classic sitcom feel. In a world where everybody’s trying to be edgy, I think we’re different!”