COOL UNDER ‘FIRE’
David Eigenberg on filming with firefighters, remembering ‘Sex and the City’ and relishing family time in Bucktown
Aformer Marine and a family man with a 4-year-old son and a devoted wife, David Eigenberg closely resembles Steve Brady, the beloved, amiable bartender he played for 12 years on HBO’s “Sex and the City” and in the franchise’s subsequent films. In fact, the producers took such a liking to Eigenberg that they wrote the character of Steve with him in mind.
But even with that series’ success and the celebrity it imparted on him, Eigenberg has held on to the humility he acquired growing up outside Chicago. “I just lucked out and landed in the right place at the right time,” he says of his star turn on the show.
That down-to-earth sensibility is part of what makes Eigenberg, 48, so compelling as a character actor. It’s certainly apparent in his latest role on “Chicago Fire,” the NBC drama that premiered in the fall and follows a squad of local firefighters and paramedics. Eigenberg plays Christopher Herrmann, a veteran firefighter and self-effacing father and husband who’s evicted from his home in the very first episode. “When I first read the script, I was like, ‘Wow. This guy is right up my alley,’ ” he says.
Like Herrmann, Eigenberg has had his share of character-building experiences. Though he was born in Long Island, Eigenberg spent his youth bouncing around a series of Chicago suburbs, finally landing in Naperville, where he was, as he puts it, a “juvenile delinquent.” “I got mixed up in teenage drinking, getting into trouble, carousing,” he admits. “I ripped out my parents’ hearts a few times.”