Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, April 1, 1995 TAG: 9504040011
SECTION: SPECTATOR PAGE: S-10 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: SUSAN KING LOS ANGELES TIMES
DATELINE: HOLLYWOOD LENGTH: Medium
Conti, who can now be seen in the new CBS courtroom drama ``The Wright Verdicts,'' received a best actor nomination for his evocative work as an alcoholic writer in 1983's ``Reuben, Reuben.''
He joins fellow Oscar nominees Roy Scheider, the commander on ``seaQuest DSV''; James Earl Jones, who plays the patriarch on CBS' ``Under One Roof,'' and ``Law & Order's'' Sam Waterston. (Scheider was a best supporting nominee for 1971's ``The French Connection'' and a best actor nominee for 1979's ``All That Jazz.'' Jones garnered a best actor nod for 1970's ``The Great White Hope.'' Waterston was nominated for 1984's ``The Killing Fields.'')
Though Conti appeared in such acclaimed British TV productions as Frederic Raphael's ``The Glittering Prizes,'' Alan Ayckbourn's ``The Norman Conquests'' and Dennis Potter's ``Blade on the Feather,'' he had turned down all requests to do an American TV series.
``There did exist, and it's silly to deny it, a great kind of snobbery about television,'' Conti, 53, acknowledges in his mellifluous tones.
``It's much less so now,'' he continues, over a cup of coffee at a hotel in nearby Pasadena. ``But people who worked in theater and in movies sort of didn't want to do television. You were steered away from it. I was told by my agent, `You don't do television. You will devalue yourself if you do television.'''
But, Conti says, the world changes and so does the small screen. ``Television did go through a terrific dip,'' says Conti, who won the 1979 Tony Award for his bravura turn as a cynical quadriplegic in ``Whose Life Is It Anyway?''
``It was wonderful at the start,'' he says. ``Now, I think it's on the way back up. I think quality is increasing again on television.''
The well-being of his only child, Nina, 21, was the main reason the darkly handsome Conti didn't want to leave his London home. ``That was the major factor. I didn't want to uproot the family. It was an important stage in her education. That's too big a sacrifice to make because it's somebody else's sacrifice. But now she's grown up and she can come and go across the Atlantic.''
In ``The Wright Verdicts,'' airing Fridays at 9 p.m. on WDBJ-Channel 7, Conti plays Charles Wright, a delightfully eccentric and brilliant English attorney living in New York City who specializes in high-profile cases. A legal superstar who would make Perry Mason jealous, Wright works as either a defender or a special prosecutor. Margaret Colin also stars as his investigator; Aida Turturro plays his eager-beaver assistant.
Executive producer and creator Dick Wolf of ``Law & Order'' renown talked Conti into doing his new series.
``Basically, I think I seduced him,'' Wolf says, laughing. ``The series was created, and we started the casting search. I was given the list of 150 actors between 35 and death. I was going down the list and I knew Harrison Ford wasn't going to do it. When I got to Tom Conti's name I said, `Tom Conti isn't going to do this; he's a movie star.'''
Nevertheless, Wolf called Conti's agent, who informed Wolf the actor might be interested in doing a series if the script was right. When Wolf later heard the actor liked what he was sent, he flew to London to have dinner with Conti. ``I told him how wonderful this would be,'' Wolf recalls. ``It has been a wonderful working experience.''
The series metamorphosed with Conti on board. A ``fairly minor change'' was transforming Charles Wright from an American to an Englishman. The big switch was in the tempo of the series.
``Tom by his very nature changed the rhythm of the original show,'' Wolf explains. ``The original show was written to be closer to a straight-ahead, hard-edged drama. He sort of transmogrified it to a lighter mystery, much to the benefit of the show. ... He has created a very unique character.''
by CNB