PASADENA, Calif. _ Performer Bill Irwin was shaken silly when he was a boy. He and the lad sitting behind him couldn't resist cutting up in class. "I was a shy kid, wasn't necessarily an extrovert, but I couldn't help doing voices," he says.
"The kid behind me, we had jokes going. He was better at laughing softer than I was so I remember being shaken � which they're not allowed to do now � but I know why they chose to do that, because you don't forget it."
He didn't forget it. And that shaking shook something loose in Irwin that remains with him to this day. While many know him from more than 20 movies, as the recurring therapist on "Law & Order, SVU," or as Mr. Noodle on Sesame Street's "Elmo's World," deep down Irwin's a clown _ a bona fide clown.
He's an alumnus of the Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Clown College, and though the baggy pants and the artful pratfalls are fewer today, the agile movements are apparent, as he unspools his long legs in a bucket chair in a hotel meeting room here.
Irwin displays some of that hard earned expertise as the geeky scientist in FX's new "Legion," premiering Wednesday. Adapted from a hero in Marvel Comics, the title character finds himself in psychiatric care, and Irwin plays one of the unconventional therapists treating him.
Irwin says his goofy antics grew out of necessity. "I am the oldest of three. I was in charge of making sure my brother and sister were OK, and also entertained, so they didn't bother my mother who had a job at home. I was forever, 'I know you're mad at me. Don't tell mother. I'm the guy who can't fall off the bed, whoaaaaaa!' Clown bits under pressure," he grins.
"From the earliest memories I have I liked physical, funny things. I used to watch the 'Jackie Gleason Show' and Phil Silvers, those early TV things. And a lot of them were patterned on the silent comedies of the '20s. There's that lineage. It was kind of natural for me to look for a way to work in vaudeville mode, even though vaudeville didn't exist anymore."
Timid as he was, it took time for him to gain the confidence to perform in front of strangers. "But between one or two friends, or within my family, I was doing characters and voices. But you start to think: 'My responsibility here is to reach a larger audience.' I remember realizing that I wanted to be funny, but being funny is such a dicey proposition. Here I am ... making my living in show business. I'm never sure I'm going to be funny. I know I have craft, tricks, experience to call upon, but you can always bomb. You can always miss."
In spite of his exhaustive work as a producer, choreographer, avant-garde theater actor and writer, Irwin says there was a time when he considered quitting show business.
"My son was 5 or 6. I was offered a tenured teaching job. I thought, 'Well, I could do some things on the side.' This agent said, 'I think you're an actor. I think you're a performer.' And that's when I realized I love teaching and do it as much as possible, but only as a lesser part of my work. If it were ever the other way around, I don't think I would have as much to offer students. And it just wouldn't work for me," says Irwin, who's wearing a navy-blue suit, maroon tie and Prussian blue dress shirt.
"In the business of this business you should always take every job," he nods. "Sometimes you say, 'They're offering me this, but I'm not ready or I'm not right.' You have to listen to instinct, but it's really hard because you have bills to pay, a calendar you want to work elegantly."
It was especially difficult when his aging parents outlived their resources. His dad died at 100, his mom 94. "It's a hard thing to talk about," he sighs. "You can talk about all aspects of life. As a show business person you're supposed to have some spicy sides, that's the easy part to talk about. Money is much harder to talk about. My parents ran out of resources. They outlived all the bets that Franklyn Delano Roosevelt had put on them, and my father's pension.
"They were solid, middle-class people, so this was shocking to us all. But my sister and I _ it wasn't smooth and easy, it was a lot of angst and tension _ but we started to realize we have to step up ... For a lot of those years we had to meet those bills. It's a portrait of these times and our culture."
Irwin, 67, is married to his second wife, Martha Roth, and they are parents to an adopted son, now 26. "We tried to have a family the biological way and found we couldn't," he says.
At first he was reluctant to consider adoption. "Then you get on board and become an adoptive family. Pregnancy is not easy, but it's the easy way. You're pursuing somewhere between a business project and a grant-writing project, a spiritual pursuit and an audition � you're always putting yourself forward � and suddenly it happens. In 1990 we became parents, that changes you totally," he smiles.
POLICE DRAMA BASED ON FACT
What if a billionaire took the reins of law-enforcement? Sound like science fiction? Not so says executive producer Matt Nix ("Burn Notice") who's behind Fox's new police drama, "APB" premiering this week.
"This was actually inspired by something that happened in New Orleans where a wealthy individual paid for a small police force to help patrol the streets of New Orleans and actually did end up solving a problem there," says Nix.
"But one of the things that we explore on the show and try to keep in focus, notwithstanding the hard charging action you see, is the idea that a billionaire can't solve things alone. He needs the participation of people that understand the problems that he's trying to solve. So on the show, it really is a partnership between Gideon Reeves (played by Justin Kirk) and his partner, Detective Murphy (Natalie Martinez). And she brings the perspective of a cop who's been on the streets and understands how things go and often has to school him because he imagines that an application of money and technology is all that the problem will take. And he's often wrong."
BEST BUDS CLEARED FOR COMEDY
Comic Jason Sudeikis ("Saturday Night Live") is co-producing Comedy Central's new series, "The Detroiters," played by two guys who grew up in Detroit. Sam Richardson and Tim Robinson were best buds, and Sudeikis says he first saw them when they all worked together in Second City in Chicago.
"They (Richardson and Robinson) have a childlike innocence to them, but with grown-men intelligence. They're incredibly clever. They're incredibly quick. They remind me like when I watched that pilot or even images of it, for me it looks like George C. Scott and Sidney Poitier doing, like, a '70s comedy, like 'The In-Laws' or something. It feels timeless. But at the same time relevant, because they just have a classic vibe to them. That was evident the very first time I saw them," he says. The show premieres this week.
CON-WOMAN CONS THE AUDIENCE
Believe it or not Bravo boasts an intriguing new series, "Imposters" premiering this week. It's about a con-woman who worms her way into the hearts and bank accounts of poor unsuspecting slogs who fall under her spell.
She assumes many identities, and no one could be better suited for that than Invar Lavi, who plays the femme-fatale. "I grew up in Israel. My dad is Polish. My mom is Moroccan, and I grew up around all kinds of different languages, and I love playing with it," she says.
Producers Adam Brooks and Paul Adelstein report they were inspired by some of the classic cons in films like "Something Wild," "Pulp Fiction," "Out of Site," and even the evergreen "The Lady Eve."
"So it's about the characters and the comedy and the kind of rhythm and pop to the dialogue and just a sense that we always wanted to be surprised by the characters," says Brooks. "And so it's not just the cons are happening within the story, we wanted to con the audience whenever possible, in terms of the pleasure of not getting it right and then thinking backwards. So it's a show full of twists and turns ..."
