There used to be a time when people didn't know Gary Cole from Gary Coleman -- literally. Cole, the star of the new TNT drama series Wanted, still vividly remembers when his first credit-card application was denied. It seems that somebody at American Express mistook him for the "whatchoo talkin' 'bout?" young star of Diff'rent Strokes.
"It was after I did Fatal Vision, a miniseries for NBC in 1984, so I put NBC down as a reference," Cole says. "Diff'rent Strokes was also on NBC and it was still on the air. And the reply that I got said, 'Dear Mr. Coleman, you need to be 18 years old to receive an American Express card.'"
That was the first and last time a mix-up like that ever happened -- in large part because it was such a goofy mistake to begin with, but also because Cole has done a superb job since then of making a name for himself. Over the past 20 years, he has segued seamlessly through a variety of roles, from satanic Southern sheriff (American Gothic, 1995) to clueless dad (The Brady Bunch Movie, 1995), from swashbuckling sci-fi hero (Crusade, 1999) to ineffective American vice president (The West Wing). He breathes life into all these characters, says Shaun Cassidy, creator/writer/producer of American Gothic, because Cole is essentially "a character actor who just happens to be playing leading-man parts."
"I take that as a huge compliment," Cole says. "But really, those two terms -- character actor, leading man -- they're just labels that are used to clarify job descriptions. To me, it doesn't make much difference whether it's a leading-man role or not. What's important is it's still got to be a character."
Cole believes he has found that yet again in Wanted, a two-fisted, guns-a-blazing action series in which he plays Lt. Conrad Rose, a former SWAT officer who puts together an elite crime-fighting unit to track down L.A.'s 100 most wanted fugitives. "It's a cop-genre show and there are a million and one cop shows," he acknowledges. "But the reason there are so many is it's a great backdrop for conflict and character." In the opening episode, for example, Rose fails as a father when work gets in the way; in his defense, he reneged on a promise to his son so he could comfort a pre-teen rape victim.
Cole can relate because his work as an actor routinely means 12-hour-plus days and sometimes requires him to be very far from home, at the expense of family-man time. "Actually, anybody with a family who's trying to make a living can relate to juggling both." It's an interesting aspect of the show, but don't mistake Wanted for a touchy/feely exploration of a cop's personal life. The series is, first and foremost, a gritty action thriller. "It's actually a bit of a throwback," Cole says, to a style of cop show that disappeared once forensics-driven CSI-type shows caught on. "Whereas our motto is 'We don't need science,'" he says. "We catch bad guys the old-fashioned way."
When Cole starred in the '80s TV series Midnight Caller, playing a radio talk jock who solved crime on the side, his real-life counterparts sometimes scoffed at the notion that radio talk hosts could moonlight as crime fighters. Cole acknowledges it was a farfetched premise. "But he was an ex-cop and always found a way, through the magic of television, to get in the middle of trouble."
Similarly, even though the Wanted cast members got weapons training, went on ride-alongs with police and have received valuable insight from on-set technical advisers, Cole suspects some real-life cops might not impressed. "Just because it's television and nothing on television can represent what they live and breathe. But hopefully not everybody in law enforcement will laugh at it. Hopefully, whether it's the intensity of the action or in the relationships between the characters, they will see something in our show that they relate to."
That's what Cole, the leading man with character-actor sensibilities, keeps aiming for every time.
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by David Martindale
