Reluctantly, he’ll find his next train

YOU could say it is the best and worst of times for actor William Sanderson. Best because the third season of HBO’s award-winning revisionist western series, “Deadwood,” begins tonight at 9. And Sanderson, 58, is one of the best reasons to watch the violent, foul-mouthed sagebrush saga from creator David Milch (“NYPD Blue”). The Memphis-born Sanderson is a scene stealer as the oily -- and often creepy -- E.B. Farnum, the default mayor of the lawless Western town and operator of the Grand Central Hotel. Farnum also has connections with the town’s kingpin, Al Swearengen (Ian McShane), though Swearengen doesn’t really take him seriously.

It’s the worst of times for Sanderson, though, because HBO is pulling the plug on the show after this year. Early last week, HBO announced that Milch would do two two-hour specials of “Deadwood” that would wrap up the series.

“It dampens the spirit a little bit,” says Sanderson in the Tennessee twang viewers first came to know when the actor played the eccentric backwoods Larry -- who had two silent brothers named Darryl -- for eight seasons on the CBS comedy series “Newhart.”

The son of an elementary school teacher mother and a landscape designer father, the versatile character actor spent two years in the Army before earning bachelor’s and law degrees from Memphis State University. After studying acting in New York, Sanderson came to Hollywood and has appeared in such films as “Alien,” “Coal Miner’s Daughter” and “The Client”; TV series including “ER” and “The X-Files”; and the well-received miniseries “Lonesome Dove,” “The Executioner’s Song” and “Andersonville.”

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We have a passion in common -- Elvis Presley. And you actually met him.

I played football with him when I was in high school with his buddies and went to the amusement park [with them] at night.... It was a great time to be a kid in Memphis.

In grade school, he was the sensation. I loved the music, and I would go downtown, probably taking the bus or hitchhiking, and he had a manager who owned a little record shop and he would let me hang around in there. Elvis came in one day. There were like four girls in the little shop. Here is the thing he did -- and I don’t usually tell it -- but he reached out with his tongue and kissed one, and then the second one. The third one pulled back, and he smiled and said, “I can get anything you want,” and she said, “Not from me you don’t.” He did it to the fourth one. It was all-lighthearted.

I got to go into his house once -- I got kicked out once politely after climbing his fence -- and I heard him playing “Don’t Be Cruel” and “Blueberry Hill” on the piano.

I ended up going into the Army at 18 like he did. I studied karate. I was probably a fanatic as opposed to a fan.

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Were you surprised to discover that “Deadwood” wouldn’t be coming back for a fourth season?

I heard what HBO said and I heard what David said and I’ve listened to the actors. It looks like David Milch is on one bus going one way and HBO is on another and I’m stuck on a train.

But it gave me three years of great exposure and as much fun as I have ever had. And I thought there was a lot more to do with him.

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Well, E.B. Farnum is such a delightfully eccentric and scuzzy character.

The character I played on “Newhart,” I tried to make him innocent, notwithstanding his strangeness. This guy, if I can be bold, is not innocent.

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What’s going to be happening to E.B. in this, the final season?

If [viewers] don’t like E.B. Farnum, they sure don’t want to miss the first episode, because Farnum himself gets in a lot of trouble. The season is working still toward development of democracy in Deadwood. David Milch swears it’s not unlike [what’s happening now] in Iraq.

I guess I have to confess there is still sex and violence. I heard somebody say something once: The series seems like a church service if a church service was obscene.

David is an intellectual, and I am looking forward to seeing the shows because I don’t really understand them, because we shoot out of sequence.

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Who were your inspirations for Larry on “Newhart”?

He was part the town crazy I played in a low-budget movie in New York and part a grandfather who wore two shirts even though it was 95 degrees on the farm.

I learned a lot from “Newhart.” On that show I could do outside jobs. Bob was very generous, but on this one you couldn’t do anything else.

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I was surprised to learn that you are an attorney, but gave up the law to become an actor. Why did you decide to forgo taking the bar exam and hanging out your shingle?

Well, it’s pretty hard to answer honestly. I wanted to act since I was a kid, but I was too shy. Even after the Army.... Law school became a little less hard by the third year, so I got up my nerve and started doing the plays. It was fun.

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Once you got to New York you trained with William Hickey of “Prizzi’s Honor” fame at Herbert Berghof’s studio.

Bill was so wonderful. He’d let me come up to the Broadway theater after he did his performance -- nobody was in the audience -- and practice a scene. He drank a bit, but if you’d stay in his class you’d always learn something.

New York is a great apprenticeship for life. I probably played too much the first year out of law school in New York. I thought I knew everything, but I didn’t know anything about acting and life.

-- Susan King