‘PERFECTLY FUNCTIONAL’
Denis Leary returning with TV family in ‘The Moodys’
Comedian Denis Leary confesses that his sense of humor has always gotten him into trouble. The first time, he was only 6.
“I specifically remember the first day I went to school in the first grade. And we were out in the yard. Right before school started, you were allowed to play around in the yard,” he recalls.
“And all these kids were out in the yard, and when the bell rang, this really mean-looking old nun came out and started yelling at us to go inside. My house is only about four blocks away, so I took off. I thought, ‘I’m not doing what SHE tells me.’ So I got detention my first day of first grade. And it never stopped.”
Although the punishment became less severe, it never did stop for Leary, who polished his funny bone in the process. “I went to Catholic school for 12 years,” he says, “at the same school in my neighborhood with the same kids, the same nuns, the same priest. So I don’t know why, but very quickly I realized that I was more interested in making the other kids laugh than actually doing what the nuns told us to do. That was my talent — so I went with it, and it paid off.”
It paid off, all right. Since then Leary has ticked off several projects on his colorful resume, from writing to producing to starring in TV series like “Rescue Me,” “Sirens” and “Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll.”
In his latest, “The Moodys,” Leary plays the put-upon patriarch snagged in an unruly and zany family. The series, which returns to Fox on April 1, is not so far from his own rowdy clan, Leary says.
“I grew up in a house that whatever your feelings were, everybody knew them because we were all yelling and screaming all the time,” he says.
“That part of (the show) spoke to my heart, and also the idea of a bunch of kids that can’t get away from each other, like most families. When they finally do get away from each other, they find their way back together,” he says.
In spite of their foibles, he regards his TV family as perfectly functional. “Coming from a workingclass Irish household where everybody wore their feelings on their sleeves, I don’t find it dysfunctional. I think it’s dysfunctional based on what people consider the ‘perfect family.’ But I don’t know a perfect family. I’ve never met one. I have a feeling it would be pretty boring. In this case, it’s the opposite. There’s always somebody screaming or upset or planning something, so it’s a blast to shoot, based on all the things they go through.”
It took a while for Leary’s brand of razor-edged comedy to catch on, but he wasn’t troubled by the wait. “I can’t remember who said it, but it’s the difference between longing to do something and needing to do something — for better or worse,” he says.
“So when I was young, I was trying to act in the theater. That’s where I came from, the theater. I wasn’t making any money, but I didn’t have a credit card, didn’t have any debt, didn’t have a car, my rent was really cheap. And I actually didn’t have any other talent, so it didn’t bother me. I just loved waking up and doing comedy and acting in shows that nobody saw. It didn’t bother me. Did I want to be famous? Yeah, but as little money as I was making was better than working a 9-to-5 job which wasn’t my gig.”
The thought of quitting his gig never occurred to him, he says. “I never looked back. I loved acting and writing and stand-up so much it never even entered my mind. What entered my mind was I wanted to get out of the clubs and go back to the theater eventually. I wrote a one-man show because I knew I wanted to get in a theatrical setting.”
That piece, “No Cure for Cancer,” played off-Broadway, selling out for six months. “I was still only making $300 a week. That was reasonable money, because I covered my rent,” he says. “I had to close the show because my second baby, my daughter, was coming. My wife and I couldn’t afford babysitters, so she was going to be born in February, and I closed the show in January so I could be around when the baby was born. That’s how committed I was.”
Once he became a father, Leary was determined to learn as much as he could about his chosen field. “Looking back on it in terms of show business, I was always thinking about the long haul. I learned about filmmaking and television and writing to make sure I had a career that lasted because I had to feed two kids now. I had enough life experience when I got famous that I knew I wanted to be in it for a long haul instead of being a flash in the pan.”
While he concedes he’s not “the most patient guy in the world,” Leary says he never looks back. “I’m a shark; I just move forward.
“I think about things I did wrong and try to learn from them, but I don’t dwell on the past, I just move forward. There were probably things I could’ve done better as a dad. Sometimes I think I wish I hadn’t tortured those nuns. But by torturing those nuns, it made me funny. And that sort of got me where I am, so I can’t really regret it.”