Two substantial notes on Scott Bakula, from Facebook comments on my posting about him. From Ellen Evans, a reminder of Bakula’s excellent role in the sitcom Murphy Brown (back in the 1990s). And from Aric Olnes, material from a interview with Bakula about his recent work on the gay drama series Looking.
Murphy Brown. On the show, which I seem, unaccountably, not to have posted about before, from Wkipedia:
Murphy Brown is an American situation comedy which aired on CBS from November 14, 1988, to May 18, 1998, for a total of 247 episodes. The program starred Candice Bergen as the eponymous Murphy Brown, a famous investigative journalist and news anchor for FYI, a fictional CBS television newsmagazine.
The original main cast:
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(front) Charles Kimbrough as Jim Dial, Candice Bergen as Murphy Brown, Joe Regalbuto as Frank Fontana, Faith Ford as Corky Sherwood, Grant Shaud as Miles Silverberg; (back) Robert Pastorelli as Eldin Bernecky, Pat Corley as Phil
Scott Bakula appeared in 15 episodes of the show, from seasons 6 through 8, as reporter Peter Hunt, who has a sometime romantic relationship with Murphy. In season 6, episode 23 “It’s Just Like Riding a Bike” (5/2/94), Peter returns from a time away, and he and Murphy arrange to spend the night together — her first time for sex after a long period of being off the market, and she’s very anxious on that point. Things are set up for a hilarious romantic encounter, in which the two actors play off beautifully against each other:
And we get plenty of prime shirtless time from Bakula:
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Looking. Now the recent interview with Bakula about his character Lynn in the show. The version Aric Olnes sent me was a 2/17/15 piece by Greg Hernandez in Gay Star News, which itself quoted from the interview on xfinity.com. Key sections:
On the surface, Lynn seems like a pretty together guy who kind of knows who he is and what he wants. How do you think of him when you play him?
Scott Bakula: Well, it was pitched to me early on and there was no script and we just got in the room and talked and, you know, he’s a survivor. He was there when the AIDS crisis began. He lost his friends. He lost the love of his life basically. He became, I think, relatively pragmatic about life and kind of matter-of-fact about it, and I think he gave and gave and gave a lot of his soul energy away, and I think he saw something in Murray’s character, in Dom, that reminded him of the past, of his real, true love and at the same time, there’s a part of him that can only go so far anymore, if that makes sense.
It’s not that he’s dead inside. He’s still got a lot of passion and a lot of life, but he’s mature, and he’s seen a lot, and a lot of what he’s seen wasn’t good and yet, that community that went through that and survived that time and stood proud and strong and tall and held people as they died and all of those things, they’re amazing, amazing people. I think of him in that light, and it was an honor to get to play someone like him.
A nice tribute.
(Bakula also talks about his new NCIS: New Orleans role.)
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