To Denis Leary, ‘Moodys’ are a perfectly functional family
Comedian Denis Leary confesses that his sense of humor has always gotten him into trouble. The first time he was only 6.
“I remember the first day I went to school in first grade. Right before school, you were allowed to play in the yard,” he recalls.
“All these kids were out in the yard, and when the bell rang, this 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.”
Though 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, “Very quickly I realized I was more interested in making other kids laugh than actually doing what the nuns told us to do. That was my talent — so I went with it (he laughs), and it paid off.”
Since then, Leary has ticked off myriad projects on his resume, from writing to producing to starring in television series such as “Rescue Me” and “Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll.”
In his latest, “The Moodys,” Leary plays the patriarch snagged in an unruly family. The Fox series, returning for its second season Thursday, is not so far from his own rowdy clan, Leary admits.
“I grew up in a house that whatever your feelings were, everybody knew
them because we were all yelling,” 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 , they find their way back,” 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 don’t know a perfect family. I have a feeling it would be boring. In this case, it’s the opposite. There’s always somebody screaming or planning something, so it’s a blast to shoot.”
It took a while for Leary’s brand of 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 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. I wasn’t making money, but I didn’t have a credit card, debt, didn’t have a car, my rent was cheap. And I didn’t have any other talent. 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 little money was better than working a 9-to-5 job, which wasn’t my gig.”