On “Shameless,” William H. Macy plays the world’s most deadbeat dad.
He stars as Frank Gallagher, a boozy, shiftless grifter whose brood of six mix-and-match offspring (do any of them share the same mother?) care for one another and, by necessity, him.
The oldest daughter, Fiona (played by Emmy Rossum), is the family’s de facto mom, a Wendy to Frank’s derelict Peter Pan.
“Derelict” is putting it mildly. Frank is abrasive, self-absorbed, scheming and delusional, a pickled patriarch whose most dignified moments find him passed out on the bathroom floor of the family’s ragtag South Chicago digs, or on a random street corner or maybe public park.
But somehow the family stays afloat, even with Frank dragging everybody down.
“For all the craziness they go through, it is a tight-knit family, an honest family that loves each other fiercely,” Macy said. “That’s what the show is about.”
Airing Sunday at 9 p.m. on Showtime, “Shameless” began its third season recently with Frank coming to in Mexico, not sure how he got there and with no funds or credentials to get himself home.
Ever the schemer, he figures out a way. Just as, this week, he figures out a way to score some drinking money: He volunteers to take a neighbor’s infant to the doctor for a scheduled vaccination, then spends the cash meant for the doctor at his favorite bar.
He pricks the baby with a thumb tack to simulate a shot, and shares a few drops of his whiskey to calm the baby’s crying.
“I pride myself on taking the script and saying, ‘I can DO this!”’ Macy said, clearly gleeful at the depths to which Frank routinely sinks. “I take all the stuff the writers can shovel my way!”
The series doesn’t glorify drinking, however riotously drinking is depicted. (Frank would be nobody’s choice as a role model.)
And “Shameless” recognizes that, in a MADD-enlightened era, inebriation is no longer automatically a joke.
“I flatter myself that, as an actor, I do a pretty good drunk,” said Macy, who, while acknowledging he’s on the wagon right now, can draw on “a little firsthand experience.”
He is careful to modulate Frank’s drunken state as the day wears on.
“For a scene that takes place at 11 o’clock in the morning, well, that’s a four-beer buzz,” he said, “as opposed to 11:30 at night, when Frank’s speech is very slurred.”
Playing a drunk can distract an actor from the primary substance of the scene.
“But if I’m pretty clear what the scene is about, then I just add on the drunkenness — slurring or stumbling — and it takes care of itself.”
Talk to us
> Give us your news tips.
> Send us a letter to the editor.
> More Herald contact information.
