A Few My Two Dads Articles From St. Petersburg Times

[Skywalker]

Greg Evigan brings artistry to fatherhood (Jun 11, 1989)


LOS ANGELES - Greg Evigan, who portrays a carefree artist on NBC's My Two Dads, is an artist of a different sort in real life. He's a singer and songwriter.

Evigan co-wrote the theme song for the sitcom and sings it on the air. He also wrote the music for a recent movie and has a development agreement with RCA Records.

As Joey Harris on My Two Dads, he designs practical art objects, such as some of the furniture in the apartment he shares with his old college chum, Michael Taylor (Paul Reiser), and their ``mutual`` daughter, Nicole (Staci Keanan).

Unlike Joey, a bachelor whose fatherhood is unconfirmed, Evigan is married and has three children. The child in the sandbox playing Joey as a 3-year-old in the pilot for the series is his son, Jason.

In his first series, A Year at the Top, Evigan played an aspiring rock singer who was tempted to make a pact with the devil to gain success. Before that, he was in the road company production of Jesus Christ, Superstar, and starred as Danny Zuko in Grease on Broadway and in Chicago.

My Two Dads has been on-again, off-again for the past two seasons. It made its debut in September 1987 and ran for the whole season. Then it was off the air for the first half of this season. It returned in January, was pulled to make room for spring tryout series and is now back on the air. Also, NBC renewed it for the fall.

In the show, Evigan and Reiser play former college buddies and romantic rivals who now lead radically different lifestyles. Evigan plays an artist and Reiser is an uptight, upwardly mobile financial adviser. They are drawn together by the arrival of Nicole after the death of her mother. In her will, the mother says one or the other is the father and she wants them to raise her daughter together.

The show also stars Florence Stanley and Dick Butkus.

``I wasn't looking to do a situation comedy,`` Evigan says. ``I thought I was going to do a dramatic show, but my agent said just go in for the meeting. They told me Paul was doing it and I said, great, I love his work. They said I could sing the theme song, but they wouldn't guarantee I could write it.

``We did the pilot, which was called Who's Dad? I'd heard it was a write-off and wasn't supposed to go on the air. They said the network had plenty of shows. But apparently one of the other shows didn't work out and we were on the air.``

Evigan describes his character as a free spirit.

``He'd rather go by his instincts, whether it's right or wrong,`` he says. ``He gets into a lot of trouble that way, and sometimes he's right. That's the catalyst for the relationship with Paul Reiser. The struggle is to see how we change. Maybe I learn from him and maybe he learns from me. But each of us retains our basic values.

``We see how Nicole reacts to it. That validates whether my instincts are right or wrong. We're all learning from each other. Each episode has a moral, which can be a little syrupy, but if you play it from the heart it can be good.``

Evigan's first series, A Year at the Top, went through a long and convoluted development, between 1974 and 1977. When it finally reached the air it lasted only five weeks.

Paul Shaffer, who's now on NBC's Late Night With David Letterman, was Evigan's musical partner in the fantasy comedy. One version, called Hereafter, was televised by NBC in 1975. The show later went to CBS.

Between times with that show he also did 10 episodes of a syndicated show called All That Glitters. That was a show in which traditional, stereotypical roles were reversed. Women ran the company and men were the secretaries.

``I played a schoolteacher on trial for taking students out on the front lawn to watch dogs mate,`` he says. ``I said it was educational. I was defended by a woman lawyer. It was a big thing then, but it's pretty tame now.``

Evigan spent three years in the NBC series B.J. and the Bear. It borrowed the trucker and pursuing sheriff of Smokey and the Bandit - and Evigan's sidekick chimpanzee, Bear, was a clone of Clint Eastwood's companion in Every Which Way But Loose. Later, Claude Akins, as the TV series sheriff, was spun off into a series called Lobo.

Evigan's next series was ABC's Masquerade in 1983-84, which asked us to believe that the CIA was so short of qualified agents that it recruited ordinary people with special skills for undercover work. He co-starred with Rod Taylor and Kirstie Alley.


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[Skywalker]

Paul Reiser is happy to be part of a successful show, but he can't help wishing that the descriptions of that show weren't so simplistic.

First, there's the flack that the NBC show, My Two Dads, has gotten over its premise: two bachelors (Reiser and Greg Evigan) jointly raising a girl (Staci Keanan) who could be the biological daughter of either one of them.

``Somehow, by the time it got thrown around in the press, it sounded like we were trying to get away with something naughty,`` says Reiser. ``But it was never that at all. It's a device to put these characters together.``

Then there are the episode plot descriptions.

``Sometimes what you read as the blurb of what the show is about to me is not what the show is about,`` he says. `` `This week, Nicole's boyfriend turns out to be 18.' Yeah, but what that triggers in Michael and Joey is really what the show is about. There's a wealth of material and really adult stuff almost hidden within the concept of a family show. It's sort of a frustration to me. They go, `This week the kid buys a hat.' I go, `It's not about the kid buying the hat. It's about Joey and Michael going, `She doesn't need that.' `` It's about the kid and her problems being the catalyst for these guys working out their differences.``

In spite of all the false impressions of My Two Dads that seem to be floating around, the show is thriving.

``It's a strange show in that it's technically a hit - it has real good numbers, better than a lot of shows which are deemed hits,`` says Reiser. ``Yet, because it got shuffled around and was off the air for six months, it never had quite the momentum or the recognition. I think it's largely still an undiscovered show.`` (The shuffle continues: My Two Dads recently moved to Saturdays on the apparent theory that the more different time slots it airs in, the more viewers it will pick up; it is slated for Sundays on NBC's fall schedule.)

Reiser's feeling has been reinforced on the set of Crazy People, a movie with Dudley Moore and Daryl Hannah that he has been filming during his hiatus from My Two Dads.

``For a couple of weeks, people on the movie have been coming over and saying, `God, I never saw it. It's really very funny,' `` says Reiser.

It's not often that he gets any kind of feedback at all. Right now it sounds like he's basking in the appreciation. Series without moms

Nicole (Staci Keanan) of My Two Dads isn't the first TV kid raised solely by males.

On Bachelor Father (1957-62), Bentley Gregg (John Forsythe) raised his niece with help from houseboy Peter (Sammee Tong).

On My Three Sons (1960-72), widower Steve Douglas (Fred MacMurray) raised a trio of boys with help from two older male relatives (William Frawley and later William Demarest).

On Family Affair (1966-71), bachelor Bill Davis (Brian Keith) raised two nieces and a nephew with the help of Mr. French (Sebastian Cabot), his gentleman's gentleman.

On Full House (1987-present), widower Danny (Bob Saget) is raising three daughters with an assist from brother-in-law Jesse (John Stamos) and best friend Joey (David Coulier).


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