FX's new legal thriller, Damages, features a vicious character named Arthur Frobisher.  The billionaire C.E.O is being sued by his former employees for swindling them of their life savings.  By the second episode, he proves even more menacing as he cheats on his wife, snorts cocaine and plans the murder of a young woman whose sole mistake was accidentally catching a glimpse of him getting into a car with his broker.

As villainous as the character is, Damages co-creator and co-executive producer Glenn Kessler said that surprisingly, viewers have responded to the character with pity rather than hatred.

“You get every aspect of this guy's humanity,” Kessler said. “You can hope for that from an actor.  But you certainly can't count on it.  I don't know how many actors could have those huge plot points in their story and have the audience walk away liking them more.”

Actor Ted Danson, who is tasked with playing the dark role, is also surprised with the viewer's positive reaction.

“He's very complicated,” Danson said before admitting he does not know the extent of his character's complexity.  This is understandable, as the 59-year-old actor is not used to playing unpredictable and mysterious characters.  For the last 25 years, Danson has portrayed more likeable on-screen personas, such as bartender Sam Malone on Cheers and a crabby but good-hearted doctor on Becker.

However, this is not to say that Ted Danson is a total stranger to productions with dark and serious storylines.  In 1984, he appeared with his Damages co-star Glenn Close in Something About Amelia, a television drama about incest.  When he was chosen to play Frobisher, Danson assured the Damages creators of his commitment to the role.

Living up to his word, Danson followed their ideas for role preparation.  He met with real-life business tycoons and watched documentaries like Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room.  He was even told to work with acting coach, Harold Guskin, though the idea did not sit well with Danson at first.

“My ego went: ‘Oh, my God! They think I'm not up to this.  They think I'm bad.  They think I need help,'” Danson said, adding that he eventually came to appreciate working with Guskin.  “I'm going to hate reading this, but it's good for an actor to be reminded that who you are is good enough.  That you don't have to put on layers of something else to feel like you're capable of playing a part.  That I have enough arrogance and entitlement in me, Ted, to play Arthur Frobisher.”

Because Damages contains much mystery and many twists and turns, Ted Danson discovers what happens to his character only one script at a time, forcing him to keep re-assessing his notions of Frobisher's ability to do good and evil.

Of his character's fate in the upcoming episodes, Danson speculated, “they're going to have to chew me up into little pieces.  By the end, it should be quite amusing how devastated I am by Glenn.  I don't have any fantasies I'm going to win this.”


-Lisa Claustro, BuddyTV Staff Columnist
Source: The New York Times
(Image Courtesy of The New York Times)