Parkinson’s takes a back seat as sitcom hits stride
‘North America’s sweetheart’ laughs at his predicament
Standing on the Emmy stage, Michael J. Fox just wanted to get to his speech. Introduced by Jimmy Kimmel as “a man nobody likes,” America’s most beloved Canadian had strode out to eulogize Gary David Goldberg, creator of Family Ties — the seminal ’80s sitcom that launched him to fame.
But as Fox began speaking, Hollywood’s boldest names stood in his honour, leading to minutes of awkward dead air.
“Steady as a rock,” he said jokingly, trying to make light, but they kept on clapping, honouring the former Spin City star who was bravely returning to television 13 years after doctors told him he’d never act again.
But for Fox, who had spent the past decade combating the stigma behind Parkinson’s — the neurological disease for which he is the most public face — it felt like they were there to eulogize him.
“The faces in the audience were like, ‘Oh, you poor man,’ ” recalls Sam Laybourne, the co-executive producer on Fox’s new series, The Michael J. Fox Show. “I thought, ‘This is one of the sickest, funniest, edgiest guys I know. We have to turn this on its head.’”
Just over a month later, Fox sits in the board room of the fictional NBC regional news program that serves as the workplace of his new TV character, Mike Henry. Wearing a loose-fitting blue Tshirt under a grey blazer, he still bears a striking resemblance to his Family Ties character, the eager young republican Alex P. Keaton — not so much his father as his older brother, perhaps.
It’s Halloween day, but this year Fox is not at home prepping his kids for the spooky night ahead. Instead, he’s at work, pumping out the 16th of the 22 episodes NBC committed to The Michael J. Fox Show without even seeing a pilot.
“All the networks jumped at it,” Fox says of the bidding war that ensued when he announced his decision to return to television. “But NBC jumped hardest.”
To hear him tell it, Fox’s return to TV was a result of inertia rather than intent. Brought out of self-enforced retirement in 2004, Fox made limited-run appearances on Boston Legal, Scrubs and Rescue Me. But it wasn’t until Larry David coaxed him to make fun of his disease on a 2011 episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm that Fox really began considering a full-time return to acting. His next gig, a recurring role as a deft lawyer who uses his disease to curry favour on The Good Wife, gave him the confidence he needed to make the jump.
“It happened very fast, I didn’t have time to think better of it,” he says with a smile. “I’d been doing guest spots and enjoyed working and realized that I could find a way to manage a regular show.”
Going on a tip from his daughter, a fan of the film Easy A, Fox met with its director/producer Will Gluck and Laybourne, a veteran Arrested Development scribe, who pitched the groundwork for what they refer to as a “retro” series, not unlike Family Ties, loosely based on Fox’s own bestselling memoirs.
“He said, ‘I can play any guy as long as he has Parkinson’s,’” Laybourne laughs.
“I don’t think I could do a reality show but this is as close as I could get to it,” Fox says. “I’m very un-Kardashian.”
In fact, it’s Fox’s “un-Kardashianism” that he, Gluck and Laybourne were banking on. On The Michael J. Fox Show, the jokes are meant to feel like a comforting hug from your mother. Predictable but welcome, like Fox himself.
Since his first appearance on Family Ties, and later as a bona fide movie star in the Back to the Future trilogy, Fox was a proxy for the clean-cut American youth (even though in private, the Burnaby, B.C., native was spiralling into alcoholism. “Being Canadian, I never met a beer I didn’t like,” the now 21-years sober Fox told Rolling Stone recently).
“People have always been affectionate to me and really warm to me. I don’t know why that is but I’m really grateful for it,” he says, later saying his mother refers to him as “North America’s sweetheart,” blood darkening on his impossibly young-looking, tan face.
Breaking Bad vet Betsy Brandt, who plays Fox’s wife on the series, has her own theory about Fox’s cachet. “He’s a very confident man. I’ve never met someone as confident and as nice as him,” she says during a short break from shooting. “I think he’s the only person in the world like this. That’s why we all love him.”
Whatever it is, Laybourne says he and Gluck knew it was their secret weapon to get a mainstream U.S. audience comfortable with the kind of off-colour jokes Fox wanted to anchor the series.
“Cosby Show, Roseanne, Family Ties, I love those shows,” Laybourne says. “They were comforting, they dealt with real issues that parents were dealing with in their shows. For us it was the idea of revisiting a form in order to find a comfortable place to tell a real new story.”
NBC scheduled The Michael J. Fox Show prominently in its Thursday night comedy lineup, opposite CBS’s comedy behemoth Two and a Half Men. The show’s pilot also didn’t do itself any favours, opening with a barrage of Parkinson’s jokes. Enough, according to the ratings, to turn off most viewers. But Fox isn’t worried. He’s got faith in his legion of fans. And if that fails, upcoming guest spots by Sting and his former Spin City co-star Richard Kind should do the trick.
“The first couple of shows we thought it was necessary to lay down the groundwork,” Fox says. “It doesn’t become about Parkinson’s, it becomes about my view about having Parkinson’s and my view is coloured by humour.”