PASADENA, Calif. _ Comic Jeremy D. Howard was not prepared for what he found when he arrived in Hollywood. The 28-year-old grew up in Alabama and Nashville, the middle child of seven. With a pastor for a mom and a Home Depot manager for a dad, Howard was the product of solid American values.
"I was raised in the South, and there are certain things that southern people are accustomed to, and do," he says in the sunny patio of a hotel here.
"I found myself in unique situations," he laughs. Those unique situations may have been jolting for the pastor's son, but they fueled his talent.
Howard is one of the eight new comics to be featured on a brand new "MADtv," premiering July 26 on the CW.
His specialties are eccentric characters that he invents, like Lily Tomlin did with her ringy-dingy telephone operator, Dana Carvey with his prissy Church Lady, and Martin Lawrence with his elderly Big Momma.
Hollywood folk are fine fodder for inspiration, says Howard, who creates his characters by observing carefully, taking notes, and then exaggerating their foibles.
But the residents of Hollywood were his biggest shock, he says. "I just wasn't accustomed to how loose _ everyone's too free for me," he shakes his head. "They say, 'You gotta do what you want, be yourself.' Everyone has a weird type of opinion. The people are very unique ... "
How unique? One of his first experiences on the West Coasts was probably something he wouldn't write home about. "It was New Year's Eve, and one of my friends said, 'I'd like to stop at my manager's house and say hello. Are you cool with that?' This was in my very beginning stages so we went to the house, opened the door, 'Oh, my gosh, what in the world!' Half of everyone's, like, naked. I was like, 'OK, I'm going to wait in the car.' She said, 'No, my manager's my rep.' I said, 'OK. I'm not used to this. I'm a little uncomfortable.' So I slowly backed up.
"'What just happened? ... This is not what I expected.' That was the biggest shock for me. It made me know I need to ask a little more questions. When somebody says, 'Hey, you want to go over to my manager's house?' I have to say, 'What's going down over there?' But the people are very interesting. You think people make up this stuff in movies? No, it happens in regular life."
Actually Howard led a "regular life" for eight years back in Nashville. He had a steady job at Lowes for seven years. "And everything started to pick up. I started booking a lot of (performing) work down there. 'OK, big fish in a tiny pond � now it's time to be that little fish in a big pond,'" he says.
"First I wanted to move to Atlanta, but my friend was moving up here, and he'd give me updates about the business. You know what? I'll give it a shot. I prayed about it. And everything lined up _ from me getting a better job right before I left to save the money. I started working at Nissan building cars. I was an inspector. I was making sure there weren't any mechanical problems inside the car, any scratches or dings. It was the same thing over again, 1,000 times a day. I said, 'I can't see myself doing this kind of work.'"
So he set a deadline for himself: six months and then he'd leave. Piloting his Infinity G35 (which he still has) to L.A., Howard was able to bunk in a one-room apartment with two other guys for $350 a month.
"I started doing brand marketing; I'd do things like pass out free chips to people." The pay was good and others would take his shift if he needed to audition. "Either I was passing out Haagen Dazs ice cream or chips or helping people learn how to use their phone. I would be the guy who would come to Best Buy and train all the Best Buy guys on the phone, and show them cool features about it. Then I'd go to the next store. So I was able to stay mobile just so I could jump to auditions, and then I'd go back to work."
Howard still shares digs with two guys, only this time they're luxuriating in a three-bedroom apartment. Though he performs once a month in Los Angeles with an improv group known as the Mad Jackrats, Howard is hoping that "MADtv" will jettison him onto higher ground.
"I've been truly blessed to not have to go through crazy stuff," he says with a big grin. "People tell you about these terror stories and you think, 'Oh, my gosh! I don't want to deal with any of that.' I didn't have any of that. The last two years have been phenomenal. That's when you know everything is right, when you're where you're supposed to be. Eventually if you're doing what you're supposed to be doing, things push in the right direction."
'RIPPER STREET' RETURNS FOR MORE FOUL DEEDS
Queen Victoria may be celebrating her Diamond Jubilee but things are still amiss on "Ripper Street," which returns for a new season on BBC America July 28. Matthew Macfadyen plays Detective Reid, who has retired from the gritty police department, but is coaxed back when a friend is accused of murder. "It was a big hit in England. It did really well," says Macfadyen. "They rang me up after the first day and said, "We got 40 percent of the share and 8 million (viewers).' And I pretended to know what it meant. But it did really, really well. And critically it was acclaimed as well. So it had a broad appeal. The broadsheets (tabloids) liked it and the critics in the main, even though some said it's not really true. It IS true but it's glamorized for TV, otherwise you'd be watching hours of paper shuffling."
'DIRTY DANCING' MUSICAL DUE ON ABC
ABC will brush up on its mambo when it presents a three-hour musical event, "Dirty Dancing" this season. This won't be live like "Grease," but will boast a super cast including Debra Messing, Bruce Greenwood and Abigail Breslin as Baby. Messing ("Will & Grace") says she's enjoyed being the center of attention ever since she was a little kid. "Yeah, I don't know if it was the second grade or third grade, but I wanted attention so much that I was constantly asking questions of the teacher. And they weren't really important questions or relevant to the conversation. I have no memory of this, but I guess they called my parents in and said, 'She just wants the attention so she keeps asking questions, so we're going to have to limit her to three questions a day.' I've no memory of it, but I'm told the story. And it seems to be a pretty important story in my history."
MCDONALD PLAYS ANOTHER PHILANDERER
Christopher McDonald plays another skuzzy husband in the movie "Don't Worry Baby," which opens Friday. He plays a philandering father who had a sexual encounter with a younger woman, only to learn that his son was intimate with the same girl. Snagged on the horns of a dilemma, either of them could be the father of her child. McDonald ("Thelma and Louise") tells me that he's constantly tagged as errant husbands. "I can't get away from them. You do one really well they gotta have you come back and do more. Everybody knows them. They seem to come my way. I've done a lot of them, but you should see how many I turn down."
