Issue date: Oct. 17, 1999

In this article:
"A Few Good Men"
Set insider: chair football
Sports Night lingo

By Mark Morrison

'Sports," says actor Joshua Malina, "is a very small part of my life. I can watch any specific sport and enjoy it, but I don't particularly care who wins." Which shows how compelling an actor he is. Because for the past year, the 33-year-old New Yorker has played Jeremy Goodwin, the sports-obsessed associate producer on ABC's Sports Night.

An inspired takeoff of ESPN's popular SportsCenter, Sports Night is arguably TV's smartest half-hour. While the show got more critical praise than viewers last year, ABC has high hopes this year, positioning it after Dharma & Greg on Tuesdays at 9:30 p.m. ET.

From his first scene in the pilot, when Jeremy's job interview turns into a manic monologue, Malina nearly stops the show even as he steals it. With his horn-rimmed specs and sheepish grin, Jeremy is the Clark Kent of the sports beat, the geek who gets the girl -- and Malina fuels him with stage-trained strength. Yet the actor modestly says, "I'm lucky to play this part. On another sitcom, I'd be the guy who falls off the chair in every episode."

He credits his success on the series -- and just about everything else in his life -- to his friend and Sports Night's creator, Aaron Sorkin. They grew up a few miles apart in New York suburbs: Malina in New Rochelle, Sorkin in Scarsdale. The son of an investment banker who dabbled in theater, Malina majored in drama at Yale. He knew Sorkin through a cousin, and after college, they grew close. "We used to play cards," says Malina. "He was writing A Few Good Men."

That drama was a Broadway hit before becoming the 1992 Tom Cruise movie. Malina made his New York stage debut in the play and his movie debut in the film -- even sharing a scene with Jack Nicholson. "I basically had five words," says Malina. "But when it came time to shoot my closeup, Nicholson stood off camera and read his lines. ... Anybody could have done it [for him]. He was a classy guy." In 1998's Bulworth, another Sorkin script, Malina played a political aide to Warren Beatty. Oddly, he'd played an aide to Beatty's wife, Annette Bening, in The American President -- also written by Sorkin. Malina even jokingly credits Sorkin for his marriage: It was in 1990 while acting in A Few Good Men onstage that he met Timothy Busfield when the thirtysomething star took over the lead. At one point, Busfield's wife, Jenny, told him, "If you ever meet my sister, you're going to marry her."

Two years later, after Malina had moved to Los Angeles, he met Busfield's sister-in-law, Melissa. "We were immediately in love," he says. "We met every day for two weeks, then planned a trip to Europe. Only I got a play in a small theater that paid nothing. But it was a chance to be in something good. I called her and she said, 'I understand.' That's when I knew I had the right life partner." They married in 1996; a daughter, Isabel Lila, was born last year. Though Malina originally tested for the anchor role of Dan Rydell, played by Josh Charles, Sorkin rewrote the part of Jeremy for him. "I am the cast member who is least like his character," says Malina. "Sadly, I'm less intelligent and less kind. My father's more like Jeremy than I am.

"I call my dad 'the Brain.' My wife says the closer I get to my father, the less I start thinking for myself. Because if I have a decision to make -- What car should I buy? -- I figure, 'I'll run it by the Brain.' " Then again, that's probably just Joshua Malina being modest again.

Mark Morrison is the West Coast editor of In Style magazine. He last profiled actress Debra Messing of Will & Grace for USA WEEKEND.

Chair football: "In a nutshell, chair football is a futuristic, ultra-violent, thunderdome type game. Like Ultimate Fighting, the rules are very simple: no eye-gouging and no fish-hooking. Other than that it is essentially football played on the rolling chairs from the Sports Night set. All the guys in the cast, and many of the crew participate, but chair football is largely the result of one twisted man's vision -- Josh Charles (who plays anchor Dan Rydell on the show). As Unelected and Unrecognized Commissioner of the League, he had this to say: 'This game is not for the timid. Check your fear at the door.' "

Deciphering Sports Night lingo

"Shoe money tonight"
Phrase to describe an evening's poker winnings.

"The zone"
Mystical place anchorman Dan Rydell enters for added gambling powers.

"Orlando Rojas"
Fictitious pitcher who made a comeback in spring training last year.

"Eli's coming"
Expresses a sense of impending doom.

"Spread it out for you in a nutshell"
Clarify a situation.

"Napoleon's battle plan"
Show up, then see what happens.

"Thespis"
Roman god responsible for wreaking havoc on the show.

-- Evelyn Poitevent

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