Stepping out from Frasier’s shadow and stealing the show in Down With Love
By Simon Braund [Empire]
November 2003
This may sound a bit touchy-feely, but we love David Hyde Pierce. Absolutely love him. The incredibly gifted screen comedian who built a career out of being, by a country mile, the best thing in ten seasons of Frasier is now, as that show winds down, turning to the big screen. And he is now, by another country mile, the best thing in this month’s retro sex comedy, Down With Love, stealing the show from Doris Day/Rock Hudson surrogates Renee Zellweger and Ewan McGregor. And we just love him for that.
For the 44-year-old Pierce, one of the highlights of playing Peter McMannus, the Tony Randall-esque sidekick to McGregor’s Catcher Block (man’s man, ladies’ man, man-about-town), was meeting Day/Hudson sidekick Randall himself. “He’s always been a hero of mine,” he says of Randall, who cameos in the film. “He’s a fantastic actor and a fine comedian. We talked about theatre and New York. It was thrilling.”
It’s difficult to imagine anyone but Pierce playing McMannus, who is cut from the same fastidious, panicky, neurotic, dandyish cloth as Frasier’s little brother. “I actually think he’s very different from Niles in a certain sense,” says the actor in between takes on the Fox lot, impeccably attired for his next scene in tweed suit and yellow moleskin waistcoat. “He’s a little uptight and neurotic and he dresses nicely, but he goes places that Niles never would.”
But, just to prove that, despite his vast talent for farce, not everyone loves Pierce as we do, he actually had to audition. “I read for the part,” he confirms. “Then they said, ‘We’re a little worried about your age. Do you have a hairpiece you could wear?’ I said, ‘I’m happy to wear a hairpiece in the movie, but if they don’t have the imagination to picture me in one then I probably don’t want to do it.’ They were very nice about it and they were able to imagine me, bald as I am, with a full head of hair. Then they gave me this,” he says, running his fingers through his seamless sandy rug. “It’s amazing. They’re going to have a hard time getting this back, I can tell you.”