Sometimes Ted Danson doesn’t need a spotlight — he needs a soapbox. When Showtime approached him to star in “Thanks of a Grateful Nation,” he found a subject he could get angry about — Gulf War Syndrome. The two-hour, fact-based drama is about the American government’s denial and what now seems like a coverup of troop exposure to toxic agents during the Persian Gulf War.
Danson plays Jim Tuite, a former Secret Service agent working for then-Sen. Donald Riegle (Brian Dennehy) to investigate why so many veterans are suffering from a mysterious illness. Also starring are Marg Helgenberger, Jennifer Jason Leigh and Steven Weber. The writer is “China Beach” co-creator John Sacret Young.
“This movie is 100 percent from the vets’ point of view,” Danson says over a late lunch in a Pasadena hotel. “Most of it’s on the record. It’s very hard when you’re dealing with the government to know the full picture. But you can see the results: 100,000 are now sick and can’t seem to shake the symptoms.
“On the other side, you have the Department of Defense and the Veterans Administration saying, `If you look at the statistics, it’s the same rate of illness as the rest of the population.’ But if you look at where the statistics came from, they were taking their facts from people who walk into hospitals. Not fair,” he adds, indignantly.
“Besides, if you send someone out to fight and perhaps die for you, if they come back and have a runny nose, fix it. How dare you not do that! Unfortunately, the Pentagon has a history of not owning up to good ideas going awry. Agent Orange — look how long it took them to admit that. Look how long it took them to admit what happened to people in foxholes watching atom bombs being tested.”
Danson, who for the past 11 years has focused his activist attention on his American Oceans Campaign, can be a powerful and articulate spokesman. “I was very anti-Gulf War,” he says, “but our nation was completely behind it. You go and win this miraculous, well-fought war in 100 days. You come back and have huge parades, which erase the memory of Vietnam. We are the victorious, powerful military nation.
“Well, you don’t get to stop the story there. As people started pouring into VA hospitals, sick and dying, you don’t get to keep that out of the equation. That’s not right. To me, it felt like the kind of thing that should be told.
“Next time we go to war we should have the full equation available to us so we can choose thoughtfully. I think you’d want to know if your gas mask worked or that there were enough of them. Will there be enough alarms to detect chemicals in the air?”
The public might not expect Danson to sound so serious. But since he wound up “Cheers” five years ago after a successful 12-year run, he has been looking for projects to sink his teeth into. Why not retire and live on the interest from the huge paychecks he earned Sam Malone?
“I did make a lot of money on `Cheers,”‘ he says, “but I do need to work. I got divorced, remember, and I have four kids. I could rearrange my life so as not to have to work, but I really love to act.”
To date, Danson’s most successful post “Cheers” work has been NBC’s mini-series “Gulliver’s Travels.” His least successful was CBS’ low-rated series “Ink,” in which he starred opposite Mary Steenburgen, whom he married in 1995. When “Ink” tanked, the two were devastated.
“I was comforting Mary,” Danson recalls. “I think it was hard for her to begin with. I was very enlightened. Then three or four months later I walked around feeling terribly depressed and very much like a loser and a failure. Mary went through her emotions much faster than I did. So I got to be noble and enlightened and then fall apart, and she got to laugh.”
Since then, Danson has completed three feature films — “Homegrown,” “Saving Private Ryan” and “Jerry and Tom” — and currently is shooting Lawrence Kasdan’s “Mumford.” He also is putting together a new comedy series, “Becker,” to which CBS gave a 13-episode commitment.
Talking about how his life has changed, Danson seems more relaxed than he has ever been. He agrees, saying, “I used to pretend to be who I am now. Now I am him. That’s a plus for being 50.
“I had a transformation five years ago. I was in a car accident, and one of the things that I came away with is that the line between life and death is a very delicate, teeny thread. It doesn’t have to be trumpets blaring. It’s a very simple shift from here to there. The accident was a big wake-up call: cliffs, ambulances, being taken out on a board. It was acted out for me in a very dramatic way so I’d receive the message.
“My life had become untenable. But with a lot of family help and a lot of hard work, I changed things. Life’s very complicated. As long as I take time to meditate, it seems to be much better.
“Before, I was worrying about scarcity. I think I was making decisions based on: Is this my last chance to make a huge sum of money? Is this my last chance to be near the center of power? If I don’t do a half-hour series, if I start over in my career and take a chance and do a film, I’ll have no guarantees. That’s OK when you’re younger, but is it OK at 50?
“I’m not there yet, but I think me being concerned about my spirituality is far more important than anything else in my life. And everything else in my life seems to be taking care of itself.”
With this relaxation has come an unexpected appreciation of “Cheers.” “At first I thought, `This is what happens when you make TV,”‘ he says. “Having now experienced non-hits, I’m much more aware of how much of a free ride `Cheers’ was. I got to play one of the most amazing characters ever, certainly ever on TV. Wow! How lucky is that?
“Sam Malone was just so rich, so funny. In the mid-’80s, people who were feminists and who on the surface were anti-everything Sam was about could laugh at him. He was so transparently struggling and over his head. There was a nice sadness to him. I’m starting to watch `Cheers’ late at night. I love having my friends make me laugh.”
