TV INTERVIEW: THE CAST OF 'THE MIDDLE'

Neil Flynn, Patricia Heaton & Chris Kattan Tell Us Why Family Life Has Gone To Heck

Parents are the real heroes, but we think Frankie Heck (Patricia Heaton) must be some kind of superhero.  A loving wife and mother of three, she’s middle class in the middle of the country and is rapidly approaching middle age. Buzzine’s Emmanuel Itier sat down with the cast of this upcoming ABC series...

 

Emmanuel Itier:  Neil, does this mean the janitor has retired from Sacred Heart?

 

Neil Flynn:  Yes, moved to Indiana, and somehow he has three children. I think I’m going to play it as if it’s a totally separate character. [Laughs]

 

EI:  As promised, your arc ended on Scrubs with a name.  So was that it for Scrubs?

 

NF:  Yeah, we were done.  The show ended, and we were free to go and find other employment, and then they started up again, which is fine.  But I’m very glad to be here.  Isn’t that what I’m supposed to say?  Yes, I’m done with Scrubs.  I’ll probably show up one more time playing a different character who has a name from the get-go, and that’s very exciting.

 

EI:  I gather there was a degree of improvisation on Scrubs that you were allowed to kind of riff.  Do you have that freedom here?

 

NF:  I tried it and was hit, so “No? Not so much with the joke?  All right.”  No.  I don’t know.  We have yet to establish that.  I think it’s a whole different setup than the character on Scrubs.  I’m thrilled that this thing is all about me, by the way. We’ll see.  The setup with Scrubs is very open to that sort of thing, but we’ll see.

 

Eileen Heisler:  It would be so nice if we could just not write your part and just say, “Neil, say something funny here.”  We’ll work something out.

 

NF:  Are you okay with that?

 

Patricia Heaton:  Yes.

 

EI: Chris, does this not kind of undermine the premise of the “Bollywood” show, in that you are unemployable?

 

Chris Kattan:  It completely undermines it.  I had a plan and now it’s been undermined.

 

NF:  Do you know what “undermined” means?

 

CK:  I know what it means.  It means under.  It’s like Latin.  Under means to go under, to surprise, a sneak attack.

 

NF:  Right.

 

CK: I know what’s happening.  And “mind” [pointing to his head] — I know what that means too.  But, no, I’m back to being…not a silly character, but a part of being middle…

 

DeAnn Heline: Not playing yourself.

 

CK: But as I get older, I become a better actor, so I will find that part of me that will come through this character.  And I’ve always wanted to be in high definition.

EI:  Patricia, you are destined to always be towered over by a tall man? Brad Garrett would be in scenes with you.  He is just huge.  Neil, how tall are you?

 

NF: 6’5″.

 

CK:  That’s not true.

 

EI: Patricia, what’s it like to play all of these scenes? Here you are, husband and wife, and yet you are under his shoulder.  Does it feel unusual sometimes to just have someone towering over you like that?

 

PH: No, I guess I’m used to it.  People come up to me when they see me on the street and say, “Oh, you are so tiny.  You are so much smaller than I thought.”  And I say, “Really?  Because everyone I’ve ever worked with is taller than me.”  I am small, but no.  It’s great.

 

EI:  You have four kids in real life, right?

 

PH:  Yes.

 

EI: What is their age range?

 

PH: Ten, 12, 14, and 16.

 

EI:  I assume that you are not as harassed as she is, because I assume you have help and things like that.

 

PH: I do not have any help right now. I haven’t had help for a while. You can see me at Ralphs or Pavilions three times a week over on Vine and Melrose, not looking like this. [Laughs]

 

EI: Being a busy, working mom yourself, what parts do you relate to and what parts don’t you relate to about your character?

 

PH: I relate to every single thing.  I grew up in Ohio, and since I didn’t really get a regular start in this industry until much later in life, I feel the Ohio roots — that Midwestern roots are still really within me, and I feel that’s where I’m most comfortable, so this is a very comfortable character for me to be in.  Everything that the ladies have written is just so…we just talk about all of the similarities we have — working at the car dealership, Eller Ford Motors… Brian Doyle-Murray plays my boss, and just his accent… I get to do a little more of an accent — that’s not an accent.  I had an acting teacher once that said, “If you don’t get rid of that Cleveland accent, you will never work,”  and that’s all I’ve played are people from the Midwest, so it actually has worked for me.  

 

We have a scene in here where Frankie throws some frozen pancakes in the microwave and then calls everybody down for breakfast.  I don’t do it so much anymore, but when the kids were little and I was working a lot, that was totally me, although we did toaster waffles more.  I get moms feeling harassed in having to do everything and do everything really quickly, and always feeling inadequate because everything you see on TV or in the magazines is how you are supposed to prepare everything, and it’s supposed to be fresh and organic and eco-friendly and all of this kind of stuff.  You just don’t have time for it and you are exhausted, especially when Frankie looks at her driver’s license and sees the change.  It’s exactly what we all go through. And there’s nothing on right now that really deals with Midwestern people and the struggle, the economy, but in a funny way and in a celebratory way, so I’m so excited to be a part of it.

 

EI: Eden, who are you channeling?  Do you know this girl?  Did you love The Brady Bunch Movie?  Are you Jan?

 

Eden Sher:  I don’t think I’m channeling a specific character from another sitcom, but I’m just taking it in from every average girl who has never made a team, pretty much.

 

EI: I’m just wondering about the production values.  It looks really expensive.  It’s cinematic.  Are you going to be able to keep that up?

 

DH:  Absolutely.  Certainly for the pilot we had a longer shooting schedule, and you have a bigger budget on your pilot than you do… But it’s called The Middle — the middle of the country and the character — the place is a character.  So it’s really important.  They have to be able to shoot out in a corn field…so although we don’t have the budget that we had in the pilot, we absolutely, in each show, are looking to say, “What can we do?  How can we incorporate the location and make it look great?”  The Midwest is wish fulfillment.  It’s corn mazes and all of those kinds of things that remind you of home.  That was really important that we do that.

 

CK:  There’s a cow on the…

 

EH:  Yeah, we have a cow.  We won’t have the budget that we had, but it’s very important that we stay cinematic the way we did in the pilot.

 

DH:  It’s going to look great.

 

EI: Patricia, you said, when you are in Ralphs, you don’t look like this, but I remember Debra Barone being completely put together for a mother of three kids, and now Frankie is on the opposite side of the scale.  When you are at Ralphs, where in that continuum are you?

 

PH:  I really don’t look like this when I’m at Ralphs.

 

CK:  You look good, though.

 

PH:  Thank you.  This is may be something I have in common with Frankie.  I buy my sweat clothes in the boys’ section of Target and that’s what I wear, and I often wear it three days in a row.  So if you see somebody really short with green polyester sweatpants on and a hoodie, that’s me.  It’s cheaper in the boys’ department at Target.  Target is cheap anyway, and then if you shop in the boys’ department, it’s half the price.

 

NF:  Target, everyone — America’s store. [Laughs]

 

EH: That’s how we are going to afford the show — Target.

 

DH: How do you spell Thrifty?

 

EH: It’s Midwestern.

 

EI: Have any of you seen Modern Family?

 

DH:  Yeah, it’s great.

 

EH: Love it.

EI:  How does it feel to be in a place where family sitcoms…the last good one was, like, in 1983. [Laughs]

 

 

NF: Which one was that? The Cosby Show?

 

CK:  Raymond, maybe.

 

PH: It couldn’t be that big because I’m not that old.

 

CK:  Was that M*A*S*H?

 

EI: To have two. This might actually, maybe, succeed.

 

DH:  Let’s hope.

 

EI:  Do you talk about the other one at all?

 

DH:  We are just so thrilled to be part of a comedy lineup.  I think it’s great. I think sometimes they send comedies out there sort of alone or after a reality show…it’s very tricky, I think, to create that excitement.  I think it’s fantastic.  And for us, we created the show because we felt like there wasn’t that family show out there anymore, and I think that’s what ABC does well.  So to have us, Modern Family, all of the shows, I think, are very family oriented on that night, and I think that does nothing but help us.

 

EH: I agree.  I think the more good shows that are out there, the better it is for comedy and the better it is for us.

 

EI: It’s very hard to find capable children to be actors.  How did you find all three of these capable children?

 

PH: They are 40 years old. [Laughs]

 

EH: We engineered them in a lab.  No, they are just fabulous.  Atticus was with us on the first incarnation of The Middle, and Brick is like this role that we thought, “Who can we get to play this…?”

 

DH: It was based on Eileen’s son.

 

EH: My son has done many Brickish things, so we were looking very hard.  Atticus walked in the door, and we were done.  That was it.  Okay.  We’ve got that one.  And piece by piece, we were looking for actors that had that realness — that accessibility that didn’t feel like TV kids.  And we just kept having sessions and kept having sessions and didn’t settle until the right people walked in the door, and each of them are wonderful.

 

DH:  Because Charlie does drama and he does comedy, I do think our show is very real, so we wanted kids who can be able to do both, because you want everything to come from a real place.  Sometimes, it’s true, with TV kids, it gets a little put on.  It’s like you are doing the play, and Eden — they all are just very real, so it’s just fantastic.

 

PH: When we were shooting the pilot, Eden was actually going to the same school dance that my son was at, so they all come from real places.

 

EH:  You just keep going until the right people walk in, and boy, you know it when they do.

 

EI:  How many did you see, do you think?

 

EH:  I think our casting director, Steven, saw way more before they even came to us — 200 or 300 more, but they weed people down before we see them. I think we’ve seen every young actor in L.A., Chicago, Canada…  You look all over place.

 

CK:  I’ve been a capable child for years. [Laughs]

 

EH: Chris read for all those roles.

 

CK: I read back in ’83.

 

EH: It was like, God, I mean, it’s close, but…

 

CK: Close, but come on.

 

EI: For the producers, can you talk about when did you do the first pilot and what changes did you make from first to this?

 

DH:  We wrote the pilot probably two and a half years ago, something like that.  The first pilot — I would say the tone of it was just a little different…

 

EH:  A little more indie film tone than it…

 

DH: I think it was actually great to be able to have the chance to do it again.  You never really get that opportunity, and we were able to change some things in the script, change some characters, and then we just lucked out that Patty was available…

 

EH: Casting was miraculous.

 

DH:  Then Neil came on board, and everything just sort of fell into place.  Also, I think we added more jokes.  I think it’s a funnier pilot now than it was.

 

EI: Who was in the first one?

 

DH:  Ricki Lake and Lex Medlin.

 

EH: I think it’s amazing to get the chance to do it twice.  I think we had a lot of things that were almost there, but we didn’t have the magic we needed.  When we got to do it again, it was really just a dream come true.  We met with Patty for breakfast when we sent her the script and heard she was interested in it, and we were just on cloud 27 to get her and to hear the lines exactly the way we imagined them and everything.  It just seemed like the pieces came together, and we got to fix things we didn’t like about the first one.

 

EI: Atticus, do you know if your parents were fans of To Kill a Mockingbird?

 

Atticus Shaffer:  They were, actually.

 

EI: I wondered.  I thought that was cool.  It’s a great name — very fitting, good name. Chris, how did you get involved with all this?  We don’t see your character as much.  Can you give us you  a little insight into him?

 

CK: I work at the car dealership with Patricia, and she’s my only friend. I don’t have a lot of friends, and I kind of weasel my way into her family.  I’m kind of writing myself.  This is what I have planned.

 

PH: It’s a really tough place we work, and we’re the two sort of outcasts.

 

EH: The friends you make at work…

 

DH: That friendship sort of started at work, and then he ends up…I think he is a little lonely in life.

 

CK: I don’t have a lot going on.

 

DH: It’s a funny dynamic too, because when Frankie brings him home…

 

EH: The relationship between these two…

 

DH: When you have to deal with your wife’s work friend that you don’t know very well, there’s a very funny dynamic between these two.

 

CK: He’s not that encouraging of me being around the house. I’m always kind of putting myself into…

 

NF: We’re two of a kind. Chris, do you think your role will get  bigger as this goes on?

 

CK: Someone was saying, “You’re like the Fonz,” so, like, the first season, get a leather jacket…  I’ll keep quiet.

 

EI: Your character seems like he was brought in from outer space a little bit.  As the character, does he really feel part of this family?  He seems to react like he’s out in the wilderness.

 

AS: I feel that he is part of the family because all the kids have their little quirks about them — Sue’s being that she can’t make a team for the life of her, and Charlie’s being he’s a little uppity. [Laughs] But yeah, he is in his own little world most of the time.

 

EI: The shot of the enormous plastic cow — where was that?

 

EH: It’s a really funny story, because we had our associate producer looking for funny Midwestern stock footage.  We hadn’t written the cow initially.  We looked and we thought it was hysterical, and we really didn’t know. Then a friend of ours, who we were in touch with on Facebook, said, “That cow is in Wisconsin and I have a picture of myself with it,” so we believe it is somewhere in Wisconsin.

 

EI: We think of Patty as Cleveland, and Neil, we think of you as Chicago.  Is that where you grew up?

 

NF:  Yes.

 

EI: But the two producers, are you from anywhere like Indiana?

 

DH: I was born in Muncie, Indiana, and then I was raised in Cincinnati, Ohio, and I still have a lot of relatives near Indianapolis, so we go back and visit a lot.

 

EH: I grew up in Deerfield, Illinois, outside Chicago.  DeAnn and I actually met at Indiana University, so we’re Midwesterners.

 

DH: For us, it was really wish fulfillment in writing this show, because we live in L.A., obviously.  We love L.A., but we go back to the Midwest. People are just so nice to you in the drugstore and ask about you and how your day is, and we just felt like we know so many people there that we love and we feel like they deserve a show too, so it was a joy and a pleasure to be able to write it and write it for them.

 

EI: Eden, I notice you don’t have braces.  Do you have to have those put on, or is there a story point where they come off somewhere in the first season?

 

Eden Sher:  Maybe she’ll get her braces off…

 

EH: No, they’re on for nine years.

 

ES: No, they’re going to be on forever.  No, they’re fake.  They’re retainers I put in. They’re not real.

 

DH: It was funny because, when she came in, she had braces and we just thought she had braces.  She got the part and she came in for a wardrobe fitting and she smiled, and she’s got this beautiful smile with these beautiful white teeth, and we’re like, “Oh, you got your braces off.  Fantastic.  Oh, what are we going to do?”  But she goes, “Oh no, these come on and off.”

 

EH: Our director is British, Julian Robinson, and she’s like, “Um, Eden, did you get your braces off?”  We’re all sweating bullets…and “No, she had them.”

 

EI: Patricia, since there are 100 reruns of Raymond available on TV everyday, you can obviously reflect on your acting career every day if you want to…

 

PH: That’s all I’ve been doing [laughs] for years — sitting in front of the TV, watching old reruns and crying [laughs], eating ice cream…

 

EI: Which actually leads to my question: How are you a different actress today than you were maybe at the start of Raymond, or if in fact, you are different?

 

PH: It’s really different.  The difference for me, when I did Raymond, was I had kids, so my acting style got very efficient because I had no time, when I was at home, to work on the stuff, and we worked very fast and rehearsed.  One of the reasons I felt okay about doing a show where, again, I’m playing a mom in the Midwest, is this is single-camera and it’s a completely different animal. For me to stretch myself as an actor, it’s very difficult.  I didn’t know at all how to prepare to shoot this show, because there’s really no rehearsal.  I always memorize my lines as I connect them to the blocking and to the rehearsal, and since you have very little of that, I feel like I was kind of floundering. We only did the pilot, so going forward, I have no idea how I’m going to do this or what it’s going to feel like, and I’m hoping to be able to learn how to do single-camera well and get into a rhythm. I don’t have a rhythm yet, so I’m looking forward to developing one.

 

EH: She fooled us well.

 

PH: I didn’t know what the hell I was doing.  Can I just tell you right now?

 

CK: She doesn’t memorize lines?

 

PH: It’s a little scary, but I think it has a completely different feel and look.