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If you haven’t had a chance to catch Better Off Ted yet, I really suggest you get acquainted with it. New episodes are returning for a summer run, and the show is slated in ABC‘s fall schedule. You can catch up on what you’ve missed at ABC’s Better Off Ted page here, and new episodes start this coming Tuesday 6/23. Catch my review of the show here.

(ABC/RON TOM) JAY HARRINGTON

I managed to catch that upcoming episode, and it’s brilliantly Ted. The crew of the show play out two different versions of getting a little too friendly with your boss, and when world’s collide it isn’t often a pretty picture.

If you haven’t caught him as Ted yet, you may know Jay Harrington from a recent run on Private Practice. Or, if you’re like me, you may remember him as Steve on the attempted Americanization of Coupling.

I got a chance to interview Jay recently, and it was one of the best interviews I’ve been involved with, mainly because the whole affair kept losing its footing as something actually “interviewish.” That makes it great for me naturally, but trickier than normal to turn into something to relay to others. I’ll give it a shot though.

Here we go.

1. Better Off Ted is obviously a quirky, unusual comedy, would you say that falls to your tastes? And/Or what sort of comedies, movie or TV are among your favorites?

You’ll see where we’re going right off the bat here, because the “answer” in the sense that I managed to write something down is – “Yes. Arrested Development.” Jay broke out so eloquently on the merits of comedy that is somewhat over the edge, and so shocked me by predicting my next question, that I just wanted to listen to him. He went into how Ted is the semi-normal center of the show, and how the craziness happens around him, but it’s a crazy that is guided by real life. The real corporate workplace taken to ridiculous extremes to make your jokes and your point (that’s a lot more interpretation than it is quote). He said that sort of wacky skew carried along by a grounded center was the sort of comedy he gravitated toward, and that’s how we got onto Arrested Development. He did mention that there’s a sort of “comfort food” quality to a good old, multi-camera sitcom, but generally he prefers a show that’s a little “out there.”

(ABC/BOB D'AMICO)

2. Ted is a character that is kind of an update of an old school straight-man that we don’t see much these days… are there any particular actors or characters that you use as inspiration for Ted?

You can see how I felt like a fool asking that question at this point. While this sent us right around to talking about Arrested Development a bit more, Jay had some great responses. He was pretty quick to point out that Paul Rudd, from Clueless on, has been working an on point update of a straight-man, though I’m not sure if we nailed down the idea that he was using Paul for inspiration. He also mentioned Jack Lemmon in Some Like it Hot, though he was quick to point out that he wasn’t sure if you would call his character a straight-man precisely. He also mentioned Cary Grant, who he said was, “dashing, but funny.” At this point I immediately buried my next question which started out, “So… you’re dashing, but funny….” I wasn’t falling for that again.

3. 4. You’ve done a variety of roles, even very recently, that run from comedy to drama, if you could pick one role from a show and take it over, what would it be, and would you lean towards comedies or more serious roles looking for a choice?

Here we lost touch with each other slightly. His answer was that he’d love to do a sort of Rob Petrie meets Sam Malone character, which is rather informative actually, but somewhat confusing. He said those are two characters he really loves. I’ll leave fusing those characters to your imagination. The second part of the question sent us off on rather a long road, but at the end of the trip we arrived at a bit of a preference for doing comedy. This was mostly by way of having the most fun doing it, and getting immediate response. When you’re doing something serious, he said, you think you’ve got it, but you kind of have to wait around and see if it turned out well. There isn’t an equivalent really to having everyone on the set cracking up when comedy is working. One of the brief stops on this road was Jay mentioning that he recently did an episode of Burn Notice in which he played a villain. That may or may not be a scoop, but it was news to me.

5. Since Better Off Ted is a new show, are there any new shows from the past season that hooked you?

Jay was pretty quick with True Blood, and after a bit he added Damages. Now sure, Damages has been on since ’07, but I like the answer. He pointed out himself that the show had been on for a while, but you never know how things are working with those cable seasons. More importantly, I just think those are answers that fit my purposes. If you’re hoping to get to know something about who Jay Harrington is, those answers work. You’re saying something a little extra by saying you’re a fan of True Blood. He also mentioned that he tended to steer clear of reality shows, but he watched American Idol and was even at a taping (live-ing?). He also professed to be a big Amy Poehler fan, and was eagerly awaiting more Parks and Recreation.

At this point the interview/ conversation line got up and stormed out, and I didn’t even call out to it frankly. Our main topic was the fact that so many shows don’t ever get the chance to really find their footing, a subject I can’t resist, but we went at it from every angle. Jay mentioned his many and varied positive feelings toward ABC for sticking with Ted and giving it a fair shake, and that the summer run was great. I have to agree actually, especially when I was a bit nervous for a while when ABC wasn’t telling anyone anything. Fair play to you ABC.

At a certain point we were moving into the neighborhood of actors, and I threw out my next question almost as a reflex reaction.

6. Suppose there is a new character on Better Off Ted who runs a very “Green” company that Veridian Dynamics was trying to take over (and likely ruin). Ted’s job is to court the seriously earth-conscious owner of the company, thereby giving us our moral struggle. If you could pick, what actor or actress would you love to work with in that role?

Now, Jay flew into this one. Right at the beginning he may or may not have said a name. I’m not sure we ever established if he didn’t say it, or I didn’t catch it, but man he was off. He had this one down. While many people might pick a famous actor that he loved or such, Jay wanted to work with a friend of his in college. It seems he had this friend in college, and they were even recently talking about working together in roles of some sort of adversarial nature. In fact, they ran into each other near where Better Off Ted is filmed and it came up how fun it would be to work together on the show. It even turns out that one of them was rather liberal in college, while the other was rather conservative, but they seem to have switched now, and wouldn’t that be a fun twist to work out given the particular scenario I created for the question. All the while it was “my friend from college” this, and “when I was in college with him” that, and it was rather a long bit of explanation of his choice. Then Jay mentioned working with this friend, and having one scene together, on Private Practice. So, now I had to ask for name, and it turns out we were talking about Taye Diggs, but you see how that’s a whole different conversation if you get to start with the name.

7. Best Movie Ever?

In order to close things out, and limit the potential for our wandering off, I shot out the standby closer question. This took a bit longer to answer than you might expect, and it seemed Jay was hesitant to take on the responsibility of bestowing this kind of status on anything. In a move that I think gave me some insight into who Jay Harrington is (and clearly violated several major articles of interview), he first lamented that in ten minutes he would think of the perfect answer and kick himself, and then (hoping to have distracted me) asked me to “throw a few out” to jog his memory. We finally settled on Goodfellas, not so much as an answer, but as a kind of “fact about Jay,” because if he found it on at any point he just had to watch it, even if he were coming into it in the middle. He wouldn’t really commit to any sort of “best” title though, I suspect because he was sure he was going to find a DVD at home giving him a very serious look.

I think I got a pretty good feel for Jay Harrington, and I hope you have as well. Please make sure to check out Better Off Ted, if you haven’t already, and tune in Tuesdays all summer. Also, check out a clip from the show below.

Many sincere thanks to Jay for the time.