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Mark Feuerstein focuses on the family

‘Royal Pains’ star’s new show, ‘9JKL,’ based on own life

By Rick Bentley, Tribune News Service
Published: October 6, 2017, 5:20am

LOS ANGELES — Mark Feuerstein didn’t realize it at the time but while he was working on the cable series “Royal Pains,” the groundwork was being established for a future television project.

Feuerstein’s new CBS comedy, “9JKL,” which he created with his wife, Dana Klein, was spawned by his living arrangements while he was filming the cable series. While shooting “Royal Pains,” Feuerstein moved into a New York apartment next door to where his parents were living. His brother, sister-in-law and their baby were living in the apartment on the other side.

“Every morning, I would wake up to my father coming in his tighty-whities, going, ‘Mark, what would you like for breakfast? Would you like eggs, French toast? What can I get?’ And every night, after a 15-hour day of shooting, my mother would be waiting by her door like a gunslinger in a nightgown, and the second my hand would touch the doorknob, she’d whip it open and go, ‘Hi, Mark. Would you like to come in for a salad?’ Which, of course, I would do and sit with her from 11 till midnight talking about the day’s events,” Feuerstein says.

The result is a comedy, launching Oct. 2 on CBS, which looks at newly divorced Josh Roberts (Feuerstein) who is an actor between projects. He moves home to New York to regroup, living in an apartment sandwiched between his parents (Elliott Gould, Linda Lavin) on one side and his brother (David Walton), sister-in-law (Liza Lapira) and their new baby on the other. They all become so involved in Josh’s life that he makes an attempt to set some ground rules.

As for the show’s title, that’s a reference to the apartment numbers where the three parties live.

This is a case of art really reflecting life with the only big change being that Feuerstein was working on a very successful show for eight seasons, but the TV character is struggling with his career.

” ‘Royal Pains’ went better than the show that my character, Josh, was on. Josh was on a show called ‘Blind Cop,’ so people come up to the character of Josh on the street and go, ‘That show sucked.’ People don’t do that about ‘Royal Pains,’ thank God,” Feuerstein says. “It’s a guy who’s trying to find the next phase of his career, trying to find the next phase of his love life, because he’s divorced, and trying to do it with his supportive and loving family around him.”

Feuerstein has gone with veteran actors to play his parents. Lavin’s best known for her long run on “Alice” and “Barney Miller” while Gould has starred in numerous feature films and TV series including “Ray Donovan” and “Doubt.” That goes along with the series filming on the same soundstage that was the home to “Mary Tyler Moore” and “Roseanne.”

Living next to members of his family for so many years proved to be a positive business thing for Feuerstein. The question is whether or not it was worth all those intrusions into his life. Would he recommend living next door to your parents?

“The answer is 100 percent. At the time of shooting ‘Royal Pains,’ I was married, and over the course of the series, we ended up with three beautiful children. I would fly back every weekend to spend time with them,” Feuerstein says. “But, I was a guy in a stage of life where you don’t often get to spend that kind of quality time with your family, because you’re supposed to have moved on and be focused on your own family.

“Because of the nature of our business and the fact that I had to shoot it in New York at that time, I got all of this wonderful quality time with my mother, sitting at the table, talking about the day’s events with my father, with my brother and his wife and their children. And I wouldn’t have had that if it hadn’t gone that way. So I would highly recommend it, because life is precious and the time we get with our family is precious and I savored every minute of it while also savoring my time with my actual wife and children.”

Being close to family works for Feuerstein as he and his wife both bring their work home with them every day. They find it a great working relationship as he deals with what happens on the set while she works closely with the writers.

Klein’s feelings about how nice it is to be married to the star of the show sounds like a future episode of “9JKL.”

“This is probably TMI but I think I had forgotten to wear deodorant one day, and I went into the dressing room and I was, like, ‘Oh, OK.’ And then, I was, like, ‘I guess I couldn’t be doing this if I weren’t married to the star of the show.’ “

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