USA TODAY International Edition
Meloni makes a switch
‘ Law’ to laughs
BEVERLY HILLS Christopher Meloni’s latest tough guy is more bark than bite.
After doing time on Oz and terrifying perps on Law & Order:
SVU, Meloni is policing the domestic front as a father raising teens on Fox’s new comedy Sur
viving Jack, premiering tonight. Meloni’s Jack Dunlevy is based on co- creator Justin Halpern’s stories about his father in the book I Suck at Girls. Like Halpern’s dad, TV’s Jack is a doctor who assumes more parenting duties so wife Joanne ( Rachael Harris) can attend law school. He’s an imposing guy but leans more toward tough love than the simmering menace that SVU’s Elliot Stabler displayed when interrogating suspects.
“As gruff as ( Jack) comes off, he desperately loves these people,” Meloni says. “That’s a very revealing and appealing thing, this physical, tough, smart, pragmatic guy ( being) very clear about his emotional state and need.”
The muscular Meloni, 52, who keeps fit via kickboxing and weight training, says he brings “a bit more physicality” to the role.
As a fan of Meloni’s performance in the 2001 summer- camp film Wet Hot American Summer, Halpern knew the actor had the comedy chops for the role. The required toughness was apparent.
“As gruff as ( Jack) comes off, he desperately loves these people.”
“The character has to feel intimidating without having to try really hard. He has this very intense way about him, ( but) he was a breeze to work with.”
Jack, which is set in the early ’ 90s, when Halpern was growing up, is closer to reality than his failed 2010 CBS comedy, $#*! My Dad Says, he says.
“It was important that there was an actor who got what this guy was. The character is unintentionally funny. He’s not trying to tell jokes,” Halpern says.
The confident Jack thinks he has a handle on his maturing kids, but his 17- year- old daughter, Rachel ( Claudia Lee), is tougher for him to figure out than his 14- year- old son, Frankie ( Connor Buckley).
“A guy knows a guy. With a son at 14, I know what he’s thinking, just as mothers do with girls,” Meloni says. As for his daughter, “it’s a natural place for comedy. Not that Jack’s dumb or getting the wool pulled over his eyes, but he’s constantly being surprised.”
Harris, who likes how Jack and Joanne are still “nuts about each other,” says Meloni is a gentleman who approaches everything with intensity.
“He’s passionate about his work, but he’s more passionate about his kids and family,” she says. He’s even “passionate about relaxing, like, ‘ Now, I’m going to relax. I’m going to do my yoga and my deep breathing.’ He is perfect for Jack, because he can’t do anything” halfway.
Through Jack, Meloni — sporting a beard — is getting a preview of his own future. He and his wife, Sherman, are the parents of a girl and boy just a few years younger than his TV children.
“There were a couple of times I came home from work with this bizarre look on my face. My wife said, ‘ What’s going on?’ I said, ‘ I don’t know where my work ends and my real life begins,’ ” he says. “They seem to be shadowing each other. My daughter thinks she’s getting stuff over on me — she’s not — but it’s very cute to watch her think she is. And my son, I can make him laugh, but I can also make him nervous.”
Meloni, who appeared in TV comedies before Oz and SVU, along with Runaway Bride and the Harold & Kumar films, says he’s happy to return to the genre.
Since leaving SVU in 2011, he has appeared as a suit- wearing vampire in HBO’s True Blood; Dodgers manager Leo Durocher in the Jackie Robinson story 42; and a colonel in Man of Steel. Upcoming film roles include a used- car salesman in Small Time ( April 18); a CEO in the Amy Poehler- Paul Rudd comedy They Came Together; and a detective in the Sin City sequel.
“One of the great things about our business is there’s something new all the time,” he says. “It’s a constant shifting of energies. Very interesting life.”