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‘Friends’ star in ‘Feed the Beast’
AP Television Writer
NEW YORK
After “Friends” ended in 2004, David Schwimmer moved from Los Angeles, where his hit sitcom was filmed, to re-settle in New York.
In all the years since, he has never passed the West Village apartment building known to the world (or, at least, to a steady stream of photo-snapping “Friends” fans) for its role as the exterior location shot of the title characters’ home.
Schwimmer didn’t even make a pilgrimage from a few blocks away at the Cherry Lane Theater where in 2008 he was directing a play, one of many varied projects he has pursued, onstage and on film, during the peripatetic stretch he calls his “professional experimentation.”
Now he’s back as a regular on series television, starring in AMC’s “Feed the Beast” as the woeful widowed father who teams up with a trouble-courting chum to open a fine restaurant on a mean street of the Bronx while mobsters and corrupt officials nip at their heels. This piquant drama debuts tonight at 10 before moving to Tuesdays.
“Now that my daughter’s going to school as a kindergartner, the timing was palatable for me to sign up for a series,” explains Schwimmer, who says that his wife and child – not working – have become his top priority.
He comes to “Feed the Beast” on the heels of playing Robert Kardashian in FX network’s limited series “The People vs. O.J. Simpson” where, he reports, he had a great time. “Then I got the offer to play Tommy Moran. I loved the character, and I had a great vibe with [series creator] Clyde Phillips. So I said, ‘Let’s try it.’”
Schwimmer’s co-star is Jim Sturgess, the London-born actor whose wildly diverse films include “The Way Back,” “Fifty Dead Men Walking,” “Across the Universe” and “The Best Offer.”
As Tommy’s lifelong friend, Dion Patras is a petty criminal and druggie who nonetheless knows his way around a kitchen: We meet him shortly before release from jail cooking up a gourmet meal for his prison guards.
Once on the outside, he seeks out Tommy, a world-class sommelier (wine steward) who, grief-stricken since his wife’s recent death, now is forlornly selling wine while oversampling his stock.
Can these hapless gastronomes transform a ramshackle industrial space into the restaurant of their dreams?
“The first season’s journey for Tommy is from death to life,” says Schwimmer, who, at 49, looks brawny in jeans, T-shirt and running shoes.
As the restaurant takes form, it reflects Tommy’s return to the living. But the journey won’t be smooth. One big problem: Both the mob and the cops, as well as drugs, all have their hooks into Dion.