Boxleitner Gets Tough With Image
Title: Boxleitner Gets Tough With Image
Source: Broadcast Week Magazine
Author: Ivor Davis
Date: November 24, 1984
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“For the first 15 shows I was in a fog,” admits Bruce Boxleitner, “and I felt totally out of it.”
Boxleitner, now well into the second season of Scarecrow and Mrs. King (CBS, Mondays at 8 p.m.; CTV, Tuesdays at 10 p.m.) opposite former Charlie’s Angel Kate Jackson, concedes that there were major problems with the show when it first unfolded.
Producers were fired, new scriptwriters brought in and now, says the handsome actor who plays derring-do CIA agent Lee Stetson, who involves housewife Amanda in all sorts of international intrigue, “I have a rougher edge. Lee’s not so frivolous. He’s harder, getting to be a little more Dirty Harry.”
To help the show overcome its first season blues, producers seeking exotic locations took the stars off to London, Munich and Salzburg, and pumped in a lot more excitement - particularly jeopardy situations.
“I guess the first few months were our teething problems,” Boxleitner says, relaxing over lunch in his motor home/dressing room at a Malibu Park where he was shooting a segment.
“Because Lee was so one-dimensional it was hard for me to understand the character. I think Kate had the same problem. Now we’re closer than ever, despite what some of the supermarket papers have said. Kate’s a tough professional. All those reports of us fighting . . . it just didn’t happen.”
“For the first year the show didn’t even know what it was,” he says. “You can’t make satirical statements about the CIA in the 8 p.m. timeslot. Our show is entertainment and adventure. No messages; we’re not a docudrama.”
Boxleitner says the show saved his career after the much-touted Bring ‘em Back Alive - in which he played the cartoon-like big-game specialist Frank Buck - died after one season.
During that time Boxleitner allowed himself to be promoted as TV’s new Tom Selleck, a throwback to the Clark Gable era. Now he’s shaved off his moustache and wrly recalls: “I’d been doing a lot of work, but wasn’t getting the recognition. So I went along with the ballyhoo.”
Between series he hasn’t been a candidate for welfare. He starred in the mini-series Bare Essence (but didn’t do the short-lived series that followed), and scored well in East of Eden, The Last Convertible and Gambler I and II with Kenny Rogers. Gambler III is in the works, he says, with him, Rogers and Selleck.
Boxleitner is happily married to a former actress, and shares their home with a son and several horses. He has a movie deal with CBS, and says, “I’m looking for a good, serious role.”
Meanwhile, he’ll be happy to save Kate Jackson from terrorists and other villains, even though people still come up to him in restaurants and say, “You’re just great in Fall Guy.”