AOL Chat With Chris Noth

October 10, 2000, 6 pm EST

TV Guide on AOL would like to welcome Chris Noth to AOL Live. Chris is currently starring in "The Best Man" on Broadway. You also might have recognize him as Mr. Big on HBO's "Sex & the City." Welcome!

Hello out there America!

Let's get started. Our first member questions is. I hear your doing a Broadway show; can you tell us a little more about it?

No, you have to come see it find out. I never tell people what the project I'm doing is. It is about a presidential campaign and it appeared on Broadway in 1960 and Pres. John F. Kennedy came to see it. So it is politics and mudslinging and it's a lot of fun. It's a really a marvelous cast of actors and actresses. I am pretty happy focusing my life on the play and being in New York.

Will you do a sequel to "Exiled," your awesome "Law & Order" movie?"

You know, I really enjoyed that sequel I had a lot of input in the story. I felt that we should have done a couple a year because we got great ratings.

There were a couple of aesthetic problems which snuck in by Dick Wolf. He imposed his own Law and order aesthetic on it. With the dark lighting and the music.

I remember seeing a pathetic criticism by a critic from the Washington Post. He saw the movie and he was like, "It's not law and order because it didn't have the dates and times." Like that's what made the show and it was called a Law and Order Movie.

It was supposed to be exiled. When he (Wolf) saw it could be profitable, he put his own aesthetic on it. The long and short of it is that we got great numbers on it, but networks don't make money on TV series. USA doesn't make the series make a lot more money.

I wanted to do one. I think the standard for TV movies is deplorable and I was trying to give them something different. I think it was far better than the Homicide movie that came out. The writer (Charles Kipps) and I spent a lot of time creating the character. It was about a guy who was on top of the world who was then exiled to the boondocks. I thought they were just fantastic dramatic possibilities with that character.

They asked me to make a series with Mike Logan and Exiled. But I am not going to make a career out of playing mike Logan. But I want all you fans to write to Barry Diller and tell him he made a big mistake. Unfortunately USA studios own the rights to the character and that is why we can't do movies with anybody else.

I was wondering do you ever watch Law & Order on A&E?

Only when I can't sleep and I want to cure my insomnia. I bore myself to sleep. I'll tune in if there is a particular episode that I have forgotten about that I want to remember, but not too often.

How do you choose the roles you take?

Just totally intuitively, instinctually -- my own method of discerning whether the character and the story has legs. I can spot the leading men parts that are terribly dull that are not very complex and are one-dimensional and you find a lot of that in TV.

When good writing is on the page it jumps out at you and then you jump at it. I remember reading the last line of the pilot and it just stuck with me '"Abso*****lutely" That just stuck with me. Good writing is usually pretty obvious in comparison with most of the stuff that is out there.

Do you like stage, TV or movies best?

I don't know. It would be misleading to say that I like one of them best. It is true that...if you're doing something that you don't believe in or the writing is weak, then it is hell.

It is easier with bad writing on TV and movies -- to give the illusion with music and editing. It can make itself deeper if it is good. Theater is most exhilarating and most honest. It feels to me like an honest day's work at the end of the day. I always feel like I have gotten an honest day's work where I don't always feel that way with TV or film

Can you tell us about this new HBO series you have in the works?

I can't tell you because I don't have anything yet. We have just started the process of meeting and talking about it. I don't have anything definite. It's just an open book right now but something is going to happen, I just don't know what.

Can you give us some scoop on this week's season finale of "Sex & the City?"

No, I am never allowed to talk about it. You have to watch it. They beg me not to give away storylines, so I honor that.

Mr. Noth there has been wide spread speculation that once your TV deals with HBO and CBS go through you will be leaving Sex and the City is that true?

I don't have a deal with CBS. That has been over for almost a year. Get with it. I think we mutually understood that they didn't get me and I didn't get them.

I think in terms of my character on HBO -- in my mind that I know that I am pretty much done with it. If people are coming up to me on the street and calling me by the character name, I think it has been done. I hate to keep going just for the sake of keeping it going. I don't know what they have in mind, but in my mind, I think I am done with it.

Do fans treat you differently now that you're known as "Mr. Big"?

I think the show is more of a phenomenon. At least in the city it has hit a nerve.

I get that it is a great show and that it is funny and that it is about men and women. How can it go wrong with those great actresses and there is an immense freedom as HBO doesn't try to please advertisers. And it is a very honest show which is what makes it so funny.

I think it shows that we are all vulnerable and we all have pie on our face from whatever sexual faux pas, whatever embarrassment we all harbor, it finds it. I think in America, it works well because in this country we are divided on how to treat sex whether like a priest or a pornographer. So I think it is a real button that can be pushed. Movie sex scenes always look so fake and serious. I think in many subtle ways we make fun of all of that.

How did you get started in acting?

I started a Marlboro College in Vermont. We had a really excellent small repertory theater company. I came down to NY and studied. And that was the beginning.

Why did you choose a stage role after so much success on television?

Why not? What's TV got over anything except for good money? Its not like TV holds the key to happiness --- LOL.

Again I trained for the theater and spent my 20's involved in it and thought that was going to be the major portion of my career. I took a side road for a TV series but little did I know that small role was going to become a major highway. I had some small movie roles in between.

I think if you are an actor that you have to face the stage at some point. In my mind, it is the most satisfying experience. There is a certain psychic cleansing involved in a way. For me it was like coming home again.

Although the TV audience may seem to think of me as a TV actor, so much of my theater was unknown. But it was like coming home and it was placed before me and there are some wonderful actors and Gore (Vidal) wrote an interesting and fascinating play. So it really was a no brainer. It is kind of like saying to a painter, "Why would you do an oil painting when you have been doing watercolors?"

We've got time for one more question. How long will "The Best Man" be running on Broadway?

New Years Eve is our last performance. Sunday Matinee.

I support the strike. I am voting for Gore.... You have to give me a better last question.

Have you been happy with your career?

That's a difficult question to answer. Because even I can't say I have been totally happy, although if you are a working actor it is incumbent upon you to be grateful. There are certain kinds of roles I have decided, to do a play every year. More canvases to fill.

There are certain kinds of roles that have eluded me. That doesn't mean that I am not going to do them but it is not in your control. You hope that you can. I was given this opportunity to do this Broadway play. Based on my career so far, I realize the pragmatic business side of the whole matter.

There are some films and roles that I grew up watching that I want to do a lot of them - historical and things like that - that I hope to get a chance to do. I think I was frustrated most of my L&O time. It was great to be on that series but it is difficult to be in one role for 5 years or 2 years. If it is in you to do many roles, it kind of eats away.

You have to balance what you mean by success. Sometimes artists have to walk away in order to do what you want to do. Sometimes people want to pigeonhole you and think that means success.

To my mind I think I stayed in L& O too long. I should have only stayed 3 but I don't regret it. It is such a youth oriented culture now and there is a new movie star every week. It is hard to know how people are seeking their entertainment. I hope that I am not over the hill just because I am in my 40's.

Thanks for joining us tonight Chris!

 

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