McDermott flies zany skies in ‘LA to Vegas’
LOS ANGELES – Why wait to get to Las Vegas to start partying?
With Captain Dave (Dylan McDermott) and the crazy crew and passengers of Fox’s LA to Vegas on board, the adventure — and perhaps the gamble — starts at “Fasten your seat belt.”
Vegas (premiering Tuesday, 9 ET/ PT) centers on an anything-goes weekly round trip to Sin City, which takes off each Friday from Los Angeles full of dreams, returning on Sunday with added baggage, at least the emotional kind.
The idea of an entertaining flight isn’t a fantasy, despite the travails of travel, McDermott ( The Practice) says during a break on the set.
“The flight from L.A. to Vegas actually is fun, because people are going to party,” he says. “We’ve all felt the pain of traveling, from undressing to dressing, to bad food, to people misbehaving on the plane, (to) getting charged for everything. That’s why I think this show is funny.”
Real-life Vegas flights aren’t quite as wild as Jackpot Airlines’ shuttle, where macho, mustachioed pilot Dave leaves the cockpit to entertain, fight and try to seduce passengers, while flight attendant Ronnie (Kim Matula) and proper economics professor Colin (Ed Weeks, The Mindy Project) find that airplane bathroom sex is awkward.
“The Mile High Club (is) not as glamorous in practice as it is in theory,” Weeks says, citing the complications: “Few hygienic surfaces to lean on, difficult to gain any traction.”
Colin, who flies to Vegas to visit his young son, is a regular on the round trip, worked by Dave, Ronnie and senior flight attendant Bernard (Nathan Lee Graham). Other familiar faces include a man who will bet on anything (Peter Stormare) and a business-savvy stripper (Olivia Macklin) drawn to bigger paydays in Las Vegas.
Creator Lon Zimmet ( Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt), who flew to Vegas to play poker during his early days in Hollywood, says he was fascinated to see people transform into weekend personas on the 55-minute flight.
“There were people going (there) to strip for the weekend, people who were going to gamble and lose all their money. There were bachelor and bachelorette parties” and people looking forward to a mix of music and drugs, he says. “With some people, it was definitely, ‘I’ve seen you on this flight before.’ ”
In two later episodes, McDermott
and Dermot Mulroney, who are sometimes mistaken for each other because of their similar names, ages and career paths, will act together for the first time, playing rival pilots.
“When they called me, my assumption was that it was intended to play off the ongoing identity confusion from which audiences seem to suffer,” Mulroney says during a break while filming a late-season episode directed by Eva Longoria. He clearly relishes the chance to do “our part to maintain a constant state of confusion — for the good of humanity!”
Mulroney then goes back to the scene, as his Captain Steve and McDermott’s Captain Dave prepare to fight in an airport baggage room, with airline personnel watching and rooting. A schoolyard brawl conveys more danger and dignity than this confrontation.
McDermott booked Vegas, his first comedy series, thanks to the pedigreed
Vegas producing crew, which includes Will Ferrell and Modern Family cocreator Steven Levitan. When McDermott hosted Saturday
Night Live in 1999, while starring as an earnest lawyer on ABC’s The Practice,
“Will saw something in me,” he says. They teamed up again on 2012 election comedy The Campaign. “It’s really a big secret that I’m funny. I’ve kept that in the closet for many years. I didn’t want anybody to know.” McDermott has less confidence in
Vegas’ flight crew. He would fly Jackpot Airlines “in a pinch,” although he offers a caveat about Captain Dave, who, at minimum, is under the influence of massive insecurity and ego. “I’d have to give him a sobriety test first.”