The Season for Playing Hard to Get

Like CEOs who don’t fly coach, movie actors prefer not to do television. This is a problem, particularly during pilot season, the mad scramble for talent that marks the months of January through April in the TV business, when casting for the fall’s new dramas and sitcoms takes on the urgency of a Barneys warehouse sale.

To save on phone calls, the industry compiles lists.

“We have this ritual where we go from agency to agency, and they give us this extraordinary list of actors,” said one studio executive, who wanted to be anonymous lest he anger some of those on the lists.

Each actor’s name, he said, is accompanied by an abbreviation: Avail. means “available”; NA means “not available” but with wiggle room (perhaps there’s a scheduling conflict); NI means “not interested”; and NI with an asterisk means “never interested.”

Earlier in this pilot season, for instance, Paul Rudd was briefly Avail., then he slipped to NA; a few weeks ago his agent was saying Rudd was so NI he was no longer interested in “engaging [the networks] in a series TV conversation.”

Who is Paul Rudd, and why is he so scared of television? Although he may be unknown to most of the country, to TV creators and executives, Rudd is a catch: a feature actor who is good looking, can handle comedy and can pass for 25 to 35. A guy with prestige credits (the movie “Clueless,” the Neal Labute series of one-act plays, “Bash.”). And last but not least, a guy who (this can’t be stressed enough) isn’t doing television.

The TV business loves feature actors who aren’t doing television. The only actors the TV business loves more are the ones who won’t even discuss doing television.

Despite gains the medium has made in recent years with acclaimed, lavishly produced dramas like “The West Wing” and “The Practice” and such sharp water-cooler comedies as “Friends” and “Sex and the City,” television still carries its stigma of banality.

The politics are ingrained. For feature actors fending off the ruthless ageism of their business, doing television is like moving to Florida: It’s where you go to retire.

A year ago, actress Sally Field seemed to be running from this perception as she stood on a soundstage at Raleigh Studios in Hollywood to preview her new ABC drama, “The Court,” for advertisers.

Field, who plays a U.S. Supreme Court justice on the show, which premieres later this month, wanted to make one thing clear: She’d had no intention of returning to series television before “The Court” came into her life.

What Field didn’t mention was that she’d been courting TV producers as far back as 1997, when she entertained offers to do a CBS sitcom.

For younger actors, particularly those who like to take on off-kilter roles in independent films, TV is perceived as a creative comedown. It’s as if doing TV ensures that someday James Lipton, the thespian-friendly host of Bravo’s “Inside the Actor’s Studio,” is going to ask about that dramatic choice you made on a season finale of “JAG.”

Still, from where executives sit, it doesn’t hurt to ask. “What’s perplexing is that everyone knows that television makes stars, yet we still chase after big names with huge offers because we believe that will give a show an advantage,” said Ted Harbert, president of NBC Studios, which is producing more than a dozen pilots.

And so, each pilot season involves the same game: burning through a wish list of celebrity names, which are bandied about studio and network offices as pilot scripts are read and orders made.

According to a random survey of studio and network executives, writers and casting agents, perennial targets include Matthew Broderick, Michael Keaton, Alec Baldwin (as opposed to other Baldwins), Kevin Kline, Marisa Tomei, Mary-Louise Parker, Dennis Quaid, Janeane Garofalo and Bill Pullman.

Representatives for Baldwin, Rudd, Keaton and Tomei, to name four, either did not respond or declined to be interviewed. Indeed, for agents, pilot season can be precarious. Think of all that “Avail.” can symbolize, including a fading feature career or the free-fall of an actor pushing 50 and tumbling down the celebrity food chain. One studio executive noted that agents can be fired just for taking a TV offer to a client.

In the parlance of this game, the term “not doing television” merits further dissection. Susan Sarandon and Michael Douglas don’t do television, but they have visited in that foreign dignitary-at-the-White House sort of way, Sarandon guest-starring on the Fox comedy “Malcolm in the Middle” and Douglas appearing on an upcoming episode of NBC’s “Will & Grace.”

Other actors flirt more deeply. Just last year, Tomei read the pilot for “Leap of Faith,” a midseason NBC comedy about Manhattan singles that premiered last week, and was interested enough to convene a reading of the script with other actors. Then she passed on the project.

To understand the desperation with which the TV industry pursues people like Baldwin, Tomei and Rudd, consider the daunting task that pilot season presents: Over several months, studios, networks, producers and casting executives have to find and agree upon leads, second leads and third leads for close to 100 drama and comedy pilots, a fraction of which will get ordered for the fall.

With competition fierce, having a name actor in your project is the easiest way to pre-sell a show to a network, advertisers and the public. Thus, each pilot season entails casting familiar TV faces, but not before checking the list of people who are either unwilling to do television, unwilling to do television but willing to discuss it or willing to both discuss and do television (this perhaps unfairly leaves out actors willing to do television but unwilling to discuss it).

“Those names, when they’re brought up in the beginning, it really helps people focus on the type [producers are looking for],” said Sharon Klein, senior vice president of casting at Fox. It’s not so much that they expect to get Alec Baldwin, she said, but “it helps you get to the essence of the character.”

For what it’s worth, Klein said that this year a run on quirky comic actors has her searching for a “Paul Giamatti type,” referring to the co-star of the current release “Big Fat Liar.”

But “we need a Paul Giamatti type” is not the greatest way to evolve a show, say critics, who would like to see the industry embrace more original concepts. “If [networks and studios] would emphasize the level of humor a little more and not be so obsessed with casting sensibilities, they’d have better shows,” said manager Rick Messina, partner in Messina-Baker, whose clients include comedian-actors Tim Allen, Drew Carey and Garofalo.

“Part of the problem with actors is they’re cast in shows that are not developed to their strengths. Who really knows what Matthew Broderick’s like? He’s a charming, terrific actor with a great innocence, but is that enough?”

You don’t have to be Broderick’s agent (who declined comment) to understand why the actor hasn’t done a series yet. He’s coming off a lucrative turn in the Tony Award-winning Broadway smash “The Producers,” and on screen he’s been able to string together a series of finely drawn roles, most recently in “Election” and “You Can Count on Me.” Of course, before the current run there was also “Inspector Gadget,” and “Godzilla,” but hey, at least he didn’t do a sitcom.

Mark Johnson, a producer who works in both features (“Bugsy,” “What Lies Beneath”) and television (CBS’ “The Guardian”), said the dilemma for many actors can be one of time and money.

“The issue is less ‘Am I a TV actor?’ [than] the five-year commitment” to a successful series, said Johnson. “In a freelance business, and in a business where people can easily get bored, five years is a long time.”

For this reason, actors settling down with families--and reluctant to be away for months at a time--are considered better bets. Vincent D’Onofrio, for instance, took a role in the NBC drama “Law & Order: Criminal Intent” shortly after becoming a father.

These days, you can almost predict when a star will show up on TV by reviewing www.imdb.com, the Internet movie database that allows you the opportunity to root around in an actor’s career.

Want to know the last time certain stars had top billing? Who produced his or her last film? Whether or not the star has done a TV movie? Check imbd.com, do the math and you just might determine how soon the “Avail.” sign will go up.