‘Unforgettable’ star would rather forget

October 31, 2011 at 12:00a.m.

By David Hiltbrand

Philadelphia Inquirer

PHILADELPHIA

You can hear traffic in the background as you talk to Dylan Walsh. He’s been spending a lot of time lately on the sidewalks of New York City. With a newborn in his apartment, it’s almost impossible to carry on an uninterrupted phone conversation inside.

And as the costar of TV’s No. 1 new drama, “Unforgettable,” he spends his workdays pounding the pavement with Poppy Montgomery, solving murders for the NYPD.

The premise of the show, averaging just under 14 million viewers so far this season, is that Montgomery (“Without a Trace”) has an absolutely encyclopedic memory. She can remember every detail of every day of her life.

That means that several times an episode, her character, Carrie, freezes in a kind of trance while viewers see her likeness revisiting the scene of the crime, picking up new details.

That leaves Walsh and the rest of the squad in the awkward position of huddling behind her silently, waiting for her to return to the here and now.

“We laugh about it,” Walsh says. “What would cops do while she’s staring off strangely? Would they just stop and watch her?”

This type of total recall, by the way, while exceedingly rare, does exist. In fact, scientists have identified — how weird is this? — sitcom actress Marilu Henner (“Taxi”) as one of the handful of people confirmed with “superior autobiographical memory.”

Henner is a consultant on “Unforgettable.”

“Actually she’s working on the set today,” says Walsh. “Poppy met with Marilu before the pilot. The rest of us went on faith.

“I was more interested in talking to her husband. Imagine how daunting that must be. She can remember everything that poor man does.”

Walsh was hoping to ambush Henner at the start of production, a plan that didn’t go so well.

“She and I had met in 1990 while I was doing a show called ‘Gabriel’s Fire,’” he says. “I couldn’t wait to test her on it. But she jumped me before I could even start and rattled off all these minute details about our meeting, half of which I had forgotten.”

Ed Redlich, the executive producer of “Unforgettable,” terms the condition “a gift and a burden. If you squint at it one way, it’s almost a mental illness.”

Walsh doesn’t think he could cope with it.

“Marilu makes it seem like fun,” he says. “But I wouldn’t want that ability. I think our self-narrative requires letting things go. Otherwise it’s too much.”

Walsh’s own narrative has been eventful. His pregnant mother (both parents were in the foreign service) was flown from Addis Ababa to Los Angeles for his birth. Then it was right back to Ethiopia, and many subsequent postings.

“I remember Indonesia and India,” he says. “But I don’t remember Africa.”

Years after the family eventually repatriated in northern Virginia, Dylan’s acting aspirations would take him full circle to Los Angeles, where he became a busy TV and film actor.

He’s perhaps best known as hectored plastic surgeon Sean McNamara on FX’s grotesque guide to vanity, “Nip/Tuck.” It was the fevered brainchild of Ryan Murphy, the producer also responsible for “Glee” and this season’s biggest shockfest, “American Horror Story.”

The long-running “Nip/ Tuck” was so outrageous and incandescent, Walsh is still trying to escape its shadow.

“You want your series to be successful, so for years you promote it,” he says. “Then the last thing you have to do is live it down and move on.

“I’m standing outside on the sidewalk now and people are waving at me,” he continues. “They’re waving at me for ‘Nip/Tuck,’ not ‘Unforgettable.’ That’s why I took another series so fast. I want to put it behind me. I need to get Sean McNamara out of my system.”

Speaking of cosmetic surgery, Dylan, you look remarkably hale for a 47-year-old. Did you ever ...?

He chuckles without mirth, as at a question he’s been asked more than once.

“No,” he says. “One thing I learned from ‘Nip/Tuck’ is that that’s not the route to take. I do worry, though, that at some point there’s going to be some accelerated catching up.”