Out of character in the real world, John Larroquette has the appeal of an enormous teddy bear — his height (6′ 4″), his easy, comfortable posture, and his very human, lived-in looking face make him seem friendly, even adorable. Even the modish, baggy clothes he wears, his sweater and pleated trousers, add to this effect. This could not be more diametrically opposed to the effect his character on the hit TV show Night Court, prosecuting attorney Dan Fielding, has on all those around him. Dan Fielding is the archetypal man you love to hate, a formidably obnoxious and arrogant sleaze, a man who is incapable of treating women as anything other than sex objects in Frederick’s of Hollywood lingerie.
All of this points to Larroquette’s immense talent, for which he has been awarded Emmys for best supporting actor two years in a row. Fielding, in his pressed-conservative, three-piece suit, with his wheedling courtroom whine and even more wheedling, needy and less-than-slick approach to anything wearing a skirt, is a great comic creation, and could not resemble the actor who portrays him less. Larroquette, seated and relaxed at a Malibu restaurant, is serious and thoughtful, even quiet, and very, very smart in both a street sense and an intellectual sense. He has all the charm Fielding aspires to have, and he doesn’t abuse it.
When asked to talk about Fielding, Larroquette explores his many ideas about his character thoughtfully but humorously. “We’re very different psychologically, and spiritually, we’re vastly different. The audience expects my character to get sleazy sex all the time, but not anything meaningful. He goes to bed with lots of women, but never more than once. They don’t want to have anything to do with him after that.”
John Larroquette • Playgirl, May 1987.
He goes on: “One of the things I dislike about television is, if you do a character well, the world begins treating you as if you were that character. When you’re playing somebody like Fielding, people have a tendency to think you’re an asshole. And, although I am, I’m not the same kind of asshole as Fielding. I’m a different kind of asshole.
“But, it’s interesting—women are very attracted to Fielding. The kind of mail I get from women—I don’t want to get into that…You know, I think one of the things that women find appealing about Fielding is that he will say things that most of us think, but are too socially well-trained to utter. That’s one thing we do have in common, he and I. Most of my life I’ve been rather outspoken about what I might feel about a certain person— it’s a bit of a defense mechanism. I’ve always been of the mind that if I can walk into a room and pinpoint the faults of each individual in the room, then they’re going to be less inclined to scrutinize me if I can put them on the defensive about their own frailties. Fielding does that too. To an almost criminal extent. With him, it’s a huge defense mechanism.”
“You can’t get too psychological about a sitcom character—the basic reason he exists is to make people laugh. The jokes are what counts. But that has something to do with his appeal—he’s very outspoken. And he’s very sensual—he loves sex. Now, he treats most women like bimbos—he definitely treats women like sex objects. There may be some slight appeal in that—I don’t know. But women can also wrap him around their fingers very easily. He is, I think, ultimately pussy-whipped. He can serve as a lover and then be shuffled off, much as men have treated women—maybe that’s the appeal. He can be used totally for his sexuality, then it’s ‘go catch a cab, honey.’”
John Larroquette, at 39, has all the accoutrements of Hollywood success— the black super-fast Porsche, the ranch in Malibu, the hit series, the two Emmys on the mantel. At the same time, he seems remarkably well-grounded. He has been married for 12 years to Elizabeth, and their two children, a 15-year-old daughter and a nine-year-old son, were scheduled to be joined by another male sibling in March. He has none of the slick and narcissistic mannerisms you might associate with the kind of stardom he has achieved in his four years on Night Court. Instead, he is remarkably low- key, more like a friend with whom you can have a real talk, or an attractive real person you’d meet at a party. But, to get to this very grounded, happy point in his life, Larroquette has done some deep and heavy searching, and has dealt with some enormous private demons.
Soon after he was born in Louisiana, his parents’ marriage dissolved, and Larroquette was raised by his grandparents in New Orleans’ notorious French Quarter. “Growing up there had something to do with my not taking life very seriously at times,” he says. “It also had something to do with my not attributing much intelligence to being an adult. I saw grown men doing very stupid things in the name of fun there.”
Larroquette enjoyed his early life in the French Quarter (which he describes as “like Disneyland on acid”), where he first developed his love of watching people, and where he always felt safe and secure. “I was not a wild kid,” he says. “I went to Catholic schools. I was never a delinquent, or in trouble with the police in any way. I was an only child, so I spent a lot of time alone, with my imagination. I lived with my grandmother and grandfather. My grandfather was a longshoreman, so I spent a lot of time on the river with him. They had a summer home in Mississippi, so I spent my summers there. It was a very nice childhood.” But as an adolescent, Larroquette’s ideas about life and about the world began to change, because of the fertility of his own imagination and the cultural revolution that was going on around him—the culture of youth, of growing your hair long, taking drugs, looking for greater meaning in the universe, of rock ’n’ roll and the Beatles.
“I wanted to be either an actor or a priest,” he says of himself as an adolescent, aware of the rather heretical content of that statement. “They’re basically very much the same. They consist in selling a fantasy. You get to wear a costume. People ask me if I’m still a practicing Catholic and I say no, I’m not. I don’t practice anymore because I’ve perfected it. Really, it just doesn’t appeal to me anymore— Catholicism. I dislike dogmatic people.”
As a teenager, Larroquette wrote short stories and radio plays and began to perform these plays on local radio stations. With his natural-for-radio voice, he also became a disc jockey and began to fulfill his need for travel and discovery. He did not go to college. Instead, right out of high school, he hit the road, in requisite Jack Kerouac fashion, to find out about himself and others. He puts his quest, in a slightly different fashion: “If I could have stayed 18, that means it would always be 1965,” he begins, “and ’65 was a great year. The only thing that could have been better is if I could have been 18 and living in London in 1965. I never really had any true Peter Pan complex, I guess. I seem to have matured rather late in life, emotionally. Most boys mature slowly. I don’t know if I used the ’60s as an excuse, or whether the ’60s had anything to do with my not wanting any kind of roots. I traveled a lot in the ’60s, doing what most guys I knew in the ’60s were trying to do—get high and get laid. My two main ambitions. Not really having any direction, any real direction—except experience.”
Larroquette worked as a disc jockey when he could, but he also worked as a bartender and at various other odd jobs during his gypsy period. He worked hardest at being a free spirit. “I was not the most reliable fellow,” he says. “I’d say, ‘See you at noon,’ and then not show up until Tuesday. I’d leave cities without telling people, and sort of upset their dinner plans. Now I try to keep promises, show up where and when I said I would. Especially now that I have children—I try to set an example for them…
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