Profile : Old South, New Waterston : The scripts of ‘I’ll Fly Away’ lure actor from movies and stage

Sam Waterston isn’t an actor one would expect to do a TV series. He has a flourishing film and Broadway career and a best actor Oscar nomination to his credit for 1984’s “The Killing Fields.”

His one TV series, CBS’ “Q.E.D,” lasted a woeful four weeks back in 1982. And Waterston, a youthful 50, admits he wasn’t looking to do another series.

He changed his mind earlier this year when he received the script for the new NBC series “I’ll Fly Away,” which premieres Monday with a special two-hour episode. The series will have its work cut out after moving to its regular time slot Tuesday opposite ABC’s long-running sitcom “Full House” and CBS’ popular “Rescue 911.”

“The material just leapt out at me,” Waterston said, relaxing at an empty restaurant at the Regency Hilton in Universal City.

“I’ll Fly Away” is the latest show from John Falsey and Joshua Brand, the Emmy-winning team who created and produced such acclaimed series as “St. Elsewhere,” “A Year in the Life” and the current hit “Northern Exposure.”

Like other Falsey and Brand shows, “I’ll Fly Away” is a character-driven drama. This one is set in the South in the late 1950s, when the rumblings of civil rights are just starting to be heard.

Waterston plays Forrest Bedford, a principled Southern attorney with three children and a wife in a mental institution who is at odds over the changes in the Old South. Regina Taylor co-stars as Lily, the Bedfords’ new strong-willed, opinionated black housekeeper who serves as surrogate mother to the Bedford children and a constant reminder of the developing New South.

Not only is “I’ll Fly Away” one of the few new one-hour dramas this fall, it’s been received warmly by critics and advertisers as one of the best.

The character of Bedford fits Waterston like an old, comfortable shoe. Both Waterston and his alter ego are intelligent, gracious and exude a quiet intensity. Waterston also is a devoted family man (he lives in Connecticut with his wife and four children).

Though “I’ll Fly Away” is set nearly four decades ago, Waterston maintains the series is not rooted in the past. “(Brand and Falsey) are opening an avenue to the past,” he said. “They are not trying to jump back into the past and stay there. They want it to be a flow between the past and the present. They want the audience, with the least amount of impediment, to do that (flow between the past and present), too. “

The series, he said, is about people, not issues.

“What I think is really striking about it is that you come to these ‘issues’ through common everyday existence,” he said. “They haven’t constructed a platform from which to preach. They have made a real world and in that real world, just like yours and mine, you keep crashing into things.

“There’s all this political stuff now and whether we are going forward or backward in resolving these racial questions we have in this country, but if this television series makes a contribution, I hope it will be on the personal and emotional level. People maybe will see there’s some kind of hopefulness in these people who are trying to be decent and seeking an understanding of each other without breaking too many things.”

Falsey agreed: “It’s a story of ordinary people set against extraordinary times. (The 1950s South) was really an important time domestically.”

Some reviewers have compared Bedford to Atticus Finch, the gentle Southern attorney and father in Harper Lee’s novel “To Kill a Mockingbird.” Falsey and Waterston disagree. “Bedford is a not a man who finds it easy to say ‘Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead,’ ” Waterston said. “There is a lot he values in the world as it is.”

“He is clearly a flawed character,” Falsey said. “We will continue to push that (fact) in the episodes. He doesn’t do the right thing. He’s not a super liberal. He compromises. He’s a conflicted character. In the pilot he says, ‘I want things to change and I want them to remain the same.’ ”

“I’ll Fly Away” is being shot in Atlanta, a real change for Waterston, whose work often keeps him in New York City. But it’s good news for the family man: “I will be coming home on the weekends. That is the blessing of shooting in Altanta. I will be in the same time zone.”

“I’ll Fly Away” premieres Monday at 9 p.m. on NBC. It moves to its regular day and time Tuesday at 8 p.m.