Christopher Meloni was intrigued, scared, ‘Happy!’
Versatile actor Christopher Meloni, who cut his teeth on drama series like “Oz” and “Law & Order: SVU,” has been stretching his funny bone more often lately, in broad, almost absurdist comedies like “Wet Hot American Summer” and his new Syfy series, “Happy!” In the latter, which premieres Dec. 6, he channels “Bugs Bunny, Jackie Chan, Clint Eastwood, a little Three Stooges,” Meloni says.
Here, he talks with Variety about what led him to “Happy!” The following is an edited transcript.
Q: Your last few projects have been comedies. What is the genesis behind moving into that genre more fully at this point in your career?
A: I find it difficult to calculate in my business. As a matter of fact, that’s kind of the antithesis of the feeling of doing this project. I read the script, and ... I was intrigued. I thought the story was interesting, I thought the characters were interesting, I thought the world was interesting. I had just never seen anything like it before. So I got on the phone with Brian Taylor and with Grant Morrison from the graphic novel — they collaborated with putting it in TV form. Brian was going to direct it, and I got on the phone twice with him, and to his credit he did not B.S. me. I kept going, “What is this world?” And he said, “I don’t know what to tell you, man.” He didn’t have the words to describe it to me, and his honesty was about “Let’s collaborate together and build this world.”
Q: Was it mostly excitement to get to build that world together or was there some fear attached to not really knowing what you were getting into?
A: It scared the hell out of me. It was the first project that I would have to help build myself. My bigger breaks in TV have been either in the sitcom format, which it’s there — you know what the format is. It was with David Milch and Steven Bochco’s show “NYPD Blue,” I did an arc there. It was Tom Fontana, but “Oz” had already been on the air a year. And Dick Wolf and “SVU,” these were worlds that were already present to me. So that did make this both exciting and intimidating to me.
Q: You’ve had some pretty famous experience in the past working with a co-star that isn’t really there – the can in “Wet Hot American Summer” and now Happy, of course — have you noticed big changes in the technology and the way you’re asked to shoot those scenes over the years?
A: No because no matter what happens, at the end of the day, we’re connected by emotion and that sense of empathy and understanding. So you can be surrounded by all of the gizmos, and that’s kind of thrilling and aweinspiring, but what you connect to is that human being.
Q: What did you have on-set with “Happy!” to work with when they’d digitally insert the title character later?
A: I had the script supervisor who did his own version of the voice, and he was absolutely indispensable.
Q: What was your reaction when you first saw what it was going to look like?
A: “Oh thank God!” Because everything rests there. We’d shot everything, and it rests on these guys in Scotland to come through, and that’s the next piece in the puzzle. You’ve got to care about me, but the co-star? You better understand his motivations and emphasize with his journey, too.
Q: Is there a specific ‘SVU’ episode or case that still really sticks with you today?
A: Any time there was a script that dealt with children, it really ruined my week. Mariska (Hargitay) and I walked the walk in that sense, and you couldn’t help but be affected.