Stand-Up Kinda Guy

Craig T. Nelson has been a very busy man this year.

Though one of his more salient roles was as the beleaguered father in the original “Poltergeist,” he has this year been seen in HBO’s “Murderers Among Us: The Simon Wiesenthal Story,” the Shelley Long feature “Troop Beverly Hills” and the yet-to-be-released “Turner and Hooch” with Tom Hanks.

Nelson is working on a six-hour miniseries called “Desperadoes,” about a Drug Enforcement Agency agent who was kidnaped and killed in Guadalajara, based on the book of the same name by journalist Elaine Shannon.

And then there’s ABC’s “Coach,” the Wednesday night sitcom just renewed by ABC. Nelson plays Hayden Fox, a football coach at a northern college who after 16 years suddenly has to cope with being a father to his 18-year-old daughter who has enrolled at his school.

“I’d done comedy early on with Barry Levinson and had lost that in the intervening years: People didn’t know me as a comedian, so I decided to do a half-hour sitcom,” says Nelson.

Nelson along with Levinson used to write for Lohman and Barkley and they even had a stand-up routine.

“I’ve done three or four heavies in a row. There’s a close relationship between heavies and comedy though,” he says. “And doing this show was like going back to live theater because you’re getting ready for a week and then you have two shows on Friday and things get changed. I liked the pressure, I liked the risk and that’s why I went into it.

“I went into this show with no intention of it being a big hit, but for it to be a good show. The payoff may not be there, in terms of what everyone wants out of it, but it’s already been there for me and that’s more than enough.”