Stage and Screen
Since Hollywood people marry Hollywood people, Jay Mohr — this weekend’s star comedian at The Orleans — is married to Nikki Cox. You may know Cox as the former star of “Las Vegas.” But she started out as a young dancer, appearing in a Michael Jackson video and in a few episodes of “Blossom” and “Mama’s Family.”
So, naturally, here’s my question for Mohr: Does he ever ask her how weird it was to be in a Michael Jackson video and on “Baywatch”?
“Oh, constantly,” Mohr, 38, says. “She’s got the best stories of anyone I know. She was the only child in a Paula Abdul video (‘Straight Up’). She was a child monster dancer. I married a child monster dancer. … That sounds like the name of a Lifetime movie.”
But he won’t tell me Cox’s good stories about Michael Jackson. Drats.
Mohr has a new sitcom on CBS, “Gary Unmarried,” playing a freshly divorced dad. But like his wife, he has notched a circuitous path in showbiz.
He performed on “Saturday Night Live” in the early 1990s. He co-produced and hosted “Last Comic Standing.” For a while on “Ghost Whisperer,” he was a professor of the occult. In “Jerry Maguire,” he played the sports agent sent to fire Tom Cruise’s Maguire. And in 1999, he starred as a Hollywood agent in the fantastically funny “Action” on Fox.
In fact, as TV lore goes, “Action” was one of the best, most acclaimed TV shows to get canceled in its first year (along with the likes of “Police Squad!” from the makers of “Airplane!” and “Naked Gun” films).
So as an “Action” fan, I ask him an obvious question: Since he was funnier portraying a Hollywood power broker in “Action” than Jeremy Piven is in HBO’s “Entourage,” has Mohr asked Piven to turn over his Emmys?
“No, I’ve never asked Jeremy Piven for anything. That’s his own thing,” Mohr says. “You know — if as many people watched ‘Action’ that tell me they watched ‘Action,’ it’d still be on the air.
“It’s like its own little Woodstock, because in hindsight, (‘Action’) went well. Nobody ever claims they were at Altamont, but everyone claims they were at Woodstock.”
“Action” probably would have survived if it had been on HBO, as evidenced by “Entourage.”
“Well, it was supposed to be,” he says. “HBO wanted to own too much of the back end, then (producers) went to Fox to just play the negotiating game, and Fox said, ‘We’ll do it as is.’ “
But that was then, and now’s the time for “Gary Unmarried.”
“The show is doing well” in the ratings, he says. “We beat the (season) premiere of ‘Pushing Daisies,’ so slowly but surely, we’re cutting out a niche and digging in. We’re like the plantar wart of comedy.”
As any actor will tell you, it’s much easier to work on a sitcom than on an hour drama, because sitcoms are just rehearsals and a night of shooting in front of an audience. But a drama demands actors wait and wait, rehearse and rehearse, and shoot and shoot.
“It’s so much less work” on a sitcom, he says. “It’s incalculable.
“You’ll be on the back lot of Universal on ‘Ghost Whisperer,’ and it’s 4 in the morning, and they’re just starting to put the crane up for lights. And you think, ‘What is going on here?’ ” he says. “The grips, the electricians, the painters, the gaffers — these guys work 15 hours a day, every day. … Actors have it easy. When we get there, they say, ‘Go lay down, we’ll call you when we need you.’ “
If you see Mohr at The Orleans, you’ll get all new stand-up material. He’s known for doing one of the most impeccable Christopher Walken impressions on the market. But he also does Harvey Keitel, Norm MacDonald, and a killer Al Pacino.
“Al Pacino’s got two different voices,” he explains. “When he was young, he sounded like Tyne Daly from ‘Cagney & Lacey,’ and as he gets older, he sounds like Big Daddy from ‘Cat On A Hot Tin Roof.’ “
Why is that? I ask.
“I think his balls dropped.”
Contact Doug Elfman at 702-383-0391 or e-mail him at delfman@reviewjournal.com. He also blogs at reviewjournal.com/elfman.