It can`t be Jere Burns, this quiet, thoughtful, introspective young man sitting across the table. Someone must have sent his clone. No way does he resemble the boastful, lascivious, woman-chasing sleaze Kirk Morris, the off- the-wall character in NBC`s ”Dear John.”
Burns, accustomed to playing abrasive types, plays counterpoint to Judd Hirsch`s more downbeaten, brooding character John Lacey of the title in the Ed Weinberger-created sitcom about the One-Two-One singles club.
In Burns` view, ”Hirsch is like a 50-year-old kid who`s really 17 at heart. He`s so good and talented, he makes everything he does seem so effortless. He`s a frumpy guy, and so un-actorish, but creative.”
Burns is not short on talent, either. Last year ”Dear John,” he says,
”was a learning experience, but this year it`s a joy. We`ve hit our stride. The cast-Isabella Hoffman, Jane Carr, Billie Bird, Harry Groener and Mary Beth Sutton-is so diverse and different, it`s what makes the series work. ”Still we all have something in common: loneliness, fear of having a relationship, the inability to make one work. Because the series addresses loneliness-and everybody is lonely-it`s a universal theme. That`s why viewers like it. They can identify with any one of the characters.”
So, too, can Burns, who admits to always having been a ”sensitive child.” He explains: ”I always remember feeling funny as a kid. I`d be at a ball game, for instance, and instead of watching the game I`d watch the people. I was fascinated by human behavior. I loved watching people and imitating them. I liked hiding behind another character.”
According to the slim, thoughtful, laid-back, blondish actor, they`re going to travel with the show (8:30 p.m., Wednesdays, WMAQ-Ch. 5) this year.
”We may come to New York and do a couple of episodes, and also go to London. The situations created will be completely justified,” he assures us. The Boston-born actor`s parents, now divorced, were very supportive of the theater and exposed him to it at a young age. In high school in Cambridge, he was attracted to acting, and after graduating from Amherst with a degree in English, he went on to New York University`s School of the Arts and studied acting. New York was where he wanted to be.
”The training was good. You go through a process of unlearning, tearing away all of the layers, and you never touch a play until after a year and a half. It was hard, hard work. In New York, you really felt like an artist. It was an exciting time.”
But one day something happened. ”I remember it was after the Christmas break and I was supposed to return to school. I was on East 7th Street and suddenly realized I couldn`t go back. It was time for me to go to work. So I started auditioning.
”I realized there comes a point in everyone`s life when he can`t listen to anyone else, he has to go do it.”
His first break was in Moliere`s ”Don Juan,” directed by Richard Foreman for Joseph Papp`s New York Shakespeare Festival. This was followed by ”Egyptology” at Papp`s Public Theater. He continued to chalk up credits with the Steppenwolf Theatre production of Sam Shepard`s ”True West” with Gary Sinese. ”Sarcophagus” at the Los Angeles Theater Center, ”Gillete” at the renowned La Jolla Playhouse, and other plays finally springboarded him into movies (”Touch and Go,” ”Let`s Get Harry,” ”Hit List” and
”Wired”).
TV also beckoned, and he appeared in shows such as ”Crime Story,”
”Hill Street Blues,” ”Riptide” and ”Max Headroom.”
He recalls auditioning for ”Dear John.” Weinberger and his colleagues said, ”Show us what you want to do.” With his outrageous mannerisms, he pulled out all the stops. The words he spoke were from the pen of John Sullivan, who wrote the British version of the series, from which the ”Dear John” pilot was taken.
”So the words where his, but the character of Kirk was mine. When I finished, they thought it was a little too raw, intense and harsh for television, but they liked it. And I`ve been playing Kirk that way ever since.”
Kirk, the wisecracking member of the club, who calls women ”broadskis,” in Jere`s view is ”really a warm little boy, vulnerable inside, with a superficial exterior. But they`re not going to write him that way.”
So once the character of an immature, self-serving, superficial bore is established, he is then determined by his circumstances, he says.
But Burns is the antithesis of the character. Happily married, with three children-two boys and a girl, ages 7, 5 and 4-he`s very involved with environmental issues, and has just finished a documentary on ”saving the Earth” that is in video stores. At home, he and the children are busy separating newspapers, bottles, cans and so forth as their contribution. ”We even car pool in the neighborhood,” he says.
