Michael J. Fox is making his return to weekly TV this fall with Michael J. Fox Show" href="http://www.ign.com/tv/the-michael-j-fox-show">The Michael J. Fox Show. The new NBC comedy stars Fox as Mike Henry, a newscaster with Parkinson’s disease who decides to go back to work after taking a few years off. Obviously, Fox himself has Parkinson’s and the first episode of the show derives a lot of humor from the situation. Appearing to promote the show today at the TCA (Television Critics Association) press tour Fox was asked if he consulted with others in the Parkinson’s community beforehand to put the show through a vetting process. Fox replied, “No, I didn’t. I don’t vet creative instinct. I just go with it. This is a reflection of my experience.” Fox noted that when it came to dealing head on with Parkinson's, “Certainly in the pilot it was more prevalent than it was in subsequent scripts.”
Fox said he wanted to convey the everyday experience of having Parkinson’s, noting, “Sometimes its frustrating, sometimes it’s funny. “We all get our own bag of hammers. We all get our own Parkinson’s. We all get our own thing.” He added, “I need to laugh at myself too. If someone wants to be outraged, they can be outraged. I don’t think it’s outrageous.”
Playing Fox’s wife on the show is Breaking Bad’s Betsy Brandt. Asked about going from that acclaimed series to her new one, Brandt replied, “Going from Breaking Bad to playing Michael J. Fox’s wife? Pretty effing awesome.” Brandt said that she was really hoping to do a comedy, adding, “I didn’t want to chase the next Breaking Bad because there may never be one.”
Executive producer Will Gluck said that when he and Fox began discussing the series, “We were startlingly un-calculated with this show,” approaching it as, “A family show with Mike, who has a unique perspective on being a father with three kids and a wife, but also dealing with something.” Gluck said that when it came to Parkinson’s, “It’s always going to be there but it won’t always be the spotlight.”
When it came to living with Parkinson’s, Fox noted, “It becomes absorbed in the normal course of a family’s life, as it has in mine.” More often, he said, “It’s about perception. You deal with other people’s projections of what it is – their fear about it.” He added, “there’s nothing horrifying about it to me. It’s what I deal with.” He said yes, he has shaky hands, but “I don't think it's Gothic nastiness.”
Fox’s natural charm and humor was on display during the press Q&A. When one of the press was trying to explain where they were in the large ballroom and Fox was initially looking the wrong direction (which happens a lot at TCA), he exclaimed, “"I have Parkinson's. I'll sync up with you sooner or later!”
As for why he felt now was the right time to return to TV, Fox explained, “I just got rested. I spent that time with my family during their really formative years. I enjoyed that. I kind of messed with pills and new medications that helped me deal with some of the things I was dealing with earlier, because there are medication to deal with the side effects. It just felt like the right time to do it.”
There are obvious parallels with Fox’s character being a celebrity returning to work, but Fox said he didn’t want it to be an exact mirror, noting, “People recognize him on the street but not as an actor,” and that he felt the familiarity his character has as a newscaster worked just as well as, say, an actor or athlete. Fox then remarked, “An actor would be boring and an athlete would be impossible!”
Fox was asked if, now that he’s returning to TV, he might be interested in films again too. He said that that schedule didn’t sound ideal, noting, “I can’t imagine doing 22 episodes of this and then spending my summer [making a movie],” adding he had done exactly that as a young man making Family Ties and several movies. It was noted that we’re just a couple of years away from 2015 and Fox was asked if he might be up for another Back to the Future film. Fox grinned and said, “I’d have to play Doc Brown!”
The Michael J. Fox Show debuts September 26th on NBC.
Source : ign[dot]com
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