Gone Fishing

Greg Germann - the name may not be familiar but the face will be, especially to followers of trend-setting US TV series Ally McBeal. For five years he's been Fish - or Richard Fishman to give the head of the law firm at which Ally worked his full name.

Now that's all over. The series was axed earlier this year, and is approaching the final episodes on C4 over here. Germann has also been paying his first visit to London to spread the word about the DVD release of early Ally McBeal episodes.

The final scenes for the series were filmed back in May. "It was everything it should be - a little sad and very happy. It was sweet misery," he says. "It was like graduating from college. You've been with the same group of people for a while, had a nice time and are going to miss them all. But it was time to move on."

The show, with its musical interludes, fantasy scenes, quirky humour and dancing baby, was something different to the usual US comedy-drama series. "I showed up for the job and was lucky enough to get it. I think I was the first one cast," says the 40-year-old actor.

Quite how different David E Kelley's series were to the usual bland TV fare didn't strike him immediately as he read the scripts. "It's such a visual show," he explains. "I would read something and go, 'what's this?' and 'how are they going to make this work?'. At the time there was nothing like it on TV. It seemed so odd."

During the first season it became apparent, to outsiders if not Germann and his fellow cast members, that Ally McBeal was something special. Their schedule, working from dawn to dusk in the studio, meant he didn't have time to register the success.

The decision to end the series was made by the network, and he says you'd have to ask Kelley whether he wanted to keep it going. "Television is all about quality first and foremost. You try to maintain some level of quality given the demands. That's why it's amazing when you see any show that's still good after a few years. They're putting out 22 hours of entertainment a year.

"After that first year, when we got some attention and won some awards, we raised expectations and were setting ourself up for an inevitable backlash."

Fishman and his Fishisms were just as much a part of legal eagle office life as Ally and her dancing baby, so you assume that real life lawyers had something to say about his character. Germann, who's married to actress Christine Mourad, has a family connection with the legal profession as his father-in-law is a lawyer.

"He kind of liked it," he explains. "He said that he would say to a client, 'If that happens again I'm going to Fish you'.

"I always felt that Fishman was much more confident than I am. Someone who's just guileless like a ten-year-old boy. He thunders ahead and never apologises for himself. It's fun to watch someone with whom you may not agree with everything they do but who's not duplicitous."

A bonus of playing the role was the love interest provided by a succession of actresses including Dyan Cannon, Lucy Lui, Jacqueline Bisset and Christine Ricci. For Houston-born Germann, Ally McBeal represented a move to TV after mainly theatre work. He confesses that made him "a bit of a TV snob" who harboured no great ambition to work on the small screen. "I think that was more about fear than anything else," he admits.

"I got to the point where I realised it didn't matter where you're doing it. If the material is good, who cares? At this point I don't really care where I'm working."

The young Greg began acting in children's plays and at university. His father was a children's playwright and theatre professor, but they weren't close growing up. "As an adult, I've become very close to him. He's very supportive," says Germann.

After moving to New York, he became a member of the Circle Repertory Company and Ensemble Studio Theatre, with credits in off-Broadway and Broadway plays including Stephen Sondheim's Assassins, The Person I Once Was (opposite Oscar-winning The Piano actress Holly Hunter), and David Mamet's War Games.

He's now worked on the other side of the camera as well. He wrote, directed and starred in a short film, Pete's Garden, which premiered at the 1999 Sundance Film Festival. He has another script, written with someone else, that he hopes to direct in the future. And he and Ricci have a script for her to act in and him to direct. "Hopefully one of those projects will find its way to the screen," he adds.

The trip to London came as he decided what to do next. He was offered a couple of things before he flew over but they didn't seem quite right. "When the material is right I will jump at it. I really like to work," says Germann. "I feel I've been blessed with a little cushion right now where I don't have to take a job tomorrow if I don't want to.

"I'm not sure how directors see me. I guess I'll find out. I imagine like anything people identify me with the role in Ally McBeal, and sometimes I get offered things that feel close to that. Time will tell. I'll need to suss out what's out there and spread my wings a little bit."

* Ally McBeal, season 1, 2 and 3 is released to buy on DVD from Twentieth Century Home Entertainment on October 7. Ally McBeal continues on C4 on Wednesday at 11.20pm.

Published: 05/10/2002