Focus : Tom Conti’s ‘Wright’ of Passage

Scottish actor Tom Conti is the newest member of an elite club: He’s one of four Oscar nominees for best actor to star in a weekly TV series.

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 Pasadena hotel. “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 the 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,” which premiered March 31, 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.”

And one who is sort of quirky. For example, Wright in New York drives a right side-steered Rolls-Royce. “I think that it has to do with maintaining his image in a way, hanging on to something from the past,” Conti says. “He can’t altogether relinquish his ties with the past. He still has his suits made in London.”

Conti didn’t consult with any attorneys before filming began. “I have known lawyers all my life,” he says simply. “There’s a common denominator throughout all the minds of most barristers in England. The bar in England is very exclusive.”

The fast-paced shooting schedule of American TV has been difficult for Conti. “We had 10 days to do the pilot and that, God knows, was hard enough,” Conti acknowledges. “We started at 8 in the morning and there was one day I didn’t finish until midnight. That was a very long, grueling day. They are trying to put a certain number of scenes in the office so I don’t have to be going out (on location) all the time. There are some scenes I’m not in. I did ask them to try to give me some time off so I am not on the screen every second.”

Conti pauses and smiles. “It’s also quite good not to be on the screen every second--give the public a rest from your face.”

But Wolf doesn’t think viewers will tire of Conti.

“This is going to be interesting to see how the demographics play out on this show,” Wolf says. “Men like him, but even the network executives can’t quite believe the reactions of their own women to the character. It’s unbelievable. You go out with (Conti) and to women over 30, he’s like catnip. It is just unbelievable!”

“The Wright Verdicts” air Fridays at 9 p.m. on CBS.