Raw Sharkey : Actor’s Character in ABC Sitcom Is So Much of Himself It Frightens Him

Ray Sharkey is a take-charge kind of a guy.

At least he’s taking charge of his first sitcom, “The Man in the Family,” which premiered last week for a seven-episode tryout on ABC.

The comedy, from executive producer Ed. Weinberger (“The Mary Tyler Moore Show”), centers around Sal Bavasso (Sharkey), a 34-year-old Italian-American living the high life in Las Vegas who promises his dying father he’ll move back to Brooklyn, become the head of the family and manage their small neighborhood grocery.

“This is my show,” Sharkey was explaining in his raspy tones, sort of a cross between Rocky Balboa and sandpaper. “I do everything here.”

Sharkey glanced around his large, ramshackle office at Raleigh Studios in Hollywood. “This office is not meant to be luxurious,” he said half-apologizing. “It’s for business, making decisions. I don’t have a lunch hour. I use the hour to work.”

The Brooklyn-born actor of Irish-Italian heritage popped open a can of Classic Coke and took a sip. Caffeine is one of the few vices Sharkey, 38, indulges in these days ever since his well-documented recovery four years ago from a $400-a-day heroin habit.

After succeeding in the early 1980s in such films as “The Idolmaker” (for which he won a Golden Globe award) and “Willie & Phil,” Sharkey’s career was going nowhere but his drug habit was rocketing. He checked himself into a rehab clinic in 1987. No sooner had he kicked the monkey off his back than his acting career heated up, thanks to his charismatic performance as mobster Sonny Steelgrave on CBS’ “Wiseguy.”

The scripts for movies and TV series began pouring in almost immediately after “Wiseguy,” Sharkey said. He spent a year at ABC developing an hour detective show “not in the vein of ‘Wiseguy,’ but really something off-center.”

Sharkey, though, received bad news from ABC executives just before Christmas, 1989. “They said they had a lot of shows they were going to air that were an hour,” he said matter-of-factly. “It wasn’t the way they wanted to go.”

Not long after ABC nixed Sharkey’s idea, he received a script from the network for “The Man in the Family.”

Sharkey thought it was great creative casting on the part of ABC. “I am a funny guy,” he said. “I am a natural ham. I like to laugh and make people laugh.”

But another actor’s fingerprints were all over the comedy script. “It was developed for somebody else,” he said. “There was already someone who was to play the part and had some creative differences with Mr. Weinberger. And they dropped out.”

The Sharkey and Weinberger marriage has been a happy one. A year ago ABC approved the series as a mid-season replacement; taping began last fall.

“We decided to re-shoot the pilot,” Sharkey said. “We had to make the scripts perfect. Ed is this old-time TV guy. He likes patterns and premises that are simple and doesn’t like to veer from the center. So we made sure that every story was right.”

And the character of Sal was tailored to fit Sharkey’s own personality and life.

“Like I said, it’s my show.”

Because it is “his” show, Sharkey sits down with the writers and relates stories about his life and times. “Maybe out of eight or nine stories, they get 12 or 13 or 14 episodes,” he said. “Then they use their imaginations.”

Sharkey describes his small-screen alter ego as “a man who was raised in a house where there were very positive intrinsic values laid on him. He left home and, you know, sought fame and fortune and extracurricular activities in the forms of legs and busts and pretty eyes and just had a good time.”

His eyes twinkled. “I am from the ‘me’ generation,” Sharkey said. “The I, me, mine, let’s do it. Let’s take care of me. I want to have a good time . Then somebody brings it to your attention that there are other things in life such as giving things away, helping people, being nice and being responsible. I think that sort of responsibility escaped my generation. We were chasing dreams.”

(Sharkey has accepted the responsibility: he married actress Carole Graham in 1988 and became the father of a daughter, Cecilia, in 1989.)

Sharkey admitted, however, it’s difficult to play someone so close to himself. “I have this concept that I am not that interesting,” he said. “If I just play me I won’t be interesting enough, that it will need English or a little pepper. The most difficult roles are the ones that deal with love and affection and compassion and romance and require vulnerability and sensibility because you have to search, you have to break down the ego, break down the walls. You have to get to that place, hold on to it and present it to the crew and go sit in an audience and watch everybody else watch you-- raw. “

For the first time in the interview, the self-confident Sharkey looked vulnerable: “That’s a harrowing experience,” he said softly. “It’s a frightening experience that borders on terror.”

“The Man in the Family” airs Wednesdays at 9:30 p.m. on ABC.