Original Article may be found here.
Mr. Midwest
Gaffigan tries to hold his own with sharp-edged New Yorkers on TV comedy
By JOANNE WEINTRAUB
Journal Sentinel TV critic
They're sheltered, insular and a little bit naive.
Those would be the Manhattanites in CBS' new "Welcome to New York." The guy from Indiana, on the other hand, is pretty cool.
The Indiana character on the Wednesday-night sitcom is TV weatherman Jim Gaffigan, who, by an amazing coincidence, is played by actor Jim Gaffigan. Who, by an even more stunning coincidence, is also from Indiana and also pretty cool.
Told that he bears a slight resemblance to television's best-known ex-weatherman from Indiana, David Letterman, Gaffigan replies: "We all look the same to you, don't we? All the goyim" - which is Yiddish, and by extension New Yorkish, for non-Jews.
Jointly produced by CBS and Letterman's Worldwide Pants Inc., "WTNY" parachutes the fresh-out-of-Hoosierland weather guy into a fictional New York morning news show bristling with cab-hailing, chronically over-caffeinated natives.
The one with the sharpest bristles is Jim's boss, Marsha Bickner (Christine Baranski), who is given to such pronouncements as: "New Yorkers always wear black, and that's only until something darker comes along."
The real Gaffigan arrived in New York a decade ago to do stand-up comedy and acting. No one tried to talk him out of a fondness for brown suits, as Marsha does Jim in the show, but he did have to get used to all the witticisms about the Midwest.
"They think you just rode in on a tractor," says Gaffigan, who grew up not far from Chicago. "Or they say, 'Oooh, you're from Indiana! You must be in the Klan!'"
A surprisingly laid-back sort for a comic, the 34-year-old Gaffigan says East and West Coast types don't really mean any harm by all this. And he notes that Midwesterners have held up their end of the humor business from Mark Twain's first quip to Letterman's last top 10 list.
"One thing I've always appreciated about Dave is that he can be sarcastic without being alienating and self-deprecating without being self-abusing," Gaffigan says.As far as Letterman's production role in "WTNY," Gaffigan describes him as "hands-off but incredibly supportive. He called to congratulate me after he saw the pilot, which was very nice.
"He adds: "My timing and stuff like that has definitely been influenced by him, but ('WTNY') isn't 'The David Letterman Story.'"
Other comic influences, he says, are Minnesota-bred comedian Louie Anderson, for his "vulnerability and empathy," and Mary Tyler Moore and Dick Van Dyke, for the humaneness and intelligence of their sitcoms, which he hopes "WTNY" will share.
The new comedy has been a modest success, ranking near the middle of the Nielsen ratings. Last week, CBS gave it a cautious vote of confidence, ordering four new episodes in addition to its original commitment of 13.
A plus for Gaffigan is that the show is taped in New York, so he can keep his place in Little Italy. He lives just a block away from his girlfriend, Milwaukee-born actor Jeannie Noth.
"We've got that Midwestern thing in common," he says, "and we're both from big families. I'm the youngest of six, and she's the oldest of nine."
Noth says that, though she and Gaffigan first struck up a conversation last winter at their neighborhood Korean deli, she'd been bumping into him for years at auditions and had even caught his stand-up act at local clubs.
"But I guess we both must have been in New York mode," she adds, "because we never really acknowledged each other's presence."What Noth calls "that Indiana Jim character" is only part of Gaffigan's personality. Like any successful actor, she notes, he's got his eyes on the prize and knows how to compete for it.
On the other hand, Noth says, "we do have that Midwestern background and those gigantic Catholic families. Sometimes I feel like I'm dating the boy next door."
And where we're living now is really like a small town, in a way. Everybody knows everybody else. The man who owns our deli doesn't even speak English, but when Jim is in The New York Times he (shows off) his picture."
Apart from visiting Noth's family in Milwaukee, Gaffigan now has a professional Wisconsin connection, too. Earlier this year, he was here to do "No Sleep Till Madison," an independent film in which he plays one of a group of old high school buddies obsessed with hockey.
"It's really kind of a love letter to Wisconsin," Gaffigan says. "I had to learn how to pronounce 'Menomonie,' 'Fond du Lac' and 'Waukesha.' "
Appeared in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel on Nov. 21, 2000.