You meet dozens of guest stars, some of whom will go on to bigger things: Vince Vaughn, Denise Richards, Jada Pinkett Smith. One of your favorites is Julius Erving, a/k/a Dr. J. He’s really nice and professional and frankly a far more qualified doctor than you’ll ever be. Not that that’s saying much. Television doctoring just ain’t the same as regular doctoring. Obstetrics, for example. You deliver quite a few TV babies. How do you deliver a TV baby?
1. Have a casting director find a brand-new mother who thinks her week-old infant is destined for stardom.
2. Cover it in cream cheese and strawberry preserves.
3. Load it between the legs of a shrieking actress.
4. Wait for the director to yell “Action!”
5. Lift the delicious bagel-baby up toward the camera, smile, and wink.
Just like in real life!
Here’s a little-known fun fact: By law, newborn babies can only work twenty minutes at a time. (The Baby Union controls Hollywood.) So it’s common for the “baby” to actually be twins or triplets. One day the mother of triplets is on set watching all three of her offspring get the cheese ’n’ jam treatment in rapid succession. You politely ask her why she is comfortable allowing her weeks-old infants to be used in this way. She turns to you and says, “I don’t know, they just really seem to enjoy it.”
Ah, show biz.
And sandwiched in between all of this is school. Yes, you go to school, five days a week. It’s the law. Along with the keep-your-parents-with-you-at-all-times provision, California mandates that all on-set children must attend school three hours a day. They also limit your workday as a sixteen-year-old to 9½ hours, including the three reserved for school and another one for lunch. That leaves only 5½ hours for shooting. And one more thing: the three hours of school cannot be broken up into increments smaller than twenty minutes.
You have a dedicated school trailer on set, along with a really great tutor/child-welfare professional named Rhona Gordon-Jepsen. Her job is to stay in touch with your high school back in New Mexico, find out what your classmates are studying, and then teach it to you. You take the exact same tests everybody else does. You’re not sure if you’re learning the full breadth of, say, biology that your peers are, but at the very least you learn what you need to know to pass the test. Is it anything like school? Not really. A typical scenario: You enter the tutor trailer at, say, 10:35:23. At exactly 10:55:23, the second assistant director, who’s been waiting outside the door with a stopwatch, knocks on the door to get you for the master shot rehearsal. You rehearse, then go back to the trailer. Twenty minutes and zero seconds later, knock knock! Time to film the master shot. School. Knock knock! Close-up shots. School. Knock knock! Coverage shots. A lot of your time and energy during your first two seasons on the show are spent compartmentalizing yourself into these weird little fragments of school, work, rehearse, school, lunch, school, rehearse, film, school.4
From the day after the first episode premieres, cries of “Doogie!” follow you as you walk down the street. It becomes the single word you hear more than any other, easily eclipsing the previous number one, “the.” If you had known people would be calling you by your character name for the next twenty years, you might have asked for a different one. Thunderbolt Howser, say, or Dr. Feelgood, or Baron von Sexy Ass. But no, you’re Doogie, and your costar Max Casella is Vinnie, and man, does it get weird when you try to hang out with him. Not that you don’t want to—he’s a lovely guy and a fantastic actor, in your opinion the secret ingredient behind the show’s success. But it’s impossible to be with him socially because you find out pretty early on that when people see you together outside the show it provokes mass metaphysical crises. The one time you try to eat lunch together at a mall food court you jeopardize public health. Dozens of passersby start gawking and freaking out and taking pictures and shouting “Vinnie and Doogie!” A handful disappear into the space-time wormhole separating reality from TV reality, never to return.
But being Doogie in particular isn’t nearly as uncomfortable as being, or being told to be, a teen star in general. You don’t consider yourself a teen, or a star, but the undeniable fact remains that you are both, and as a sixteen-year-old who thinks of himself as a gawky ragamuffin with awkward features and an undulating Adam’s apple, posing for glamour photos is demoralizing and surreal. You may never feel as out of place in your whole life as you do at the Teen Beat photo shoot. All these publicists and photographers and network reps are there asking you to pose as if you think girls would want to have your poster on their wall. Would they really? You don’t know, and don’t want to, but you do know it’s a disarming experience to get groomed and then have some random shutterbug stare at you like a pile of fresh produce at the supermarket. “You’re doing great! Now same thing, but smile bigger … smile smaller.… Now look thoughtful … raise one eyebrow … turn the shoulder.…” When you get older you will come to feel much more comfortable in front of still cameras, but right now it’s an ordeal.
And yet can any aspect of starring in a high-quality, well-paying network show truly be considered an ordeal? No. The inconvenience of spending an hour at a photo shoot, or the psychological angst caused by being known as your character, amounts to one-half of an anthill of a third of jack-all squat compared to the totality of the Doogie experience. You spend four years working with creative, friendly people on a show you feel honored to be a part of. You learn thousands of lessons about collaboration and creativity and production that will stand you in good stead for the rest of your life. And dozens of years later, on those semiannual occasions when you flip channels and suddenly come across a white-robed vision of your teenage self demanding “thirty ccs of penicillin stat!” you will be beyond proud to see that your work, and the show, lives on.
And most of all, you will be happy for Doogie, who, after conquering a twenty-year Valium addiction, now spends his days working with Dr. Drew on Celebrity Rehab, and his nights kicking back in the mansion in Valencia he bought with the proceeds of his successful XXX-rated series, Do Me Now Sir, DP: Volumes 1–35.
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To attempt to enjoy the perks of being a child star, only to discover yourself pretty much constitutionally incapable of doing so, go HERE.
To do more TV acting, go HERE.
To hear from the creator of Doogie Howser, go HERE.
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1That is the correct plural.
2Mmm … wounds.
3If only your face were so flawless. You’re sporadically riddled with acne throughout the entire run of the show. You’re stuck in an epidermal vicious cycle: you get zits, which the makeup artist covers with makeup, which causes more zits, which leads you to apply Accutane, which makes your lips peel and blister. Evidently dermatology is not Doogie’s specialty.
4Another little-known fact: To save time, the producers sometimes use a body double to shoot over your shoulder. The double moves his head slightly while another actor sits just below him reading your lines. As it happens, that other actor is Marc Buckland, who a quarter century later will be a major Hollywood producer, no doubt due entirely to the valuable show biz lessons he learned reciting off-camera lines toward your costars’ crotches.
And now a word from your friend …
STEVEN BOCHCO
In 1988, when I made a long-term, ten-series overall deal with ABC and 20th Century–Fox Television, the first show I elected to make was a half-hour series about a sixteen-year-old doctor named Doogie Howser whose prodigious intellectual gifts had been fixated on medicine since an early-life struggle with childhood leukemia.
You were one of the very first actors I met when we started casting for Doogie. You were a young actor of enormous talent and sensitivity who had already made a name for himself in several well-received films. Though you were in fact sixteen, you looked younger, making the contrast between your youth and the character’s accomplishments even more dramatic. From the moment I met you, it was a foregone conclusion—for me, at l
east—that you were the only actor who could properly portray the character.
By the time I told ABC I wanted to cast you in the role, they were already having some misgivings about the concept. They had envisioned a broadly comedic, joke-heavy, three-camera comedy, whereas I was presenting a far more realistic portrayal of a young man caught in an almost schizophrenic dilemma: on the one hand, Doogie is a sixteen-year-old, living at home like any other kid, obsessing about girls and cars and chafing at parental supervision; on the other hand he is a gifted medical professional entrusted with the enormous, life-and-death responsibilities of caring for the sick and dying. Not necessarily a laugh riot, to be sure. So, when I proposed casting you as Doogie, the executives at ABC balked, concerned that your sensitivity, coupled with your lack of an obvious comedic persona, would doom the show.
In the tug-of-war that ensued, I finally prevailed, and Neil Patrick Harris, all of sixteen, became the star of Doogie Howser, M.D. The show premiered in the fall of 1989, and became, much to ABC’s surprise and delight, an immediate success. It lasted for four years, as America watched you grow from a small, cute kid into a tall, handsome, and self-assured young adult. I believe now, twenty-five years later, as I did then, that you were the only actor who could have played the role. Your genuine wit and intelligence, your youthful sensitivity, and your enormous talent all combined to make a potentially unbelievable premise completely credible. You, for better or worse, were Doogie Howser, M.D.
Television schedules are rough—long days, often twelve hours or more, week in and week out—pretty grueling for anyone, let alone a sixteen-year-old boy. You had a caring, close-knit family, and I felt a keen responsibility not only to you, but to your parents as well, to provide a professional environment that was as nurturing in its own way as your real family’s was. And so I determined that both in front of and behind the camera, I would surround you with caring, stable, and supportive crew and costars, including James Sikking and Belinda Montgomery (Doogie’s parents), Max Casella (Doogie’s best friend and neighbor, who looked sixteen but was twenty-two and used to sneak outside to smoke cigarettes), and Larry Pressman and Kathryn Layng (his colleagues at work). They became your onstage surrogate family, and took care of you as if you were indeed a favored son and colleague.
When Doogie Howser, M.D., finished its run (about a year prematurely, I always thought), you were twenty, but in the years since we’d started, you had gone from being a kid to being a man. I had always envisioned that the last year of Doogie would dramatize that transition, but ABC, in its infinite wisdom, pulled the plug on us after four seasons. Shockingly, it’s been twenty years since Doogie ended, though in a sense it never will, living on, as these shows do, in the never-ending world of TV syndication.
As I’ve watched you grow up and evolve, from near and then afar, I have often been struck by the long road you’ve traveled with such grace, and no small amount of courage. You have become a role model for a great many people over the last number of years. There’s a reason the social and cultural shift toward acceptance of and comfort with gay marriage has had such a rapid rise, and you are very much a part of that welcome phenomenon. Not that being gay is your defining characteristic; but it, and the grace with which you have communicated that aspect of your life to the public, is certainly part and parcel of who you are, and is an inspiration to many.
I had hoped this little chapter would be more “fun,” perhaps breezier, more anecdotal. But this opportunity to share my thoughts and memories of you remind me that, for all your charm, good humor, and preoccupation with magic, you were a serious and gifted young man who, at sixteen, was better cast as Doogie Howser than any of us ever realized.
Last thought: in my body of work, Doogie was, and will always remain, one of my favorite shows. It was sweet, it was funny, it was on occasion melancholy, but it was always true to itself. It was always about something. It never, as they say, jumped the shark. And as you go on to enjoy the full measure of success you’ve earned as an actor, a host, a musical performer, and—ultimately, I am sure—a director, I hope you remain as fond of Doogie and the values his character promulgated as I am.
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Go HERE.
At the end of every episode of Doogie Howser, M.D., Doogie types a few sentences into the journal he keeps on his computer. Most of the time the entries are poignant and insightful. Some, like the ones reprinted here, are less so.
PERSONAL JOURNAL OF DOOGIE HOWSER, M.D.
Sometimes as a doctor, the best treatment is no treatment at all. But today was definitely not one of those times. RIP, van full of senior citizens. Next time I’ll use medicine.
It isn’t always easy being a good son. Especially since I’m much, much smarter than my parents. But even if I weren’t so smart I’d be smarter than them, ’cuz they’re stupid.
My favorite color is orange. It used to be purple but then at a certain point it became orange. Maybe by next year it will be yellow. It is impossible to know.
Boobs are amazing.
Friendship is a lot like surgery. It’s complicated and bloody and can kill you. Plus it costs a lot of money and the government is very reluctant to pay for it.
Is it normal that sometimes when I see a pretty girl my pee-pee grows? I have a medical degree so I suppose I should know, but I must have missed that class or something.
Parents are people. People with children. When parents were little, they used to be kids, like some of you, but then they grew, and now parents are people.
Sometimes I wish I could just go away to a different place where I don’t have to be Doogie Howser anymore. I’m specifically thinking of HERE.
Other times I wish I weren’t such a nice guy. Instead of being a nice doctor, I’d like to be an evil, horrible doctor, somewhere far away, like HERE.
And other times I wish I could hang out with Katy Perry at the Super Bowl, but I’ll never get to do that, because that’s in Indianapolis and to get there I would have to travel all the way HERE.
There comes a moment in every young actor’s life when he is no longer a child. And according to the laws of California, that moment falls exactly on your seventeenth birthday.
With the show on hiatus you spend the first half of the year as a senior at La Cueva High in Albuquerque engaging in wholesome acts of tepid teenage rebellion. But when shooting starts you return to Hollywoodland alone and engage in far less wholesome acts. Legally liberated from the need for parents, tutors, or being in any particular place at any particular time, you decide to settle into your new life as a demi-star. You rent your own place in Sherman Oaks. You gradually get less self-conscious about using phrases like “I’ve rented my own place in Sherman Oaks.” And you shell out five hundred dollars for a high-quality fake ID and begin, in both senses, forging your identity.
You and your then buddies Stephen Dorff, Matt Levin, and Jayson Rome dress up, meet up, and go out, your car blasting whatever current song is most likely to make you feel cool for blasting it. (Toad the Wet Sprocket, anyone?) You make the LA club circuit: Tuesday is Skybar night, Thursday the Roxbury, Saturday the Viper Room. Upon arrival you navigate your way through the hundreds of people hanging outside. You work your way past the bouncers by using Stephen Dorff’s celebrity, discovering along the way that when necessary you can be the kind of person who pulls that kind of move. You stay till the bars close at 1:30, then go to Canter’s or Damiano’s for pizza, stagger home, and sleep until noon. Then at 5:00 or 6:00 p.m. you go out and have dinner and begin the pattern again.
It’s the circle, the circle of nightlife.
Future centuries will remember the early-1990s child-actor party scene as the cultural and intellectual high point of human civilization, with the possible exception of the mid-eighties Brat Pack era. It’s a time and place when even B-list celebrities—C-list, to be honest—feel empowered to get away with some pretty remarkable behavior. Shannen Doherty, for example. She’s trouble. Like, soap opera trouble. And she loves
living out that role. Once you watch her get into a fistfight at the Roxbury with another young star of the era. (You will never remember the other star’s identity; for purposes of completion, let’s say Soleil Moon Frye.) On several occasions you witness Shannen get upset when another pseudo-celeb gets too close to “her” section of a bar, then react with her standard public ritual of shouting, glass-throwing, and storming out. These incidents then become fodder for gossip columnists and are used as fuel for subsequent shouting/glass-throwing/out-storming sessions.
Shannen embodies this era. You, alas, do not. For one thing the scene is fueled primarily by alcohol, and you are—by biochemical nature—a dull and crappy drunk. Yes, alcohol loosens your inhibitions, but your habit of self-observation is too deeply ingrained for you to ever do anything tabloid-worthy. Screaming in public, taking your shirt off, belittling valets—all fun and rewarding things for celebutante drinkers to do, no question about it. But your dreams of partaking in such amusing sport are invariably nipped in the bud by imagining yourself being the jackass doing them. (You can, however, more than hold your own against anyone when it comes to morning-after puking, shivering, and wishing you were dead, so at least there’s that.)
Cocaine and heroin are two other drugs of choice running rampant in that scene, and they don’t remotely appeal to you. They’re way too hard-core, too destructive. A few years ago there were those two cheerleader girls back at your high school in Albuquerque who you found out were cokeheads. Once you knew that, you couldn’t stop looking at them and thinking, Cokeheads cokeheads cokeheads cokeheads. You’d watch them laugh too loud and roll their eyes and just generally act self-impressed and pretentious. Good for them, but there’s no doubt in your mind that if you were ever on coke, you’d start acting self-impressed and pretentious, then think, Wow, I’m the self-impressed, pretentious cokehead guy, then start drowning in a vortex of miserable self-awareness.