NiceGirls Q & A with David Alan Basche of “The Starter Wife”

Last week, NiceGirlsTV.com participated in an interview with The Starter Wife’s David Alan Basche, who is playing Kenny Kagen in this season’s USA Network series. I have to say, I enjoyed this interview so much that I found myself wishing we could spend the entire afternoon jawing with him. He exudes energy and excitement which transfers to his acting ability on screen or stage. He’s just delightful!

David takes over for Peter Jacobson, who played Kenny in the mini-series. His biggest challenge is in trying to make Kenny a bit different than Peter’s ‘Kenny’, without making him unbelievable. “So on the one hand, I have these big shoes to fill, because Peter is just so great and kind of masters the throwaway and the low-key delivery. He’s really spectacular. I think the women wanted me to be a little more broad, which is perhaps why they chose me. I like big, broad comedy. I’m comfortable with it, and a fun challenge for me is always trying to toe the line between character and characateur. Not to make Kenny a cartoon, we didn’t want to blow him up so big that he’s just unbelievable, but we did want to make him a little bit more broad and a little bit more bold and yet we still wanted everyone to kind of shake their heads whenever he says anything stupid. That was sort of the fun challenge. I hope, when push comes to shove, that I’ve achieved it.”

Another challenge is in playing two roles simultaneously in two television shows. “There was overlap in my filming of Starter Wife and Lipstick Jungle. Both shows worked together to make that happen, which I’m very grateful for. The idea of being on two shows at once and playing a bastard in both was really fantastic, not something that an actor gets to do very often. So without telling you too much about what happens in Lipstick, it’s easy for me to say that I’m in every single episode of The Starter Wife and not in every single episode of Lipstick. So we’ll leave it to viewers to wonder what happens to Mike Harness and how Kim Raver’s character, Nico, manages to get him out of her life, if in fact she does.”

Regarding the character of “Kenny”, Nice Girls wanted to know if he will ever grow a spine. Being Nice Girls, we couldn’t actually ask if he’d grow a “pair”, however, I feel now that David would have loved that. After joking that he liked the sound of “Nice Girls”, he laughs at the question, then goes on to answer, ” I don’t know how you’d type that laugh, but put it in there. You know, only when it’s convenient for him. Kenny will only grow a spine when it’s convenient for him. Unless he discovers that he still has strong feelings for Molly or unless someone in any way threatens his daughter or puts her in harm’s way, I think the folks at Nice Girls will be very interested to see what happens with Kenny in this sort of fresh jumping off point with the series because he remains his usual inattentive, misogynistic self and, as you said, willing to sell anybody out at the drop of a dime without much backbone at all. But there are also some new layers, I think, to Kenny. That was what made the whole part exciting for me and so interesting was there are some layers of what’s the wreckage from this 10 year love affair that he had with his now ex-wife. I think it’s not unfathomable to people that there might still be some emotions left over there. Kenny may decide that he’s going to have to deal with those, or like most men, he may completely subjugate them. You’ll have to watch to find out.”

Speaking of new layers, this Nice Girl asked David about the relationship between Kenny and his daughter, Jaden, played by Brielle Barbusca. “There is some wonderful stuff with the characters of Kenny and Jaden and some really fun, I think, a fun take on this father/daughter relationship in general and maybe even specifically on the father/daughter relationship involving a divorce. Again, we poke fun at Hollywood, we poke fun at the Hollywood type of, in particular, of kind of a high-powered, very wealthy man who feels entitled to just about everything in his life and doesn’t show much respect to anyone and, as you said, doesn’t seem to have much of a backbone. But that’s one area in particular where we may actually get to see Kenny do the right thing. He’s certainly an idiot sometimes and self-focused. I’m really running out of adjectives to negatively describe him, but when it comes to his daughter, there’s no question that he really is able to put her first and recognize the love and attention that she needs. Though he can’t always communicate well with her, he certainly tries. I think people are going to find it very interesting.

I don’t think that Jaden or the interaction between Molly and Kenny, based on having Jaden, I don’t think that’s the only thing that keeps Kenny around. Perhaps, where we left off in the miniseries, obviously Kenny cheated with a much younger woman and seemed to be kind of off and running on his own. I think people will see that his love life and his career are a little bit more in turmoil than we might have expected from where we left off. I think Kenny comes around not just because he loves his daughter and obviously has to deal with joint custody, but I think also because he needs attention. He’s most of the time just sort of like a puppy and you just sort of have to scratch him and give him some attention and feed him and he’s pretty happy. Sometimes, yes, he comes around because he wants a little love. That’s a strange thing to say about a narcissist, to say about a cheerful sociopath, but I think, I hope, that that’s part of, again, what’s going to make people want to know what he’s going to say next and what he’s going to do next, in particular when it comes to Molly, his ex-wife, and is there any love left there. As you asked, why does he come around? Is it just because of the daughter or is it not? I think it will be very interesting for people to answer that question. ”

In the mini-series, Kenny wants a divorce just before their anniversary and before the prenups expire. When David was asked if he thought this was the norm in Hollywood, he had this to say: “It’s really fascinating that Kenny drops this bomb right before the prenup expires. He’s not a stupid man. I frequently make fun of the character of Kenny and really like to, but he’s by no means unintelligent. He’s a very, very successful billion-dollar box office Hollywood producer. So think what we may of those people, they usually don’t get where they are without having fairly strong intelligence. So, Kenny knows most of the time exactly what he’s doing, unless he’s distracted by food or sex.

This, unfortunately in my experience, is a little bit on the nose when it comes to Hollywood. Unfortunately, it’s been my experience having grown up in the east coast and come out the L.A. to work—which I’m very grateful for and I actually kind of like L.A.—but sometimes you run into people in the business that are certainly much more interested in the perks of the business and the money and the fame and the allure and much less interested in decency and honesty and loyalty and good karma and saving the world and changing the world and making it a better place. So, I think certainly The Starter Wife has a little bit of both, but in terms of Kenny, I’m there to represent the bad side of Hollywood.”

David also plays Nico’s boss, Mike Harness, on Lipstick Jungle. Is there a bit of Mike in Kenny? “Well, in terms of research, I just had lunch at the Ivy and listened to all the conversations around me that I could, and that pretty much did it. There is a little Mike Harness in Kenny and there’s a little Kenny in Mike Harness. I was talking to someone a few weeks ago, I think it was, and I hadn’t even realized that there sort of was an inspiration for me for Kenny, and I didn’t really recognize it, maybe because I don’t want to give the guy credit. He was an old agent of mine many, many years ago. He used to wink at me, and he used to say things like, “I’m your biggest fan,” and then he’d wink and point at me. He said that to me right before dropping me and never speaking to me again, dropping me as a client. So I think there’s a little bit of him in there. Hopefully he’s going to read all these blogs and know that it’s him and be pissed off that I haven’t given him credit by name.”

One question that was asked of David particularly interested us here at NiceGirlsTV.com. He was asked how he came into these two shows, Lipstick Jungle and The Starter Wife, that particularly target women and how was it working with so many wonderful actresses. “I think luck has a lot to do with it. I couldn’t be happier being a working actor. Just that would be enough. To be able to make a living in this business is tough, and to be able to thrive is even harder. To get a shot at doing some network TV is almost like the icing on the cake. I have to tell you, I’m feeling very grateful. I try to remind myself if I get a little too big for my britches and I start asking people to bring me coffee when the coffee machine is 10 feet away, I try to remember that I waited tables long enough in New York to know that I’m lucky to be on two shows at once. I’m lucky to be on one show.

How did it come to be? I had come from a few other series, and actually when I auditioned for Lipstick Jungle, I knew the two show runners at the time. They had created a show called Three Sisters that I did with Vicki Lewis and Dyan Cannon on NBC. So that was exciting to be back on NBC with Lipstick, which was great. Then plot twists and turns in Lipstick sort of left me a little bit available, and USA being part of the NBC universal family I guess had their eyes on me and that worked out very well that I was able to do Starter Wife, too. It’s been quite a year. I couldn’t be happier. My wife is eight months pregnant and due on December 3rd. So that’s going to take the cake. I’ll tell you, that’s better than all of this. That’s kind of the long-winded answer about how did it happen and isn’t it great and hey, lucky me.

The other question about the great actresses and what’s it like, I’ve been very fortunate to work in film with some great directors, some male icons of directing, and similarly, I’ve worked with some great actors. But somehow I keep getting cast in situations that are surrounded by strong, powerful, beautiful women. And, you know, that just doesn’t suck. It’s fantastic, and Debra Messing fits right into that category, of course. She is smart, she’s witty, she’s a comic genius—I don’t think I’m overstating that—and she’s just fantastic. So I couldn’t be happier. As a guy, when you work around all these smart, powerful women you realize that they’re a lot smarter than you are. If you’re smart, you keep your mouth shut and do what they tell you, and things go really, really well.”

Getting back to Kenny, knowing how much of a nasty person he is, how does David relate to Kenny and get into his skin? “That’s a good question. I ask myself that sometimes, because I really like to think I’m a nice guy. I hope that most of my friends would tell you that I am actually in real life a nice guy. So how do you relate to a guy who’s not? I think there are two layers to that answer. One is as an actor, it’s fun to just make stuff up, and it’s fun to say if I were this big of a jerk how would I behave? If I didn’t care about this person, then what would I say? What’s the most outrageous thing that I could add to this situation to make it even more misogynistic? So asking yourself those questions just opens everything up and you just go with the flow.

The other half of it is, honestly, I just turned 40 and I’m still working on trying not to be self-centered. I’m still working on trying to listen and pay attention to people and not get caught up in my own little world. That happens a lot, particularly in Hollywood. We all get caught up in our own little worlds, here, and take ourselves too seriously. So sometimes, I’m sorry to say, I just sort of look back into my past and I go back to my 20’s, and there’s that self-centered guy who wants what he wants and doesn’t really take anybody’s feelings into consideration. Growing up, thank God, I had a strong family unit. Even though I’m from a single parent family—my dad died when I was a kid—but thank God my older brother, Steven, and my older sister, Fran, kept me in line. They would tell me, “You’re just not listening. You’re just not thinking before you speak.” I remember once my older sister sat me down—I think I was a teenager—and she said, “We’re all not just characters in the movie of your life, David.” I thought, oh, okay, I have to work on this. So obviously that stuck with me.

I think I’ve come a long way since then, but sometimes I think actors just have to admit that, you know what, they have a part of everyone in them. If they go back and dig around a little bit, they’ll find it.”

David is married to actress Alysia Renier, who is another Starter Wife on the show. Working together is nothing new to them – it’s how they met! ” It was spectacular working with Alysia on The Starter Wife. She’s in the first few episodes, and then she had to go back east to do some theater and some other work so she wasn’t available after that. But we hope the producers will bring her back. They’ve indicated that they might, so now we’ve said it in print. So hopefully they’ll read it.

It was great being on the same set with her. We met doing theater, and we’ve since done a lot of theater together. We’ve done some film work together. We’ve never been on the same television set. So for us, it was really a treat. It was just very, very exciting to be able to do that together. We had a ball, and she and Debra got along great. I actually know Debra’s husband a little bit from back in the day. We’ve since seen each other, and we’re kind of planning a dinner, the four of us, in New York. So it’s been a wonderful thing to have both artists in the same house working and involved on the same project.”

When David was asked what his most memorable moments were while filming The Starter Wife, he has a couple. ” One of them I think I already mentioned in the press, which was—it’s the same answer when someone asks me what’s the funniest thing that ever happened on the set—we were filming a fantasy sequence. In every episode there’s at least one, sometimes more, fantasy sequences from other movies. At one point, Debra does an impression of Clint Eastwood in Dirty Harry. Debra and I do Young Frankenstein. There are some wonderful fantasy sequences, and one of them was Basic Instinct. It’s of course that famous scene where Sharon Stone is sitting in the interrogation room and crosses and uncrosses her legs. Debra decided to play a little joke on all the boys in the room, and at one point when she uncrossed her legs, it became very clear to all of us that her panties that she was wearing had letters on them that said “Say please.” So, needless to say, we all had the giggles for quite a while. It was hard to film that scene after that. So she showed her practical joker colors there.” I’m thinking perhaps NiceGirlsTV should start a line of apparel like that. “Nice Girls Say Please!” Any takers?

Continuing: ” The other was, honestly, I think around about the third episode when I accidentally came on set and the producers had been watching some dailies. I kind of walked up quietly and heard them all just nodding and sort of saying, “Yes, yes, no really good. David’s really, yes…” There were no specifics there, which is great because otherwise they’d go to my head, but there was this wonderful sense of oh yeah they like me, they really, really like me. Being sort of the new guy on the show, that was a great feeling to have, feeling like a few episodes in, I was getting up to speed and doing what it was that they wanted to see in the show. That made me really happy. ”

So why does he think people watch The Starter Wife? “So many reasons. First of all, Debra is a huge reason. She’s just spectacular. She’s gorgeous and funny and smart and silly. She’s fun to watch, and she has a huge following from Will & Grace that she deserves. But also, the miniseries had a big impact on people, I think. Debra told me that she was struck by how many women came up to her after the miniseries aired and said, “Thank you for doing that, there’s just so few single, divorced women trying to make their way on television. That’s me, that’s who I am, and I really like watching it. Thank you.” So I think that’s another part. Women can relate.

Also, I think men probably tune in, and maybe it’s at first because their wife or their girlfriend makes them sit on the couch and watch and turns off the football game. I think interestingly enough, USA Network has such great shows and a lot of them have such, I think—I’m guessing—a strong male viewership like Burn Notice and Monk and Psych, and certainly we know wrestling is a huge draw for the guys.

So I think we’re going to see men tuning in in greater numbers on USA to check this out. Hopefully my character is interesting, and they’ll dig this guy. We have Chris Diamantopoulos and Hart Bochner and some other great, great male actors on the show that I think are going to make it really fun for men, too. I hope if you ask me that question in a year from now and say, “Why did so many people tune in? What do you think the success of the show is about?” that my answer will make even more sense then.”
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NiceGirlsTV wanted to know if David preferred comedic roles to more dramatic ones. “You know, I never thought I was particularly funny. I really sort of had in my head, like most kids out of college that want to be a big star, I thought okay I want to be a big movie star. I want to be George Clooney. There’s still time for that, but all of a sudden someone said, “You’re funny.” I knew I was testing for a pilot in L.A. that was a sitcom, and then they said, “You got it and we’re going on the air.” Even though it didn’t go anywhere, there was another one that said, “You’re funny. You were funny in that, and we’re going to put you in this thing. That’s funny, too.” Honestly, I just sort of went along with it and then tried to learn how to be funnier. I think if you work with Debra and you really pay attention—again, I worked with Vicki Lewis and a bunch of other comediennes and also some great comic actors—eventually I just said, “Okay, this is where I find myself. I’m not going to fight against this. I’m not going to say I should try to control all of this and I want to be George Clooney.” Instead I said, “You know what, I’m working. I’m living the life. I’m living the dream. Here I am working in Hollywood making money doing what I love to do, and whether it’s serious or it’s funny, I should just sort of shut up and do a great job.” That’s really how I look at it, and now I really do love roles that have some comedy to them. I’ve really come to appreciate that and really come to enjoy it and I kind of crave it. Hopefully after five or six or seven seasons of Starter Wife, I’ll be itching to do a film about a guy who dies in a fire or something tragic, because you always want to do a little bit of both as an artist. I love the comedy. Even though I sort of fell into it by accident, I absolutely love it.”

Finally, we Nice Girls wanted to know if David could play any other role on the show, which one would it be? Here’s what he told us: “Boy, that’s a tough one. Every character is so well drawn. Can I do a round robin? Can I be Judy Davis for a week and be Joan and then be Hart Bochner’s character, Zach, for a week? Then I want to be Rodney for a week. I couldn’t even choose. I think they’re all so wonderfully drawn and they all have such heart but also such comedy. I’m sure if I said I wanted to be Molly, then I’d have fun but I’d be coveting everything that Chris Diamantopoulos gets to do as Rodney, and I’d want to do that. So maybe that’s the sign of a balanced cast, perhaps.”

We wanted David to know that we think he is indeed as big as George Clooney, so we told him he was going to be our next Nice Boy. “Alright. Just for saying that, you can come back anytime.”

I bet George Clooney wouldn’t have said that.