Larroquette: On the Biz and Booze : Actor Has Practical Experience in Playing Recovering Alcoholic on His New Show

John Larroquette, dressed in work boots, faded jeans and a denim shirt, draped his long body against a ticket counter, flipping his head sideways from time to time to keep his dark, tangled hair from falling in his face.

The former scene stealer from “Night Court,” who won four consecutive Emmys playing adolescent assistant Dist. Atty. Dan Fielding, was entertaining several cast and crew members on the set of his new NBC series with tales of alcoholism--a subject with which he has some familiarity.

Larroquette, a recovering alcoholic who says he quit drinking in 1981, told how he was once stopped for drunken driving. Instead of being arrested, he was escorted safely to his hotel room because the female officer who pulled him over was a fan of the TV series he was in at the time, “Baa Baa Black Sheep.”

“I know one actor who used to get so drunk he would pull his car over to the side of the road and drive along the gutter with his tires rubbing against the curb so he could drive straight,” said Larroquette, 45. “The cops would just follow him to make sure he got home safely.

“Of course, that was in the old days, when drinking and driving was romantic, before they found little babies’ arms in the grills of Oldsmobiles.”

On “The John Larroquette Show,” which premieres Thursday at 9:30 p.m., Larroquette plays a freshly recovering alcoholic who takes the only job he can get, as the night-shift manager of a run-down bus station in St. Louis. (“Larroquette” then moves to its regular time slot on Tuesdays at 9 p.m., directly opposite the ABC ratings powerhouse “Roseanne.”)

So is this new NBC series Larroquette’s epiphany, his chance to exorcise all the old demons and dramatize his inward journey to sobriety before a prime-time audience of millions?

“No,” Larroquette said with a slightly disgusted look. “You know, I was just a drunk. It wasn’t anything profound or spiritual. It’s just that I drank till I became addicted to alcohol.

“So anybody who draws those parallels is just barking up the wrong tree. The idea of playing a drunk was not so much because I am one, it’s because it’s a very interesting character to play. Not someone who is drunk--that’s not interesting to play. Someone who decides he can’t be that anymore, and that’s the only way he’s lived for a very long time. That’s very interesting.

“I mean, it would have been the same if this guy had had amnesia for 20 years and had just come out of a coma. It’s the same landscape--not having any idea of how to live correctly, not having any real history.”

Still, Larroquette admits, there’s a sense that he was meant to play this role. Creator Don Reo wrote the pilot with him in mind three years ago, inspired by the images of denizens of the night--cops, hookers, street people--conjured up by a Tom Waits album he was listening to.

“A bus station struck me as a place filled with stories I had never seen,” Reo said, “certainly ones I had never seen on a sitcom.”

Larroquette was still tied up with “Night Court,” and Reo and Witt-Thomas Productions were unable to come to terms with anyone else they felt was suitable. The “bus station project,” as it came to be known, “effectively died for the lack of a catalyst,” Reo said.

When “Night Court” folded in the spring of 1992 after nine seasons, Larroquette spent months “swapping spit” and vacationing with his wife and three children. Even though he had a 13-episode commitment from NBC for his own TV series, Larroquette was looking for roles in feature films, only he didn’t want to play the “sleazy lawyer” types he was being offered.

Then his agent handed him Reo’s pilot script. “I knew I had to go back to work,” Larroquette said.

NBC has placed a lot of faith in Larroquette, whose show finished second to “Frasier” as the highest-testing new comedy series on NBC this fall. To capitalize on Larroquette’s popularity, the original name of the series was changed from “Crossroad”--reflecting a man at a personal crossroad in life--to “The John Larroquette Show.”

“It’s called ‘The John Larroquette Show’ for a reason,” explained Preston Beckman, NBC vice president of program planning and scheduling. “All our testing indicates he’s an established TV star and people want to see him in his own show. When you’re in a four-network, multichannel environment, you take any advantage you can get.”

“It’s not flattering. It’s scary,” Larroquette said. “Because this business is all ego. If I pick up that newspaper Wednesday morning and I see ‘John Larroquette’ No. 59 for the week, I mean, I know how I’m going to feel. My wife’s going to have to keep the bloody razors away.”

In an even bolder display of faith, NBC executives scheduled Larroquette against “Roseanne,” the No. 2 show on television last season. For the last two seasons, NBC has thrown one-hour dramas against “Roseanne” with little luck.

“I affectionately call it the Gallipoli time slot, where I get to run at the German trenches,” Larroquette said sarcastically. He’s unhappy with the time period because it erases any chance he might have to become a breakout hit.

But, in the opinion of NBC’s Beckman, “Roseanne” is on the decline after losing nearly 10% of one of its key demographic groups--adult men 18 to 49--last season. “Roseanne” is also losing the full-time services of Yale-bound cast member Sara Gilbert. Three years ago, when Fox moved “The Simpsons” against “The Cosby Show,” NBC learned that even a hit show can take a hard hit by smart counterprogramming.

“What we learned when ‘Simpsons’ went up against ‘Cosby,’ when you take a show that’s successful but declining, and you offer the audience an alternative, you can help the decline,” Beckman said. “There’s implied power and assumed power. ‘Roseanne’ is a strong show, and because it’s a strong show nobody programs against it. But it’s never had to face a comedy. Now it will.”

“ ‘Simpsons’ had been on the air and was very popular when it was moved to Thursdays at 8 p.m. The Larroquette show is an unknown,” countered Alan Sternfeld, senior vice president of program planning and scheduling for ABC. “ ‘Roseanne’ had a great year last year. We haven’t seen any data that it’s trending down. Some of the qualitative research shows that this show is stronger now than it was two years ago.”

Ironically, Reo said, “Roseanne” paved the way for “John Larroquette.” Reo had created the hit NBC comedy series “Blossom,” which looks at growing up from the perspective of a teen-age girl, and he wanted to do something more adult.

“There’s always been this sort of unwritten rule that when people turn on the TV set they want to be taken away from their lives into something more fantasy-like, where everybody dresses great and all the houses are great,” Reo said. “I think ‘Roseanne’ may have changed that, oddly enough.

“All of our characters are sympathetic. They’re not all happy. They are all to one degree or another pissed off about something--but most people are. That doesn’t make you unlikable. They all have a point of view. We’re not politically correct on this show. We have a lot of racial humor, and a lot of people who don’t get along. But they are characters who have self-respect, and they’re all good people coming from an honest place.”

But Larroquette is not trying to deliver any serious messages. “It’s a mistake to think that you can do anything really significant on television as far as anybody’s life is concerned,” he said. “I just think it’s the wrong universe for that. The best thing you can hope for in television is that you entertain people. To make them laugh until they pee is very entertaining.”