TV veteran finds it easy 'Crossing Jordan'
By Bridget Byrne
Associated Press
The more years Ken Howard works, the more of himself he sees in the characters he portrays.
Associated Press
"You unavoidably bring who you are to roles and who you are, we would hope, would be a little richer and a little fuller when you're older," says the 58-year-old actor.
Ken Howard plays Max Cavanaugh, an ex-cop with a lot of street smarts and a few dark secrets. He's the father of title character Dr. Jordan Cavanaugh.
He agrees with something the late Rosemary Clooney said when asked why, despite declining vocal range and breath control, her singing got even better as she aged.
"She said, 'Oh that's easy. I don't have to show off anymore. I just have to serve the song,' " recalls Howard. He adds, "I just have to serve the text."
In NBC's "Crossing Jordan" (9 p.m. Mondays), Howard plays Max Cavanaugh, an ex-cop with a lot of street smarts and some dark secrets. He's the father of title character Dr. Jordan Cavanaugh (Jill Hennessy), a medical examiner working in the Massachusetts state coroner's office.
The loquacious Howard — "I'm a mouth on a trolley" — is a veteran of many TV series, including the 1980s prime-time soaps "Dynasty" and "The Colbys," and most notably "The White Shadow," the 1978-81 CBS drama in which he starred as a basketball coach at an urban high school.
A decade earlier, he won a Tony Award for playing a similar character on stage — a gym coach at a Catholic boys school in the drama "Child's Play."
Years later, he would end up teaching public speaking courses at Harvard. Those lectures will form the basis of a self-help book, "Act Natural," to be published in May by Random House.
Tim Kring, creator and executive producer of the series, believes Howard's "natural charm and likability" keep viewers sympathetic, whatever the plot twists might be. "He has a very quiet strength, this big teddy bear of a guy, a quality we wanted the audience to fall in love with before revealing some really dark secrets."
There have been unresolved issues surrounding the murder of Cavanaugh's wife when Jordan was a child. The "Family Ties" episode — airing Jan. 13 — will shed more light on what may have happened.
"It's good stuff because you don't quite see it coming," says Howard. He avoids details about why Cavanaugh has secrets, saying "he's not basically this bad guy."
Now in its second season, "Crossing Jordan" has had only modest Nielsen ratings, routinely overshadowed by CBS' two forensic dramas — the top-ranked "CSI: Crime Scene Investigation" and its successful clone, "CSI: Miami," which airs opposite "Crossing Jordan" on Monday nights.
As a result, NBC is pressuring "Jordan's" producers to retouch the show in "CSI's" flashier image.
Kring and Howard aren't thrilled.
"It's not so much the kind of gore factor, but the network does like high-tech gadgets and more forensic detail," Kring says, noting an overall trend toward shows such as "CSI" that feature a "crime of the week" that wraps up in an hour, rather than run in serial form, as "Crossing Jordan" often does.
He believes changes should not be made "at the expense of the show's bread and butter: people tuning in because they like the characters."
Howard agrees. Show business has "always followed the money," he says, but he believes that corporate thinking is even more intrusive now than when he started his career. "THEY really are in charge now. There is very little room for creative craziness."
