‘Tucker’ Tries to Adapt to All the Changes

Tucker Pierce, the hero of NBC’s new comedy series, “Tucker,” is a bright, optimistic 14-year-old boy in the throes of puberty.

In fact, in the first episode, Tucker’s hormones get the best of him while riding in the car with his newly divorced mother Jeannie. Tucker, who has a side-conversation going with viewers, chalks up the incident in the car to the auto’s vibrations.

Though laced throughout the show, the hormonal references in the first episode aren’t meant to be sexually ribald or the main plot point, according to executive producers and creators Terri Hughes and Ron Milbauer. “That is really there to illustrate how much a 14-year-old, even a 14-year-old boy who is as smart as Tucker is, can only control so much of your life,”says Hughes.

Tucker, played by the charming 14-year-old Eli Marienthal, is also coming to grips with the fact he can’t control much in his life, especially his parents’ divorce.

Unable to afford their own house, he and his mother (Noelle Beck) have moved in with Jeannie’s smug, sharp-tongued sister Claire (Katey Sagal) and her husband, the good-natured Jimmy (Casey Sander).

Tucker also has to share a bedroom with his cousin Leon (Nathan Lawrence), a wrestling fanatic and slob who keeps a collection of human hair. And, of course, there’s the girl next door, McKenna (Alison Lohman). She already has a boyfriend, but Tucker is not without hope.

Hughes and Milbauer insist “Tucker” isn’t this year’s edition of “Malcolm in the Middle,” the popular Fox comedy series about an outrageously funny dysfunctional but loving family with a boy, Malcolm, about the same age at its center.

“I think in our minds, ‘Tucker’ is a little closer to ‘The Wonder Years’ than ‘Malcolm in the Middle’ in terms of pace,” says Hughes. “ ‘Malcolm’ is really quick with the humor. It’s very fast-paced. I think we are looking for emotional realism in a lot of moments. It is more about the things that Tucker is going through than about the wacky situations he’s getting into.”

A Functional Family Emerging

Though the household comes across as a complete mess in the first episode, the executive producers believe beneath the surface there is a highly functional family emerging. “Our goal is to totally keep it in reality,” says Hughes. “We are actually working toward the place where the two sisters adopt an adult relationship with each other because they come into it harboring just these sort of childhood roles.”

“It is way more in the real world than the sitcoms, where everybody is always painfully nice to each other,” adds Milbauer. “I don’t think that’s real.”

Just as it’s hard to envision “The Wonder Years” without the wide-eyed, open-faced earnestness of Fred Savage or “Malcolm in the Middle” without the comic timing and infectious personality of Frankie Muniz, it’s difficult to imagine “Tucker” without the intelligence and winning demeanor of Marienthal.

The executive producers saw over 50 young actors for Tucker. Marienthal, they say, perfectly embodies the character. “He really is this smart,” Hughes explains. “He is so smart. He takes his physics lessons in French. I think it really comes through [in his acting]. You see his thought process as he is planning something or figuring something out. He’s very, very quick. He can make super-quick changes with emotional beats. He’s incredibly talented.”

Marienthal would like to think he has a lot in common with his character, but stops short of saying he is Tucker. “He’s a great character,” Marienthal says. “He’s warm and compassionate and optimistic and smart. So I would like to think I have a lot in common with him. I wouldn’t say so, but I appreciate when people make the connection.”

Though the series is called “Tucker,” Marienthal says, it is not just about the growing pains of his character. “There are other aspects and other interactions I have nothing to do with,” he says. “There is a lot between the two sisters. There is an amazingly affectionate and perfect relationship between Aunt Claire and Uncle Jimmy. I think as we go along we begin to evolve more and more [as a family].”

At 14, Already a Stage and Film Veteran

Marienthal, who hails from the San Francisco Bay Area, has attended school since age 4 where classes are taught in both English and French. He further perfected his French when he attended school part-time in Paris when he was in the third and fourth grades. And the ninth-grader is keeping up with his French lessons while being tutored on the set.

He caught the acting bug five years ago. “My mom enrolled me in an acting class, not as a career move, but just because she saw I enjoyed being in front of people,” he explains. In the Bay Area, he has appeared in plays at Berkeley Repertory Theatre and the Magic Theatre.

Making his TV debut in the 1996 CBS holiday film “Unlikely Angel,” Marienthal has also appeared in the feature comedies “American Pie” and “Slums of Beverly Hills” and was the voice of Hogarth Hughes in the animated film “The Iron Giant.”

Marienthal believes “Tucker” has something for everyone. “It has a lovely family dynamic,” he says. “It has him at school and going after the girl next door, which is a very 14-year-old thing [to do]. I know all kinds of people out there who relate to me on that one!”