John Laroquette on ‘Night Court’ reboot: ‘so surreal’
You can forgive John Larroquette for thinking he’d stepped into a time machine when he took the soundstage of the rebooted NBC sitcom Night Court.
The backdrops for the courtroom, chambers and hallways where he first got people laughing in the 1980s as District Attorney Dan Fielding had been painstakingly remade, even the green couch in the judge’s office and the cafeteria -Chairs have been stored and repurposed. It was he who had changed.
“Replaying a character you played 35 years ago is both an interesting problem as an actor and a bit daunting. When I look at myself then and now, I kind of play my own grandfather,” says the 75-year-old actor.
In the reboot, Larroquette’s former prosecutor, Dan Fielding, is convinced he’s returning after years out of the courtroom as a public defender. He’s become a lovable curmudgeon, saying things like, “This is a dish. No therapy practice, no matter how many mentally ill people march through here.”
Melissa Rauch plays former Judge Harry Stone’s daughter, Abby Stone, the new Night Court Judge and the sunshine to Larroquette’s gloom. Speaking of the crazies who show up at her court after hours, the judge says, “It’s hard not to like them when you know what’s going on underneath.”
A verdict on the new “Night Court” has already been made: NBC ordered a second season early after the revival brought in the highest ratings for a comedy series on the net since 2017.
Larroquette suspects some of the interest is due to nostalgia and repetition, but also pointed to the popularity of Rauch, a former star of The Big Bang Theory. “I’m sure there were millions of people who were very interested to see what she would do next,” he says.
Rauch also produced the show and developed the revival concept. She was a huge fan of the original as she used VHS tapes to record her favorite episodes to watch and re-watch as a teenager.
“I think if you told the kid version of me that I was going to do that, my head would have exploded, and I probably would have wanted to fast-forward my whole life to get here,” she says.
She was drawn to the show’s ability to effortlessly transition from heartfelt drama to heightened comedy, a flip she hoped to recreate in the reboot.
“First and foremost it’s a comedy and we’re there to make people laugh. But I always have the feeling that you laugh louder when you can also feel something. And I think ‘Night Court’ did that brilliantly,” she says. “Our writers, led by our wonderful showrunner, Dan Rubin, have truly found that balance beautifully.”
Larroquette is the only actor to return to the series, which first aired from 1984 to 1992, with the late Harry Anderson, the late Markie Post, Marsha Warfield, the late Charles Robinson and Richard Moll.
The original show’s breakout character was Fielding, both clever and lascivious. Larroquette won four consecutive Emmy Awards for the role, a record at the time. But he initially refused to return.
“I wasn’t interested in revisiting him for many reasons, in part my love of physical comedy and the fact that I’m almost 40 years older than I was then that I can’t jump tables. I can’t quite do the things with my body that I could so easily back then. And what do you do after this time? Who is he now?” says Larroquette.
“The more I thought about it, the more interesting it became for an actor to figure out how I could be funny with him at that age now?”
The Fielding in the restart has matured past its sowing phase of its wild oats. His character finally found the love of his life between the end of the last show and her return – but lost her.
“Dan Fielding back then was very different from the Dan Fielding we see today,” says Rauch. “But he’s still the same person. He still thinks he’s the smartest guy in the room. He’s still a narcissist. And at the same time he has evolved.”
While the new series is clearly a product of today – with references to Uber and DJ Khaled – there are plenty of callbacks from the original show, like toys, bouncy canned snakes that explode, and the stuffed armadillo exhibited by the previous Judge Stone became.
Set designer Glenda Rovello recreated the sets from the original plans. “We gave it a coat of paint to modernize it, but we didn’t think a government building had changed that much over the years,” says Rauch.
“Walking into this set just feels so, so special. And honestly, I pinch myself walking through these halls. It feels so surreal.”
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