Alexander’s quieter side starts to come out in ‘Listen Up’
On the new “Listen Up,” Jason Alexander plays a sitcom version of real-life TV sports talk host and newspaper columnist Tony Kornheiser.
Before taking the role, was he familiar with Kornheiser?
“No, not at all,” Alexander admits. “I really follow sports very minimally.”
Maybe that’s why they call it acting.
“I read his columns, watched his show,” Alexander says of Washington Post and ESPN fixture Kornheiser. “A funny man! I didn’t know what he was talking about, but I enjoyed the hell out of him.”
Of course, Alexander got famous acting the part of hothead single guy George Costanza on “Seinfeld.” But on “Listen Up” (Mondays at 8:30 p.m. on CBS), he’s Tony Kleinman, a sports fanactic and family man with a knowing wife (Wendy Makkena) and two precocious teenagers.
Malcolm-Jamal Warner plays the sidekick on his talk show, “Shut Up and Listen.”
“Listen Up” is Alexander’s second try at a sitcom comeback. Three years after “Seinfeld” ended, he landed on ABC in 2001 playing a self-help guru on “Bob Patterson.” It quickly flopped.
“I was always interested in trying again, because I do like doing a sitcom,” says Alexander.
For “Listen Up,” he’s borrowing from his past as George, “in the same way that I was doing a blatant Woody Allen impression when I started playing George – until I really understood that he was (‘Seinfeld’ co-creator) Larry David‘s alter ego, and the character could take on his own life.
“I look forward to growth in this character, of finding something uniquely different from where I started,” Alexander says of Tony Kleinman.
He notes that Kleinman is closer than Costanza to who he really is.
“I was never George,” says Alexander. “I never had friendships like his. I never dated; I met (wife) Daena when I was 19.”
Not that anyone would confuse him with any of the characters he’s played.
“The truth is: The real me is pretty shy, sober and serious about stuff,” Alexander says in his typically quiet manner.
“I don’t have the sort of ego that makes me prone to those kind of outbursts. To do that, you have to feel, at least in the moment, INCREDIBLY right” – he is revving into moderate George-mode – “and to look at the world and go, ‘YOU are wrong, and not only are you WRONG, you’re INSANE, and the madness has to END. And I’m here to END it!’
“I usually see the gray of everything,” he sighs, “so it’s hard for me in real life to make that kind of bold stand. But it’s fun to play those guys!”
Alexander doesn’t count on starring in another series that will rise to “Seinfeld’s” stratospheric heights. That’s fine; at age 45, he says he embodies a more mature approach to success.
“True happiness occupies a very even, middle keel,” he declares. “That’s my experience of this show: even, constant joy and rewards. It will never burn as bright as the one that came before it, and there was a time when I would have said, ‘Oh, that’s disappointing to me.’ Now I go, ‘That’s real to me, and just fine.’ “
The birthday bunch
Jazz pianist Ellis Marsalis is 70. Singer-accordionist Buckwheat Zydeco is 57. Actor Robert Ginty is 56. Singer Stephen Bishop is 53. Actor D.B. Sweeney is 43. Actress Laura San Giacomo is 43. Rapper Reverend Run (Run-DMC) is 40. Actor Patrick Warburton is 40. Drummer Travis Barker (blink-182) is 29.