NiceGirls Talk to Hart Bochner

Hart Bochner

NiceGirlsTV had the opportunity to participate in a Q&A with actor Hart Bochner, who plays Zack Phillips on The Starter Wife. Sounding a bit tired from being up late the night before wrapping the series, Hart talks about Zack, working with Debra Messing and his career as actor, writer and director.

A screenwriter and journalist, Zack has experienced ultimate success. At age 20, he won a Pulitzer Prize, then went on to Hollywood where his screenplay is nominated for an Oscar. When we meet Zack, he is in the process of writing a novel, but he’s stuck. He’s blocked. To try to work through this, he begins a writing workshop, where published authors come in and discuss the process of writing while beginning their own projects.

After her children’s pop-up book flops, Molly joins the workshop, hoping to gain some direction. She pulls from her journal which entertains the group and intrigues Zack. “We’re sort of kindred spirits in the fact that we’ve come out very difficult marriages,” Hart explains.  “We’d been married to high powered people in the industry.  My wife is, a ballsy woman who is a powerful agent.  She runs an agency.  That’s then hard on my psyche by virtue of the fact that we have a seven-year-old daughter and I’m looking for someone who is supportive of me and she’s anything but.   Debra’s character, Molly, is coming out of a marriage where she was with a man who wasn’t particularly there for her.  They also have a seven-year-old daughter.  So the two of us are somewhat wounded and gun shy about getting back into real relationships and yet we sort of take baby steps towards one another and we find ourselves, as the show evolves, becoming more and more involved.”

Hart points out that the differences between the mini series and the tv series allow him to move into Molly’s world without much difficulty. “This show is sort of its own entity in that the mini-series was about marriage and the demise of that marriage.  This picks up really from an entirely  new place, which is Molly trying to find her sea legs and declaring herself and finding a career for herself.  So as far as I’m concerned, it’s not like, I didn’t take over for another actor.  It’s a new character.  It’s a brand new relationship for Molly.”

So just what was it like working with Debra Messing? Hart has his moment of gushing. “It was nothing but terrific.  I can’t say enough good things about the show, my experience or working with Debra.  She’s just an absolute joy and I’m just crazy about her.  We finished last night and it was all very sad for everybody.  We’re very much hoping that we’re coming back, obviously and we have high expectations for the show, but nonetheless, we shot ten episodes and it became like a family.  It became a family really very quickly.  It was the nicest group that I’ve ever worked with.  A lot of that is due to Debra and the fact that expression “the fish stinks from the head,” well, she’s just delightful and adorable and incredibly gifted and we had so much fun everyday. “

He goes on to say, “What I find so remarkable about Debra, while everyone calls her the Lucille Ball of her generation is, she’s also brilliant dramatically.  She can turn that on a dime.  And so for me, it was just really a question of showing up and being in the moment because most of my scenes, all of my scenes are with her.  So it was really quite easy to see and feel that relationship evolve just by virtue of being there with her everyday.”

So, what was it about The Starter Wife that attracted Hart? “Well, it sort of came out of left field, because I had just finished writing and directing this movie that had come out.  I thought, “Well, what am I going to do this summer?”  And suddenly my manager called me and he said, “You’ve been called in to meet on this Debra Messing show.”  I was aware of the mini-series and the book, so I read it and I thought, this is a no-brainer if they offer it to me, so I have to pursue it and that was that.”

The role of Zack has been rewarding for Hart. Zack is not only a romantic interest for Molly. “The fact that I’m not looking to find a woman that mirrors the relationship that I’ve just come out of, which is having been married to a very blustery, successful business woman, I want somebody who’s going to nurture me.  And like all men, this character needs a woman in his life to champion him and to motor him and that’s what’s been sorely lacking in his life.  And what he finds in Debra’s character, and Molly is someone who has the glowing eyes that feed him, but also someone who challenges him.  I think what is most surprising to my character is, I’ve been having dalliances after having come out of this tough marriage with women that are inappropriate, but eye candy, younger, hotter, but ultimately not very satisfying intellectually and Molly comes along and surprises me. “

Debra Messing and Hart Bochner

Anyone who watched the mini series will remember that Molly sees things sometimes in  fantasy sequences that strongly resemble scenes from popular movies.  To Hart, these were the the most memorable moments during filming. “We do these fantasy sequences in every episode which are really interesting.  They’re segments from various movies, sort of seminal movies, Body Heat, A Few Good Men.  We just did Basic Instinct.  Debra has this uncanny ability to sink into these characters, and I think that’s been a great joy for her.  But watching her, when we did Hello Dolly, we did a version of Hello Dolly and we were shooting downtown at the Los Angeles Theatre, which is one of these great, old iconic theatres of the city.  I walked on the set and this Carol Channing figure is smiling at me and I thought, “Who the hell is that?”  And it was Debra completely done up and then I walk on the set the other night and there she is as Sharon Stone.  I was playing the Tom Cruise character in A Few Good Men, and she was Jack Nicholson, and there she was.  Look, she doesn’t look like a man or Jack Nicholson, but the demeanor and the way she attacked the sequence was just astounding. I’ve had a blast all the way through.  But I think the fantasy sequences are so unique and hilarious and well observed that I guess that would have to be the part of the show that I’ve gotten the biggest yucks from.“

Hart goes on to talk about working both behind and in front of the camera. “It’s interesting.  I really, really always wanted to be a director.  So when I started, for me, it was like really fulfilling a dream.  Acting was something that I kind of got into accidentally when I was about 19 years old.  I was discovered at an open house at the American Film Institute, because I wanted to go to film school, and this woman came up to me and asked me my name.  And a couple of months later I got a call from Paramount and six months after that, I was playing opposite George C. Scott in this Hemingway movie called Islands in the Stream.

So it took me about 16 years to get behind the camera, but when I started directing, after I directed PCU and High School High, I thought if I could continue doing this, that’s a pretty good deal for me.  Those movies, quite frankly, didn’t hit the number that studios need to show their shareholders in order to hire you again and I found myself having to reinvent myself as a filmmaker.  So I had various projects in development that took a nosedive and then I had another movie that was good to go and that fell apart.  Then I got this movie made, but in the interim I went back into acting and did some pieces, but I had taken several years off from acting because I wanted to be taken seriously as a director.

And then I started missing acting.  And getting back into it now, especially after I’ve had years away from it, it’s much more fun now.  I also think that for a man once you grow into yourself the words that come out of your mouth fit in your body better as you mature.  I find that that has been a really interesting process.  It makes the work a lot more pleasurable, I have to admit. “

Since The Starter Wife wrapped we wanted to know what Hart would be doing with his time. “Now that we just finished, I’m writing a script with Campbell Scott and then I’m writing a script on my own that I hope to direct at some point next year.  When you say erotic thriller, it sounds like a B movie that shows on cable at midnight on a Saturday night, so I don’t want to say that, but that’s kind of what it is.  I thought I’d try my hand at something different, you know?”

Looking back on his career, Hart had this to say: “Sometimes you can have a great experience and the movie is crap and vice versa.  I guess it’s interesting because I’ve done movies as an actor over the years that have meant a lot to me when I was starting out the first few, Islands in the Stream, Breaking Away, Rich and Famous.  I guess the movie, it’s funny because it’s probably the smallest part I’ve played in a film was Die Hard, but that movie, I guess, resonated within the culture so much that even after 20 years people still talk about it, so there’s that.  I did a movie called Apartment Zero with Colin Firth years ago, which I guess has become a cult film, which was very satisfying creatively because Colin and I were given the framework for a script and we improvised basically every scene, so that was really interesting creatively.

Then I guess directing my first film, PCU, was great, and that was like, I couldn’t believe anybody hired me off this little short that I had made.  I made a black comedy starring Jon Lovitz about a guy who gets trapped in his apartment with a mosquito and goes crazy and the fact that I was hired to do a major studio film based on that was certainly beyond my expectations.”

He’s a busy guy who enjoys what he’s doing. He’s a joy to watch on the screen,  whether it be television or big movie screen.  Watch Hart in The Starter Wife, premiering Oct. 10 on USA Network.