Ed O’Neill and Ethan Embry weren’t exactly in awe of being associated with “Dragnet.”
To hear them tell it, in fact, the iconic cop series, which has lived for more than 50 years, has had little or no effect on their performances in ABC’s reworking of the show.
O’Neill, who stars as Detective Joe Friday, says he watched the old show when he was young, but he’s not worried about comparisons to Jack Webb, who produced and wrote for “Dragnet” and played Friday in the 1950s and ’60s.
“It’s me doing it instead of Jack Webb, that’s all,” he said at the TV Critics Association press tour. “As an actor, you don’t think of those things.
The 24-year-old Embry had never even seen “Dragnet,” in any of its incarnations.
“Never seen an episode,” Embry says. “I know that there was a movie with Tom Hanks and Dan Aykroyd. Never seen it.”
Executive producer Dick Wolf (“Law & Order”) was glad to hear that, Embry says.
“Dick says, `Good. Don’t. That’s not what we’re doing here.'”
