After years of strenuous work on series like Oz and Law & Order: Special Victims Unit , Chris Meloni slips into something a little more comfortable on the Fox sitcom Surviving Jack .
Chris Meloni and Connor Buckley as Jack and Frankie Dunlevy on Surviving Jack.
Mike Yarish / FOX
It's normal to be a little bit scared of Chris Meloni.
Whether you know him as convicted murderer Chris Keller on Oz, intense detective Elliot Stabler on Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, or ancient vampire Roman Zimojic on True Blood, Meloni's work has been nothing if not intimidating.
"I think my face doesn't help," Meloni says with a knowing smile, leaning in closer. "Maybe that's how I am in real life."
There's no question Meloni looks the part when it comes to the stern, authoritative characters he often plays. In person, he exudes a striking confidence, even when he's being far gentler and funnier than his past roles suggest. He also knows how little it takes to put the person he's talking to on edge, something he does deliberately for a laugh.
Meloni has done comedy before — including memorable turns in 2001's Wet Hot American Summer and 2004's Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle — but now he's diving into the sitcom world with Surviving Jack, which premiered March 27 on Fox.
"I think I was leaning toward a comedy," Meloni explains. He's leaning back in a chair in a near-empty conference room, enjoying a more subdued setting than the rest of his frantic Manhattan press tour. "I hadn't made a conscious decision, but I realized that's what I was looking to do, something a little lighter."
With oscreen wife Rachael Harris as Joanne.
Darren Michaels / FOX
Of course, Meloni's titular character on Surviving Jack isn't far from past roles: Jack Dunlevy is a tough, no-nonsense parent who uses his military training to keep his teenage children in line. His behavior is played for laughs, but Meloni himself continues to cast an imposing shadow.
For Meloni, who has seen his share of similar sitcom dads over the years, Jack's unique characteristics were a selling point.
"I thought it was refreshing," Meloni says. "I enjoyed the uncompromisedness of his viewpoints. I enjoyed the maturity of his relationship with his wife. I enjoyed that it was actually a guy, a parent, who had control of the household, as opposed to that dopey parent thinking they've got control but really the kids rule the roost. Which, I don't know. It's fine. But it's been done."
It might help that the character of Jack is based on a real person — Surviving Jack co-creator Justin Halpern's father, as seen in his autobiographical book I Suck at Girls. Meloni's take on Jack is "one-third me, one-third Justin's dad, and one-third my dad."
Halpern's dad isn't entirely unfamiliar to audiences: He's the subject of Halpern's popular Twitter account Shit My Dad Says, and a subsequent and short-lived television series with William Shatner in the lead. But beyond that, Surviving Jack has little to do with CBS' $#*! My Dad Says series.
"I won't speak for [Halpern], although to say in this particular incarnation, he has far more creative control," Meloni says. "[$#*! My Dad Says] was his maiden voyage into the big, bad land of TV. I don't think he had quite learned how to guide it in the way that he wanted it to be guided. So in any rate, I think this is closer to his original intent."
As opposed to Shatner's Ed, Meloni's Jack is younger and less crotchety — but more authoritative. The single-camera comedy is more grounded in reality, which makes the show funnier, by Meloni's estimation.
"I look for the rhythms — rhythms that come off of authentic behavior, relationships that I understand and recognize and wanna learn more about, which are very difficult to write," he says. "It's easy to go toward shtick, and I think it takes a far more — you have to dig far longer and far deeper to get into what is funny in this absurd situation that we call life and relationships and family and all that, when all those collide."
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