Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, September 3, 1994 TAG: 9409070015
SECTION: SPECTATOR PAGE: S-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: By JAMES ENDRST THE HARTFORD COURANT
DATELINE: HOLLYWOOD LENGTH: Long
How in character, how white bread, one would have to say. If, that is, one assumed Pierce was anything like Niles Crane - the fellow snob/psychiatrist and sibling he plays to Kelsey Grammer's Dr. Frasier Crane on NBC's hit sitcom "Frasier."
But that would be jumping to Freudian conclusions, wouldn't it?
After all, sometimes breakfast is just breakfast and actors are just, well, acting.
Granted, there's some predictable, subliminal confusion at first. Dressed casually in white slacks and a comfortable-looking red shirt on this recent morning, the 35-year-old Pierce doesn't dress much like his prim-to-the-brim TV counterpart.
And yet ...
There's that crisp diction, the face that reflects a mind ever in motion, a humor that's deliciously droll.
"I've discovered that I like to play characters that appear to be one thing and are actually another," says Pierce, whose performance, like Grammer's, won him an Emmy nomination this year.
"I don't know, maybe that describes any interesting character, so maybe that's a dumb thing to say," he says. "I know that's true for Niles. He's so fastidious and so upper-class, uptight - all those things on the outside. He seems to be a person who sort of has everything, and is very in control, and I'm sure that's how he comes off to his patients. But on the inside he really is pretty clueless and kind of naive."
Pierce, however, resists comparisons between Niles and Theodore Van Horn, the suicidal U.S. congressman he played on Norman Lear's hilarious but short-lived NBC series "The Powers That Be."
"I loved that show," says Pierce. "I just talked to Norman Lear a couple days ago. He called because of the Emmy. He and I both found that more people now than ever come up to us and say `Gosh we loved that show. Sorry it's gone.' "
It bothered Pierce, too, so much so that he thought about turning his back on television altogether.
"I was very disappointed," he says. "And people came to me with offers for other shows and I just thought, `Well, no thanks.' "
Some of those offers, as it turns out, were from NBC. "And honestly," says Pierce, "I felt a little burned by NBC. I wished that the network had been more behind that show. But then they came with this package ..."
The opportunity to play Niles - who Pierce has described as "well-dressed and badly married" - came, in part, out of his much-noted physical resemblance to co-star Grammer, something he'd been hearing for years.
"I used to get it in New York on stage," says Pierce, a Yale graduate who started his career on Broadway in a play about crazy psychiatrists called "Beyond Therapy" before getting his big break in "The Heidi Chronicles."
"I would come out of the theater and hear people saying, `Oh, that guy from `Cheers' is really good.' "
One is tempted to say fate cast Pierce in the role, but the actor isn't interested in assigning any cosmic relevance to career choices.
"I don't believe there is a supreme being that cares who gets cast on a TV show and who doesn't. That would really upset me if that were true," quips Pierce, who got into television to increase his exposure and improve his movie roles. (He's had a string of strong but small parts in such films as "Little Man Tate," "The Fisher King," "Sleepless in Seattle" and most recently "Wolf.")
Clearly, though, there's something special about the Pierce-Grammer combination that goes beyond the Emmy nominations.
On and off screen, both men say they've bonded.
"Kelsey is amazingly generous and supportive and creative," says Pierce, while Grammer says Pierce is "like the brother I never had."
But Pierce is not one to psychoanalyze.
Not himself, anyway.
He's never felt the need for therapy himself and chuckles at the suggestion that he might find it interesting.
"I can't imagine going just to see what therapy is like," he says. "It sounds like going to the dentist just to see what having your teeth pulled is like."
That works for Niles, too, as far as Pierce can tell.
"I imagine Niles doesn't speak to anyone," he theorizes. "I think he would be just petrified confronting all the things going on inside him. For example, his relationship with [Frasier's psychic housekeeper, home-care provider] Daphne and his relationship with [his wife] Maris. Everyone in the world can see that he is married to the strangest, most scary woman alive and everyone else in the world can see that he's madly in love with Daphne ... He didn't think anyone can tell."
Pierce is more plugged in than that - though he knows as little as most viewers about Niles' yet-to-be-viewed wife (who was named after a friend of producer/writer David Lee).
"I thought we had three children. Then I found out we have no children," says Pierce.
He's also not too sure what to make of his Emmy nomination.
"I certainly had thought about it," he says, mentioning how friends early on started saying "Ooo, ooo, Emmy" when they saw his first few shows. "I think I would have gotten over it if I hadn't been nominated. I certainly plan to get over not winning."
Beginning Sept. 20, "Frasier" will move from its Thursday timeslot to Tuesdays at 9 p.m. on WSLS-Channel 10.
David Hyde Pierce (from left) Peri Gilpin, Kelsey Grammer, Jane Leeves and John Mahoney join "Moose" (foreground) on "Frasier" at 9 p.m. on WSLS-Channel.
by CNB