In the second episode of FX’s legal thriller Damages, a billionaire CEO named Arthur Frobisher, who is being sued by his former employees for bilking them of their life savings, reinforces his Enron-era scoundrel credentials by cheating on his wife, snorting cocaine and putting out a contract on the life of a young woman whose only crime was having accidentally glimpsed him getting into a car with his broker.
Series co-creator Glenn Kessler said viewers responded quickly to Frobisher’s conduct: They felt sorry for him. This was not a reaction the producers anticipated.
“You get every aspect of this guy’s humanity,” Kessler said. “You can hope for that from an actor. But you certainly can’t count on it. I don’t know how many actors could have those huge plot points in their story and have the audience walk away liking them more.”
Then again, Arthur Frobisher is played by Ted Danson, who has for the last 25 years been one of the undisputed giants of a series format in which likability is paramount: the half-hour comedy. But even with successes like the charming, teetotaling bartender Sam Malone on Cheers and the crabby but good-hearted Bronx doctor on Becker, the positive response to Danson’s dark, layered and vulnerable portrayal of the blue-jeaned, self-obsessed Frobisher has been as much a surprise to him as to television critics and viewers.
“He’s very complicated,” said Danson, who is more accustomed to situations in which the lead character isn’t so unpredictable and mysterious. “But the truth is that I have no idea just how complicated he is.”
Because Damages has such a twist-heavy and secrecy-minded story line, he finds out what happens to Frobisher only one script at a time, and has to recalibrate constantly his ideas about his character’s depths of good, evil and self-deception. (FX will encore the first five episodes today at 3 p.m.)
At 59, Danson, who has shown glimmers of his prickly, bullheaded side during his occasional guest appearances as himself on Larry David’s quasi-improvisational Curb Your Enthusiasm, appears to be rediscovering the pleasures of being spontaneous and thinking on his feet. In the case of Damages, it’s about bringing to life a portrait of menacing power.
“In a funny way, this has been a great little acting lesson to me, just to relax, have fun, show up and, you know, be there,” Danson said. “Just do what Arthur is doing that day.”
Back in 1996, Danson and wife Mary Steenburgen were the stars and executive producers of a CBS screwball newsroom comedy called Ink. Though it ran for only a season, that show’s failure was less bruising to Danson than his experience last year with Help Me Help You, a poorly rated, short-lived ABC series in which he headlined as a highly regarded therapist leading a group of nutty patients.
“Demoralized,” is the emotion Danson remembers feeling most after the series was canceled before all the episodes could be shown. It began to gnaw at him that perhaps America had tired of him as a prime-time laugh generator.
“Part of me was like, ‘Wow, I’ve gone there too many times,’ ” he said.
Danson is no stranger to the serious. He made his feature-film debut in 1979 as an ill-fated Los Angeles police detective in The Onion Field, and appeared with his Damages co-star Glenn Close in a 1984 television drama about incest, Something About Amelia.
Though Frobisher is this season’s adversary, in the end, Damages revolves around Close’s hard-charging, victory-at-all-costs lawyer Patty Hewes, and new cases are sure to follow this one.
Over the span of the next eight episodes, Danson speculated, “they’re going to have to chew me up into little pieces.”
“By the end, it should be quite amusing how devastated I am by Glenn. I don’t have any fantasies I’m going to win this.”
INFORMATIONAL BOX:
On tv
Program: Damages
Airs: 10 p.m. Tuesdays on FX
Marathon: First five episodes at 3 p.m. today
