February 16, 2011
By Staff Reporter
“I had done ‘The Practice’ for so many years [and this was just all new people and it was a different environment,” the 42-year-old Irish-American actor said of the appeal of headlining another TV drama. “I would have done this in my bathroom, this was so good. The material was so good.”
McDermott and several other long-time cast members were disbarred from “The Practice” in 2003 as part of an ill-conceived plan to increase viewership and cut production costs, but fans balked at the move and the award-winning courtroom drama was canceled after the 2003-2004 season when it failed to bounce back in the ratings. Despite the manner in which his role on the series ended, McDermott said he is just thankful for the chance to have spent seven years on one of the most beloved shows in recent memory.
“I’m very grateful that I had that time because a lot of good actors don’t ever get the chance to do that,” he said. “They have pilot after pilot after pilot, and it never goes. I did one pilot in my life and it went for seven years, so that’s a pretty good record. I’m grateful. I mean, it was kind of funky the way it ended, but I just try to remember the good. It’s like a relationship.”
In “The Grid,” a six-hour “Traffic”-style series, McDermott plays Max Canary, an FBI agent and counter-terrorist mourning the death of his best friend in the 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center, while trying to prevent future tragedies. Adding to the tension in his life, Max also feels ambivalent about his romantic relationship with his friend’s widow and the paternal role he has assumed in her son’s life. He is also forced to deal with interagency friction and red tape during his team’s quest to find and disarm international terrorists.
“The script and the story and the characters were all really well-defined,” McDermott said of “The Grid.” “I thought they had done a tremendous job on the script. You always start with the script and then the players and then director. But I think primarily it was the script that I was just wild about.”
The Fordham University graduate says that as a native New Yorker he could relate to his character’s feelings of loss following the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and that as an actor he was awestruck by how real-life federal agents shoulder enormous burdens in protecting the world from terrorists.
“I think, certainly for New Yorkers, there is a lot of anger there and it’s justifiable,” he said. “When I went down to [Ground Zero] and I saw that big hole there, it just feels like that psychic hole that we’re all carrying around with us; we’re all kind of walking on eggshells. Is it going to happen again? These alerts go up and down, obviously, you have Iraq and you have the Olympics coming up. The stress that these guys — these people in the FBI and CIA — feel must be enormous on a daily basis.”
One of the first dramatic projects about terrorism completed after the 9/11 attacks, “The Grid” is scheduled to premiere less than two months before the third anniversary of the tragedy, a fact that sparks the question: Are television viewers ready for entertainment programs focused on terrorism?
“I’m hoping that people are ready,” McDermott said. “I think there is enough distance, but I’m not sure.”
The actor says that in addition to the screenplay, he is most impressed with the way “The
Grid” presents all sides of the war on terrorism without resorting to stereotypes.
“It just wasn’t black and white; it was gray,” McDermott said. “Everybody is different. Everybody has different values. Everybody has different opinions and if we can all kind of talk about it, maybe we could understand it a little bit more.”
One culture McDermott is already very familiar with and proud of is his own.
“I consider myself quite Irish,” he said. “I love going to Ireland. I was there last summer. I went for the Special Olympics. The Shrivers invited me to go and that was an amazing event.”
(Co-starring Bernard Hill, Julianna Margulies, Jemma Redgrave and Tom Skerritt, “The Grid” premieres July 19.)