Corbin Bernsen’s Wake-Up Role : New NBC Movie Opened ‘L.A. Law’ Actor’s Eyes to Minority Injustices

Corbin Bernsen was afraid for his life.

The “L.A. Law” star was in the midst of his last week of filming “Line ofFire: The Morris Dees Story.” In the fact-based drama, which will be aired Monday at 9 p.m. on NBC, Bernsen portrays Dees, the Alabama-based lawyer who battles neo-Nazis and the Ku Klux Klan in their attempts to reassert white supremacy in the United States.

In the past, Dees’ life has been threatened several times by the people he has targeted. The producers also feared repercussions against the cast and crew from such groups, so NBC kept the filming a secret. Bernsen was upset, however, when a national television series had mentioned a week earlier that he was making “The Morris Dees Story.”

“We are not doing this (keeping the filming secret) because we are trying to build up some excitement,” Bernsen said angrily. “For one thing, it is for my safety.”

Even before “Line of Fire” began filming last spring in Los Angeles, the production was running into problems.

“There was a blurb early on in the trades that we were going to make a movie about the life and times of Morris Dees and the Southern Poverty Law Center,” producer Michael Shapiro said.

“The same week that story appeared, our offices were vandalized. Though the police were notified and Morris Dees got the FBI to look into it, nothing was ever uncovered. So who knows? I think we all have a threat of a security breach on a project like this.”

Shapiro doesn’t fear retributions after the movie airs.

“It’s freedom of the press,” he said. “It is factual, the annotation of the script is incredibly thorough. These words (by the white supremacists)were actually said. The events actually happened.”

Bernsen, who has become a TV superstar as the slick, womanizing divorce lawyer Arnold Becker on NBC’s “L.A. Law,” wasn’t very familiar with Dees before the project. Dees most recently made headlines in October when his Law Center sued white supremacist leader Tom Metzger and his son, John, for the slaying of an Ethiopian immigrant student and won an unprecedented $12.5 million for the slain man’s estate.

“I vaguely remembered the Los Angeles Times Magazine (Dec. 3, 1989) article on Dees,” Bernsen said. “But I had forgotten about it. I really found out more about him as I took on the project.”

As it turned out, Bernsen was one up on Dees. The lawyer had not heard of the actor before he was cast in the movie.

“I don’t mean to put down ‘L.A. Law,’ ” Dees said by telephone from his office in Montgomery, Ala., “but I had never seen the program. I am not a program watcher. So I turned on the TV and watched it once, but he didn’t have much to do.”

After filming was under way, the two met when Dees flew in from Alabama to witness the courtroom sequences.

“It was a bit weird,” Bernsen said. “All of a sudden, he was there and I was playing and performing for him and being a bit scared that my accent was too thick. I would rather keep my distance.”

Dees recalled, “My former wife spent a week on the set and called me and said, ‘This is unbelievable. I talked to you on the phone and went on the set and saw you walking down the hall.’. . .Then I walked on the set in Orange County and we hit it off right off the bat. I thought they did a good job in casting him.”

“Line of Fire” opened Bernsen’s eyes to injustices against minorities.

“Not having been directly related to anybody who was part of the Holocaust, I always see those Holocaust films which constantly remind us of it,” he said. “I always hear people say we need to be reminded and it was my attitude that we need on some level to remember, but on another level, to get past it and start living life again.”

During the filming, Bernsen said, he began to realize the battle for civil rights was far from over.

“I realized the Civil Rights movement just did not stop when blacks and whites could share a water fountain in Mobile, (Ala.)” he said. “I kind of was a naive person. I knew we had to be fighting for rights--rights for women and gay rights--but I kind of thought there wasn’t a threat to civil rights.

“Line of Fire” is the most dramatic role Bernsen has tackled since “L.A. Law” premiered in 1986. Most of his feature film roles--”Disorganized Crime,” “Hello Again” and “Major League”--have been comedies.

“Any of the comedic things people like me to do is not what was required here at all,” Bernsen said. “Doing comedy or lighter romantic stuff, you don’t question your own values. You have to do a fair portrayal of a character and you have to see where you stand on things. I always thought I was a liberal and one for human rights, but I am also the same guy who thought we had seen enough of the Holocaust.”

“Line of Fire: The Morris Dees Story” airs Monday at 9 p.m. on NBC.