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Jonathan Silverman is swinging. Not as in "a wild and crazy guy." As in baseball. Two bats in hand, he's wacking at invisible balls, loosening up, finding his form. He's in full baseball regalia, sans hidden black garters a la Bull Durham. (Well we had to ask.) He rests the bat on his shoulder, blows a huge bubble-gum bubble, tosses one bat aside and steps up to home plate.
"Okay, Johnny, take your time, take your time," shouts his girlfriend/teammate Annalee Fery, a tiny, tan blonde standing on second base in cut-offs and a navel-baring white T-shirt.
So it is that Silverman, the single guy of The Single Guy (part of NBC's Thursday-night juggernaut) is not completely single. Right now, however, that's all he's asking for, although a double would be nice, a home run even better. Never mind that it's just a Sunday afternoon, co-ed softball league. His team, Team Reebok, is undefeated and he's determined to beat these HBO guys.
The pitcher serves up a piece of meat and Silverman sinks his teeth into it, drilling it over third base. He cruises to second, easy, bringing Annalee and two others home. "Way to hustle" he calls out, ever the team cheerleader.
It's fitting that Silverman, known as Mr. Nice Guy, is a baseball fanatic. "I live and bleed for the Dodgers," he admits later, over beers at the Hollywood Canteen. "Hey, you gotta have passion and I don't do drugs, so..."
More importantly, the just-turned-30-year-old owes his cushy TV gig and his girlfriend to America's national pastime. "I guess, to quote Chico Esquela, (an old Saturday Night Live character) you could say 'Baseball's been bery bery good to me,'" he grins.
It started a few years ago when Silverman, whose biggest claims to fame at the time were the comedies Weekend At Bernie's parts I and II, played in a Hollywood all-star game at Dodger Stadium with the likes of Billy Crystal, Tom Selleck, and Kevin Costner.
"Of course, I didn't get to play the position of choice, which would have been somewhere on the infield," he quips, "but unless you have a top ten show or 100-million-dollar movie, it's outfield." He did, however, catch two flies hit by Selleck, and the attention of Crystal, who suggested him for a part in the 1994 Castle Rock film Little Big League, which lead to the Castle Rock-produced Single Guy, yet another urban, 20-30-something sitcom--this one with Silverman as a bachelor novelist drowning in a souffle of married couples whose main goal, apparently, is to get him hitched. Sandwiched between megahits Friends and Seinfeld, the equivalent to batting between Ruth and Gehrig, it consistently hit fifth or sixth in the ratings and returned this season in the same coveted time slot.
As for the girlfriend, up-and-coming country western singer Annalee, they met at a charity softball game three years ago. She was on the other team--the team that won. "I thought, If you're that sweet, that beautiful, and you can hit a ball, hey, I'm in love."
Silverman's so smitten he wears a cowboy hat and boots to Annalee's s gigs. He says she's perfect. He calls her Boo. "We're simple folk," he claims. "Our idea of a hot date is a Dodger game." Despite rumors of an engagement, Silverman claims wedding bells are distant. The Single Guy lives! And nor just for the sake of the show, he insists, although Silverman frequently wishes for a new title. "It's kind of lame to walk down the street with my girlfriend and have some guy say, 'Hey, the single guy's not single anymore is he?' " he says, before pausing. "Well, I guess it beats being called schmuck."
Silverman's too cute to be a schmuck. But he's also too square to be hip. The worst vice he'll admit to: being a Taco Bell addict. In khakis, a cashmere polo shirt, and suede oxfords, he's almost got a kind of`Fifties, polite Cary Grant thing going. "With Johnny, what you see is what you get," insists Brad Hall, SNL veteran, husband of Julia Louis Dreyfus, and creator of The Single Guy. "He's so ridiculously nice it's almost appalling. He's got that guy's guy, just-hangin'- out thing, yet he's got that charm and sensitivity that make him believable as the best friend to a woman. Basically he's the guy every mom wants her daughter to marry."
The youngest and only son of three children born to a rabbi and his Israeli wife in west Los Angeles (they divorced when Silverman was 13), his childhood was fairly standard issue.
"I didn't go around announcing, 'Hi I'm Johnny, and my dad's a rabbi,' " he says. "But I did have a pretty big bar mitzvah." Silverman's boy-next-door upbringing made him well-liked, if not exactly cool. At Beverly Hills High School, he and future Friends star David Schwimmer were the drama geeks who got into good-guy mischief.
"We were just short little cute kids who the moms trusted and the girls didn't really want anything to do with," he says. "We had drama and PE together, and let's face it, those were really the two most important classes, so we bonded immediately."
It was during a high school performance with "Schwimm" of A Midsummer Night's Dream that Silverman was pounced on by an agent and swept off to New York at age 17. There he starred in several Neil Simon plays, eventually landing film (Brighton Beach Memoirs, Class Action, Stealing Home) and TV roles (Gimme a Break.)
"I didn't think I'd return to TV until I was old and fat and couldn't handle the movie lifestyle," he confesses. "But this was a deal I couldn't refuse." In addition to starring, he's a creative consultant and part owner. "It's weird how 20 movies haven't got me near the recognition that this show has."
But the recognition has helped snag him some movie roles such as the upcoming French Exit with Madchen Amick and Neil Simon's TV adaption of London Suite. And there's the Hollywood Hills home near neighbors Brad Pitt and Nicolas Cage. "Unfortunately the architecture is like this Miami Vice drug-dealer house," he says. "It's like you could do cocaine off the front door or something." To counteract the starkness, Silverman packed the house with warm wood furniture--a far cry from the sports memorabilia-filled bachelor pad of his TV alter ego.
"This season we're going to make him more of an unlucky single guy," explains Silverman. "This first season it got to be a little bit like 'babe of the week.' " Adding some innuendo, however, British actress Olivia D'Abo will join the cast, playing Silverman's neighbor. We needed sexual tension like Sam and Diane," of Cheers.
But that's an issue for the future. Right now, Silverman has a ball game to win.
It's the bottom of the 9th, the score's 6 to 6, and he's at bat. In the top the inning, he somersaulted to catch a drive, catching earth instead. Now it's his chance to be a hero - the bases are loaded again. He leans in, takes the first pitch and smacks it hard, this time straight down the right field line. Three players sail home, the Single Guy is Mr. Double, and Team Reebok, with a 9-6 win is still, at least for the time being, undefeated.
"Baseball," says Silverman, relishing the word, "is the last pure thing in America."
Singlespeak:ON TURNING 30: "Growing up I had this image in my head about life at 30. I figured I'd be divorced by the time I was 30. I mean, I've had alimony payments I was looking forward to paying by now. And I'm nowhere near that!" ON WHAT EVERY GUY SHOULD KNOW AT 30: "One, every guy should know what his major in life is. I think you should have found your passion by 30 - what you want to do with your remaining years. "Two, know what your favorite pro sports franchise is so you can root for them over the years and tell your grandkids stories. "And three, own a tuxedo and own a AAA card. I have no clue how to change a tire." ON THE LAMEST THING EVER WRITTEN ABOUT HIM: "That I was having an affair with Rebecca Broussard. I did a movie three years ago--Blue Champagne, it went straight to video--that was financed by Jack Nicholson with Rebecca as the female lead. One night there were all these calls on my machine asking me if I was okay. I found out the tabloids had run this picture of me playing tennis and looking as young, healthy, and cute as I could, alongside a picture of Jack looking as bad as he could with this story something like, 'Beautiful woman dumps movie star for young hunk.' It listed all Jack's Oscars and acclaim and like the two things I'd done. Now, I've done a lot of stupid things in my life, but I'm not about to have any relationship with Jack Nicholson's girlfriend. I mean just give me a gun and I'll shoot myself now. Why bother? But at the time I was terrified. I called up Jack's people and said, 'Uh, Mr. Nicholson doesn't think this is true does he? Cuz, uh, I'll leave town, I'll do whatever I have to do.' They just laughed." ON TV, MONEY, AND THE FRIENDS CAST ASKING FOR $100,000 PER EPISODE: "When I opened the Montreal Comedy festival I told a joke. I talked about how David Schwimmer is one of my closest friends, but that he couldn't make it this year because he's directing a movie and he's on strike. And I talked about how nice a hundred thousand dollars a week sounds and how I'd like to get that." "So I went up to Warren Littlefield [head of NBC] and said, 'Warren, unless you give me a hundred thousand a week, I quit.' He convinced me to stay with four little words. Weekend at Bernie's Three." |
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