The Sunday Conversation: Mark Feuerstein of ‘Royal Pains’

If it’s summer, it must be time for “Royal Pains.” The USA Network show set amid the Hamptons’ summertime swarm recently returned for a second season after strong ratings last year. That’s in no small part due to the nice-guy appeal of Mark Feuerstein, who plays a concierge doctor with integrity.

Your character is a new model for a knight in shining armor, which is a doctor who makes house calls.

My theory is that the show is an answer to the failure of our healthcare system to make us feel we’re taken care of, to make us feel safe. Our healthcare system has deprived us of that primal connection between you and your caregiver. And here’s a guy who’s willing to go out in the field and say, “Knock knock, what’s wrong with you?”

Your character surfs the zeitgeist in other ways too. The show’s premise is that he’s the Robin Hood of medicine, the guy who doesn’t turn his back on the real person for someone who’s super-rich.

That’s the pilot episode. That’s the concept of the show … the guy who’s willing to go out there and give you the meds you need for free. That Episode 104 of Season 1 is where the show and the character crystallized. The network is smart. [ NBC Universal cable entertainment chief] Bonnie Hammer is in the zone. She said, “We’re hitting a recession and people may want to escape, and we’re showing them a clean, elegant, architecturally savvy world, but they may also resent people who have so much more than they do right now because they’re losing their shirts. So let’s represent the other half as well.” We run the gamut of the economic spectrum.

What did you think when the news broke of Michael Jackson’s death while in the care of his concierge doctor?

We had a little mention of it in one episode. Andrew McCarthy plays Tucker’s father, [an] estranged alcoholic dad. As Andrew McCarthy is dealing with his withdrawal from prescribed medication, he refers to Dr. Feelgood something, the doctor who’s in the Hamptons taking care of all the rich people who need their drugs.

I wasn’t aware of concierge doctors until I saw the show, and I thought of your character.

That’s the opposite end of the spectrum, the doctor who took care of Michael Jackson and wasn’t looking out for his patient. And the way the rich can abuse that privilege to buy control of the pharmaceutical and medical industry for their own escapist purposes. That was a sad, sad example of the flip side to what Dr. Hank Lawson’s all about, which is pure integrity and serving the Hippocratic oath for the best care for the most people.

That’s where he’s a fantasy.

I’d like to think there’s somebody out there like him, but I don’t know. I know that my cousins who are doctors are the best of people and take care of the rich and poor alike. But there are other people in the world.

So your family is all doctors and lawyers…

And then there’s me.

My son, the guy who plays a doctor on TV. How does that go down at home?

My parents are very proud that I am a working actor, but they would have been equally proud if I weren’t working as much as I am right now, because they just want me to be happy, like most parents. My mother carries around her little portfolio of magazine clippings and you’d be hard-pressed not to be shown one or two of them even though you might be a stranger on line at D’agostino’s.

That doesn’t surprise me because of your reputation for being a nice guy. I read that you were happy to prove that nice guys don’t finish last. Is that true?

There are a lot of brilliant people in the world who may not be the nicest people. And if you go through a career in this business associating with only the not-nice guys, which is possible I guess, you could start to believe you have to be … to get ahead in the world.... At the end of the day, I am a nice guy and I prefer to be one. And I never thought it would happen for me, this nice guy, I would always be the best friend in a sitcom that doesn’t do that well. .

Was it interesting for you to play a Neil LaBute character at the Geffen Playhouse in “Some Girl(s)” a couple of years ago?

That was really hard for me because at the end of Act 1, it was my ex-girlfriend from high school, and I was rehashing our relationship, and as she’s telling me about her pain, I’m checking my texts. And I remember [writer/director] Neil and I decided I would go full tilt … which I was loving. It was such a relief to not have to be pandering to my desire for the world to like me, just go for it, and I’m checking texts and going, “What were you saying about your heart breaking?”

And she smacked me at the end of that act, and the entire audience erupted in applause. And it was the first moment I realized, “Oh, they don’t like me.” And to feel that for the first time, having always played pretty sympathetic characters, was shocking and hard, but good and healthy, because it’s the great challenge for an actor to step onto the dark side. At the end of 21/2 hours onstage, feeling the wrath of the hundred people in front of you, it’s a lot to hold as an actor, but it was a great experience.

calendar@latimes.com