Help Wanted: A Few Good Leading Men

Struggling actors will probably cringe reading this, but there’s a serious lack of men out there who can be funny, appealing and attractive all at once.

You know, someone who combines the comedic timing of a Tim Allen with the likability of a Tom Hanks and the sensitive good looks of a Matthew Broderick.

That’s the lament from casting directors and network executives this and every pilot season--the roughly four-month stretch during which potential new prime-time series are cast and episode prototypes shot, all leading up to decision time in mid-May, when networks pick the new entries for the fall schedule.

Right about now, network and studio executives around town are hitting a casting wall, most especially when it comes to finding male leads for sitcoms, which represent the majority of potential new shows.

That a few good funny men are hard to find is not surprising, given that six networks are combining to produce some 140 pilots this year, not including cable outlets Lifetime, HBO and USA Network, each of which is producing original programming.

“There’s a dearth of talent in certain [categories],” said one veteran casting director, pointing immediately to leading men. “Whether it’s real or perceived, that’s what holds things up. . . . There are very few people who are approvable [to studio and network executives].”

Sandy Grushow, president of Twentieth Century Fox Television, which alone is producing more than a dozen pilots, says the lack of quality leading men is only the most glaring shortfall in a market where the talent pool can’t keep up with the growing number of pilots made each year.

“[Leading men] are sort of the monument to the problem, which stems from six networks all trying to cast and produce pilots,” Grushow said. “There are times when you are forced to push a show to midseason because the available talent pool isn’t sufficient to create the kind of show you hope to create.”

The list of pilots among the various networks does include a host of well-known names, including John Larroquette (starring in a remake of the British series “Fawlty Towers” for CBS) and Nathan Lane (playing an opera singer who loses his voice and comes home to run a family vineyard in a show for NBC).

But the current seller’s market really plays into the hands of an actor like Brian Benben--not a big star, but an established comedic performer on television thanks to “Dream On,” which ran on HBO from 1990 to 1996.

Benben is starring in a pilot for CBS, in which he plays a TV anchorman who gets fired from his job, only to be hired back as a general assignment reporter.

“An actor like Brian Benben will have his pick [of scripts], and there are probably only one in 100 he’ll want to do,” said Peter Golden, vice president of talent and casting at CBS.

Along with other CBS executives, Golden has spent much of the last several months auditioning people for the 12 sitcoms and 14 dramas the network green-lighted for production as new-series candidates.

“Our mantra as pilot season begins is, ‘Have auditions right away, and if you like somebody get them quickly,’ because we know in a couple of weeks they’ll be gone,” Golden said.

“It’s an old casting adage that you don’t need a thousand people for a part, you just need that one person,” added a more hopeful Judith Weiner, vice president of talent and casting at UPN.

Still, most involved in pilot season casting paint an unromantic picture of the process: long days spent auditioning leads and supporting players who read in screening and conference rooms in front of casting directors and studio and network representatives--less-than-ideal dramatic conditions.

“Auditioning [for television] is not like auditioning for a play,” said Julie Pernworth, a casting director at NBC. “It’s not like you’re reading with another actor. You’re reading with a casting person.”

Because millions of dollars ride on each project, executives are generally reluctant to go forward unless they feel a program has precisely the right talent, leading to a number of pilots being given what are called “cast-contingent” orders--meaning the network will only proceed with the project if it approves of the actors involved.

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Further complicating matters is the fact that casts are sometimes shuffled after pilots are shot in an attempt to improve ensemble chemistry. That was the case this season, for instance, when Jason Bateman became a late replacement as Bob Newhart’s son on the CBS sitcom “George & Leo.”

Finding lead actresses is only slightly less difficult, say insiders, if only because there aren’t nearly as many pilots written for them.

Calista Flockhart of Fox’s “Ally McBeal”--previously best known as a stage actress, having starred in Broadway productions of “The Glass Menagerie” and “The Three Sisters”--”had been on people’s lists for five years” before she agreed to do a series, says a talent director.

Flockhart is benefiting from a character who seems to have been written with her personality in mind. Not all actors are as lucky, though some take what are otherwise minor characters and make them large.

Ten years ago, casting director Marc Hirschfeld was working on a sitcom pilot for NBC called “The Seinfeld Chronicles,” looking for an ensemble cast to surround his male lead--stand-up comedian Jerry Seinfeld.

For the role of Seinfeld’s neighbor Kramer, Hirschfeld, now a partner in Hirschfeld-Liberman Casting, chose Michael Richards, who had only modest TV credits--including guest spots on NBC’s “Cheers” and “Hill Street Blues.”

Still, Hirschfeld remembered Richards from when he’d auditioned for the Al Bundy part on Fox’s “Married . . . With Children.”

“He was considered a regular, but [Kramer] really was only supposed to be an ancillary character on the show,” Hirschfeld said.

The rest, of course, is history. But don’t think Richards has altered the paradigm of the sitcom leading man.

“He’s not what the networks are looking for,” Hirschfeld said. “He’s older, he’s offbeat. They want 30- to 40-year-old leading-men types.”