Schreiber takes on celebrity seamy side
LOS ANGELES — Liev Schreiber exudes a cool, unstudied masculinity. Tall and thoughtful with stubble on a strong jaw, he breaks for a cigarette and coffee on the set of his new show, “Ray Donovan,” which premieres at 9 p.m. Sunday on Showtime.
The 45-year-old actor plays the titular character — a Hollywood “fixer” called upon to cover up, deflect or mediate public relations disasters for the rich and famous.
“Our obsession with celebrities, who are really, at the end of the day, just employees in the entertainment industry, is worth taking a look at,” says Schreiber, sitting on a bench in a fake foyer at Sony Studios in Culver City, Calif. “They are fallible, sensitive people, just like us.”
In the neo-noir landscape of sprawling Los Angeles, the gritty drama, which was created by “Southland’s” Ann Biderman, does not shy away from the ugly side of celebrity. Masturbatory stalkers lurk in the shadows of sunny beaches, famous actors display pedophilia tendencies, and dead bodies are treated not as career-enders but as inconveniences to be dealt with.
“A lot of people have to collude for people to get away with the ... they get away with,” Biderman says. “To create a Michael Jackson scenario, a lot of people have to keep saying ‘yes.’ And the more that happens, the more you’re living outside of permissible boundaries. I find that fascinating.”
Boundaries are nonexistent to Schreiber’s Ray, for whom no door is ever really locked and whose use of a baseball bat is more Al Capone, less Derek Jeter. And although he’s a pro at making the problems of others disappear, he can’t quite do the same thing when it comes to his complicated family.
His wife doesn’t understand him, his kids are growing up too fast and his brothers, who work at the family’s boxing club, have been left emotionally stunted by the psychological abuse of the family patriarch, Mickey.
Mickey, played with menace by veteran Jon Voight, is a crass lowlife who recently got out of jail after serving 20 years for murder. Ray framed him to put him there.
Needless to say, it’s a series dominated by antiheroes. Voight’s Mickey is manipulative. He feeds his addict son Bunchy cocaine, smokes weed with prostitutes and insinuates himself into Ray’s family with a sly stealth.
“We’ve got wonderful actors playing delicious parts,” says Voight on set. The premium cable channel has high hopes for the hard-nosed drama whose complex and ambiguous moral themes mesh neatly with many of their other series such as Emmy-winning “Homeland,” “Dexter” and “Nurse Jackie.”
Biderman says she was lucky when she pitched the show because the network was looking for “a big, juicy macho show.”