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| From The Times Clicky March 15, 2008 William Baldwin talks Dirty Sexy Money, the hit US show now on C4 Coming from a turbulent family himself, no wonder William Baldwin relishes his new role as a member of a dysfunctional dynasty Jenny Eden William Baldwin was always the prettiest of the Baldwin brothers. His intense come-to-bed eyes, lascivious smile and coiffed hair made him an obvious 1980s pin-up. For a decade no film was quite complete without a Baldwin - William, Alec, Stephen or Daniel. But no acting dynasty has had so many ups and downs. William added eye candy to Flatliners and Backdraft, and dated Madonna, but then a couple of bad choices - the Sharon Stone bomb Sliver and Cindy Crawford's disastrous debut Fair Game - relegated him to the slush pile of 1980s pretty boys looking for work. Alec was the chiselled alpha male in Working Girl and Glengarry Glen Ross, married Kim Basinger, but fell from grace during their bitter divorce when his phone rant to his teenage daughter ricocheted around the internet. Stephen had his biggest success with The Usual Suspects and his biggest flop with the Kylie Minogue film Bio- Dome, then became an evangelical Christian in the wake of 9/11. Daniel became a star in Homicide Life on the Street before yo-yoing in and out of rehab, with assorted scrapes with the police thrown in. Now, in light of his turbulent family background, it seems that William has finally landed the role that he was born to play - at the heart of a family of dysfunctional multimillionaires. In Dirty Sexy Money, one of the biggest hits of the US TV year, he plays Patrick Darling, a married politico with a penchant for transsexuals. His brother is a vicar with a secret love child, his sister a serial marrier, and his youngest sister could be Paris Hilton's best friend. Twenty years on from when he started, the dimples and the jet black hair are still there, along with a mischievous glint in his eye when he talks about comparisons between the Baldwins and the Darlings. “How do we measure up? The Darlings are rich, famous and highly dysfunctional, so fairly well,” he shrugs. “When we were filming the pilot people were arguing that some things wouldn't happen, someone wouldn't do that to their own brother. I was like: ‘Oh, yeah? I've got the scars to prove it, buddy'.” Unlike the Darlings, the Baldwin brothers weren't born with their own platinum cards; their father was a teacher who raised six children on $20,000 a year. At first William wrestled (he has been inducted in the US wrestling hall of fame) and studied politics, but then he got his first taste of Hollywood glitz when his looks landed him a contract modelling for Calvin Klein. Then his oldest brother started acting and he decided to give it a try, too. His two other brothers felt the same and also followed Alec into the business. It was inevitable that, with so many Baldwins washing around Hollywood, there would be some crossover. When they started out there was a more delineated pecking order, but now William admits that there is a good-natured rivalry between them over roles. “There are several times when I've said to Alec that I'd got a meeting about a part, only to find out that he'd already been offered it. It's happened to me with Stephen - they've offered the role to me - but I'd really love to get one over on Alec.” We're sitting in the poolside cabana of an elegant hotel on Sunset Boulevard on a blazingly hot LA day. William is wearing a Panama hat at a rakish angle, which emphasises the air of frisky eccentricity that he seems delighted to cultivate. Having followed Alec into film acting, the brothers, ironically, now seem likely to follow him on to TV. Alec, with appearances in the Oscar-winning movies The Departed and The Aviator behind him, is now enjoying success with the TV comedy 30 Rock, for which he won a Golden Globe, and William is fiercely proud of his big brother. He was Alec's “date” at the Emmys last year, when he was nominated for Outstanding Lead Actor. “Alec has always been really funny and I've always wanted people to know that about his work,” he says. “It wasn't until he had done Saturday Night Live eight times that Hollywood started to catch on and say we have to find him some fun roles.” While Alec has the bigger career success, his bitter divorce from Kim Basinger and their furious custody battle means that William is probably the happier man. He and his wife Chynna Phillips, of the girl band Wilson Phillips, have just celebrated their 12th wedding anniversary. She and their three children - Jamison, 7, Vance, 5, and Brooke, 2 - were the main reason that he accepted the role in Dirty Sexy Money. “I've never been one of those actors that was doing a film and had my next three films lined up,” he admits. “Now I know when I roll out of bed that I have a job and I have the security to provide for my family at this stage of my career.” With so many famous people rattling around one family tree, William admits that his kids have taken a while to realise that not all families are like the Baldwins. For the first time, all four have appeared on prime-time US TV shows at the same time. “The kids think TV is like home video because every time they turn on they see one of their uncles. But I have a pretty good head on my shoulders, and my wife even more so, which is incredible when you think she was raised by Warren Beatty, Jack Nicholson and Dennis Hopper and all these Hollywood lunatics who lived with her mother [Michelle Phillips, from the Mamas and the Papas]. We are trying to take all the things from our parents that were wonderful and beautiful, and discard all the other stuff.” He smiles that big, dimpled Baldwin smile and launches into one of his practised anecdotes about family life. A passing publicist's eyebrows shoot sky high and, egged on by the reaction, he launches into a selection of tales from the Baldwin bedroom. “The other day the kids were in bed so we decided to go for a roll in the hay, but we get in there and she takes off her underwear and she puts it on my head like a shower cap. She says: It's such a hassle afterwards, I never know where my underwear is and this way at least I know where it's going to be when I'm done'. As I walk away from the cabana, William calls after me. “I bet you can't get the picture of me with my wife's underwear on my head out of your mind.” You know what? I can't. Dirty Sexy Money, Friday, C4, 9pm |
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| From The Sunday Times Clicky March 9, 2008 Dirty Sexy Money preview Amorality is the glue binding TV clans together – and none is stickier than the Darlings in Dirty Sexy Money Stephen Armstrong Television was created with the family in mind. Being British, we started with a high-minded mission to educate and inform, but soon gave that up and got in the sitcoms. In America, however, Congress was insisting television should be about and for the family as early as the 1950s. In the 1970s, the small screen saw the family through misty eyes - in Family, Eight Is Enough, The Waltons and Little House on the Prairie – while the 1980s of Dallas and Dynasty revelled in it as a focus for high fashion and high finance. By the 1990s, however, family was on reality television in Oprah and Jerry Springer, washing its laundry with bile and venom. This led scripted series to create “new family” units, such as the guys you hung out with in Friends and Seinfeld. Now, with the new series Dirty Sexy Money, the family is back, taking the fiction of New York’s wealthiest clan and gorging on its dysfunction. The Bible Belt must view its arrival as an omen of the end of days. We see the Darlings through the eyes of purity. Idealistic Nick George (Six Feet Under’s Peter Krause) reluctantly becomes the family lawyer for the ultra-wealthy, eccentric New York Darlings when his father, their previous attorney, dies suspiciously. The machiavellian patriarch, Donald Sutherland, buys George’s soul by donating to his fiancée’s charity - although he had hoped to hire Bill Clinton. Within seconds, Nick is bailing out the wastrel Jeremy Darling when he wins a yacht that’s packed with illegal immigrants in a poker game, covering for the aspiring politician Patrick Darling’s trans-sexual affairs, smoke-screening three murder investigations and fending off hatred from the Rev Brian Darling and sexual advances from the sultry Karen Darling. He’s busy, busy, busy. Of course, it’s not hard to see where the executive producer, Greg Berlanti, gets his material. The matriarch, Letitia Darling, is in the Jackie Kennedy mould - where “mould” means “exact template”. Samaire Armstrong’s Juliet Darling, meanwhile, is a peroxide-blonde heiress trying to make it as an actress while slutting her way through New York society. Paris Hilton has never seemed so interesting - but Armstrong’s script is better. Indeed, the show seems to be pouring scorn on the likes of Hilton and her gadabout gang just as their own families are rebelling at the monstrosity of their excess. American television has been creeping in this direction for some time, of course, with the corus-cating influence of blood ties firmly at the heart of Six Feet Under and last year’s Brothers & Sisters. Joining Dirty Sexy Money on our screens is Jimmy Smits, in Cane - a business epic about scheming Cuban-American rum magnates - giving us more feuding clans to watch than the UN observers at Culloden. There’s no question where this particular trend began: in New Jersey in 1999. David Chase had been touting his Sopranos script around Hollywood for three years before HBO spotted its potential. The idea of family shows - even shows about “the family” – was dead, he was told. Yet, in this postSopranos world, amorality at the heart of all relationships delights US primetime audiences, from Desperate Housewives to the forthcoming Pushing Daisies (in which the romantic lead is basically a serial rekiller). Even a series called Heroes features messed-up failures barely managing to get by. Which is why the time is so perfect for Sutherland. As Dirty Sexy Money’s camp insanity unfolds, he lurks at the centre, channelling Mephistopheles as beautifully as ever. When the plots wobble too far from their tracks, when the bodies smother credulity, he can freeze screen time with just the slightest, barely audible breath. When we meet on the set, he is in wisecracking form. What keeps a 72-year-old working so hard? “Debt,” he deadpans. And how do you think Dirty Sexy Money compares with 1980s family sagas such as Dynasty and Dallas? “I didn’t see Dallas and Dynasty - I was really somewhere else in the 1980s.” I laugh. He looks mock-outraged. “Now you’re guessing,” he says. His character, he believes, is not a devious man. “He’s someone who pursues the poetry of truth,” he smiles slightly. “I mean, I know a lot about manipulation, but he doesn’t.” And does he believe the show’s premise - that wealth and power are dirty and sexy? “It’s true there are certain aspects of power that are associated with money,” he nods. “If you look at Bill Clinton, you know power corrupts, and absolute power makes you really horny. But look at Warren Buffett. Look at Bill Gates. They certainly feel their power, but they feel an obligation to participate economically and socially in the community they live in.” He pauses and grins. “The Russian poet Joseph Brodsky talked to a graduating class at Dartmouth in 1989. He looked at them and he said, ‘You know, this is the best day of the rest of your life. Everything else is going to go downhill from now on. You’re going to get things. The more things you get, the more boring it’s going to be. In the middle of it all, try to stay passionate. Leave your cool to the constellation. Passion alone is a remedy against boredom.’” Dirty Sexy Money is on Channel 4 from March 21 at 9pm |