Edmonton Sun - Malcolm McDowell on Pearl 7/29/96

Teacher is a gem By Neal Watson

Edmonton Sun 7/29/96
Pasadena, California - Gabe Kaplan, Howard Hesseman ... and Malcolm McDowell?

    It may not be the acting company that the classically trained McDowell wants to keep, but if Pearl clicks with viewers this fall, the English actor will join the pantheon of sitcom teachers that includes the former stars of Welcome Back, Kotter and Head of the Class.
    McDowell stars as an arrogant, pompous college professor who takes great pleasure in humiliating his students. One of those students is the title character, Pearl, a middle-aged widow returning to school and played by Rhea Perlman.
    It is Perlman's show, but McDowell is the star. The Liverpool-born actor commands the classroom the way John Houseman's gruff law professor did in the Paper Chase. While Perlman's tart-tongued Carla regularly stole the show in Cheers, her steady, level-headed Pearl regularly witnesses the same kind of thievery from McDowell's professor Stephen Pynchon.
    Despite her star billing, Perlman says she doesn't mind one little bit.
    "The stronger the actors there are around me, the better it is for me as an actress," Perlman said in an interview last week. "That's what you have to play off. I'm just pleased as hell that we have him (McDowell) here."
    The star of if...., A Clockwork Orange and one of the movie's most memorable villains, the charismatic McDowell can't help but steal scenes - even at press conferences. He plays very well, however, at being humble. It's obviously hard.
    "It's a bit like going to a madhouse or something," he said of the sitcom experience. "I'm a bit fearful of having to churn one of these out every four days. That will be new territory for me. I just hope that I'm up to that. I feel a bit scared about it, but nothing that I'm going to lose any sleep about."
    Nor does he do much more than yawn about the coincidence that Perlman is moving to CBS this season, as is her former Cheers partner, Ted Danson. While McDowell teams with Perlman, his ex-wife Mary Steenburgen, co-stars with husband Danson on Ink.
    "What can I say?" McDowell asks. "Life is a circle, is it not? Hey listen, I hope they have a big hit. Ted is a very special person. My children (with Steenburgen) now live there. I want them to have a big hit because I want my kids to be happy. Other than that, I never talk about ex-wives."
    McDowell says he didn't call on personal experience with a professor or teacher to create Pynchon - like many English actors he's not big on method acting, anyway, preferring just to "get on with it, you know." But some of Lindsay Anderson, who directed McDowell in O Lucky Man! and if..., did creep into his portrayal, he admits.
    "He taught by demeaning you, and giving a swift kick in the arse. And he did it with great humor. So there's a bit of that, of Lindsay Anderson in this character for me."
    When it is pointed out to McDowell that some of his countrymen, like Dudley Moore, have not fared well at sitcoms, he counters by saying, "Joan Collins did all right, didn't she?"
    McDowell doesn't know, but most of us realize that Collins starred in a drama and not a sitcom. That's OK, he probably doesn't know about Kaplan or Hesseman either. Best not to tell him, don't you think?