Barry Watson has made a career out of playing the sincere nice guy. He was the responsible, eldest child on 7th Heaven, the hopeless romantic in What About Brian, and now he's the good-humored boyfriend of Christina Applegate's amnesiac character in Samantha Who? That new show premieres tonight at 9:30pm on ABC, wedged carefully between Dancing with the Stars and The Bachelor.

Barry Watson spoke to BuddyTV about Samantha Who?, his desire to play a bad-ass, working with such an experienced ensemble, and his wife, Extreme Makeover: Home Edition designer Tracy Hutson. Below you will find a transcript as well as the mp3 audio file of the interview.

Hi this John from BuddyTV and I'm talking to Barry Watson from the new ABC Series Samantha Who? Hi Barry.

How ya doin'?


I'm doing great, how are you doing this morning?

I'm doing good! Just waiting for the show to premiere to see how we do, how we fair.


That's what everyone's waiting. Now it's tonight at 9:30pm wedged right in between Dancing with the Stars and The Bachelor which is a pretty good time slot I've gotta say.

Yea, it's not that bad, I wouldn't complain.


Similar I think to your last show, What About Brian, the target audience for this show is I'm guessing more a female demographic than anything else. I'm wondering if this is an active choice you've been making, trying to do more sensitive male roles to attract that female audience?

You know what I think I've just kind of, you know, fallen into that with you know, What About Brian and this. Yeah, it's jut kind of happened that way, I can't really explain it but I'm not going to complain about it though.


Yeah. Do you ever get the desire to play just a hard-nosed cop or some guy who always gets into fights?

Yeah you know, some dude who just kicks ass for an hour and 30 minutes. Yeah of course I mean, you want to do everything ... it's kind of funny. You know when I first started off, before I was like a series regular starring or doing any movies or anything like that, I was always guest starring as like, the bad guy. Forever. But nobody will ever remember that because people only know me for playing like, you know, these nice guys.


Definitely. And with you and your co-star in this, Christina Applegate, both kind of not necessarily grew up on TV, but most famous for playing teenagers on long running shows: Married ... with Children, 7th Heaven ... two completely different series.

Yeah, a lot of TV experience which I think is great because we both go into it with kind of a professional attitude and you know we've all been there before so you know that in the TV world you never know what's going to happen. But you know I think we all really believe in this show and are kind of excited to see what happens because I think we'd all like to do it for a while.


Yeah. So everyone on the show kind of like gets along, so do you find you have more in common with her than some other actors you've acted with just because you have all of that experience for such young actors?

Yeah, I don't know if it so much that we have more in common than other people I've worked with but I just think that we just ... we know that we're both going to, and not just with Christina but with Jean Smart, who is on the show, and Kevin Dunn. Everybody's got a good body to work behind them and so everybody shows up and knows what they need to do for their part and there's no ... everybody's in it for the same reason, to make the show as good as possible so there's no kind of selfish attitudes or anything like that which is great. I don't think I've ever had a chance to work with such a solid group of people that all, you know, just want to make the best show.


And uh, I'm not sure how many episodes you've filmed already yet ...

We're about to shoot our 10th episode this week already.


Do you have just a favorite moment or favorite scene that you've gotten to do so far on this show?

Um, you know what, I mean it's funny because usually we find like one thing on something you've worked on but you know most of all my scenes are with Christina. So it's just, I mean she's ... people are really, really, really, really gonna fall back in love with Christina Applegate because of the character she's playing and how great she is. So I think like, every scene that I've had with her just, you know, cracks me up. I mean, there's something that we did a couple weeks ago where she, her character kind of realized that I have a new girl living in our apartment and there's a very funny exchange between her character and Jennifer Esposito. I can't really say too much, because I'll give it away and it probably doesn't air for another two months but you know, everything I do with Christina is just fun because you know she makes it fun, the writers make it funner, we all kind of just ... you know we're laughing everyday we go to work.


Yeah. And from your time on 7th Heaven toward the end you worked as a writer for that show and you directed a couple of episodes ... is that something that you're interested in pursuing further? Or was that sort of just isolated for that one show?

No, no, no I mean there's actually something I'm working on right now that I'm trying to write and style up for a comedy for a feature film. And you know, directing is another passion of mine that I really want to keep pursuing. Actually, I think every actor should try to dip in to every aspect of the business in some way because I think it's really made me a better actor you know, knowing every single process of how everything gets done ... and I want to try to do everything. And you know also play the bad guy, action star, I want to do it all so you know the directing this is something I'm really passionate about and I hope to do more of it.


And finally I want to just ask one quick question about your wife, Tracy, one of the designers on Extreme Makeover: Home Edition ... how awesome is your house then?

Man, my house kicks ass. No, you know, it's funny because everybody always asks me that and our house is great, don't get me wrong I love it, it's beautiful but there's still some things that need to be done. But she's so busy fixing everybody else's house that you know our house is kind of on the back burner right now so, yeah. I could use some improvements, I need like Ty Pennington to show up with that megaphone, actually I don't want him to do that because I think I'd put it down his throat. But yeah, we need a couple little things ... everybody needs a couple little things to do to their house so yeah.


Okay. Well than you very much for talking to us Barry and I wish you all the best. I've seen the pilot episode and I really do enjoy it, it's a very funny show I gotta tell ya.

Well you know I think you're going to be really happy because the episodes ... all the episodes after the pilot get even better and it's going to be a lot of fun.

 

-Interview conducted by John Kubicek
(Image courtesy of ABC)