William H. Macy on “Shameless” … and loving it

William H. Macy heads up the Gallagher family on Showtime's "Shameless"

By Stacey Harrison

William H. Macy doesn’t impress easily.

Having been a professional actor for decades, with more than 100 film titles and countless stage productions to his credit, the dependable everyman has pretty much seen, laughed, cried, and got angry at it all. He knows what he likes, and what bores him to tears. All that experience has only deepened his appreciation for Shameless, his audacious new series that airs Sundays beginning Jan. 9 on Showtime.

“It’s hard to make me laugh,” he says. “I generally find comedies work too hard for the laughs. This thing has consistently made me laugh. … It’s my kind of comedy — this is what I like to see. My least favorite kind of comedy is when the laugh, or telling the joke, is all, so that character and truth and even logic goes out the window just to say what is supposed to be funny.”

At first glance, you could look at Shameless and wonder just what the heck is supposed to be so funny about it. The Gallagher family lives on the margins of society, eking out an existence in a working-class Chicago neighborhood. The six children — ranging in age from 18 to newborn — are left to pretty much raise themselves with no mother and a father whose preferred method of coming home at night is via the police who deposit his intoxicated, passed-out body at the front door. Every day is a struggle, from finding a way to pay the electric bill to using the baby for show-and-tell at school when you can’t find a sitter.

The comedy emerges from the show’s lightning-fast pace, which is a product of the overall hectic way the Gallaghers interact with one another, and how they use their brash resourcefulness to navigate through their plights. Shameless is a whip-smart show with a lot of heart, but very little sentimentality.

“An Archie Bunker for 2011”

Macy plays Frank, the would-be patriarch of the family who has seemingly checked out on life, content to take his monthly disability check and spend it at the local watering hole while evading government watchdogs.

While it may sound like a sad existence, Frank always seems happy. This is never more apparent than in the series’ opening narration, in which Frank paints himself as the loving head of his close-knit clan, a delusion brought upon by drugs, alcohol and a healthy dose of denial.

“He’s a pretty classical addicted personality. He’s able to rationalize just about everything,” Macy says. “I gotta tell you, I haven’t had a role like this in a long time. I’m sort of an Archie Bunker for 2011. … I do have my work cut out for me to make sure that Frank does not become an insufferable lout.”

If he does his job well enough — and judging from what we’ve seen so far, he’s definitely on the right track — Macy’s portrayal could take its place among the best all-time movie and TV drunks, like Dudley Moore in Arthur or Otis Campbell on The Andy Griffith Show.

The call from Shameless executive producer John Wells, who had worked with Macy on ER, came along at a most opportune time, just as he was deciding that a juicy TV role sounded appealing.

“My wife [Felicity Huffman of Desperate Housewives] is on television, and she loves her job, just adores it,” Macy says. “With the death of independent films and movies of the week — things that had been my stock in trade — I decided I wanted to try and do television, and I’m a lucky palooka. The phone rang, and there’s John Wells. I took one look at this script and I was hooked.”

Macy says the trick of the show is that it is really a farce masquerading as a light drama.

“They just put these characters in the most ludicrous storylines,” he says. “Our writers have done a great job, they walk that fine line between being ludicrous for ludicrous’ sake … and keeping a reality to it. Our cast is just doing a bang-up job in keeping it real.”

That cast includes Emmy Rossum (The Phantom of the Opera) as Fiona, the oldest child and de facto mother figure; Jeremy Allen White as Lip, the troubled genius of the family; and Cameron Monaghan as Ian, a middle child dealing with sexual-identity issues. Outside the Gallagher household, viewers will find Joan Cusack, Joel Murray (Mad Men) and Justin Chatwin (The Invisible).

The British Version

Audiences on this side of the Atlantic might not know it, but Macy does have big shoes to fill in his portrayal of Frank Gallagher. For the past seven seasons, Shameless has been a bona fide smash in Great Britain with David Threlfall in the role, and is still going strong. The much-anticipated eighth season is scheduled to coincide with the debut of the U.S. Shameless.

Macy counts himself a fan of the original show, and believes the remake does it justice.

“We are clearly following in their footsteps, because we’d be idiots not to,” he says. “It’s a wildly wonderful show, and very successful, very popular. But we’re not following it exactly. We’ve brought in a few plots, combined episodes, we’ve mixed it up a bit. The translation from British humor to American humor has just happened seamlessly. I think all credit goes to John Wells. He saw what this thing could be, and he wrote the pilot, and he set it in Chicago, which was very cagey on his part. It just works wonderfully. It’s the same show, but completely different at the same time.”

Also helping to ensure a smooth transition are some veterans of the British version, including creator Paul Abbott, who serves as executive producer, and pilot director Mark Mylod. Macy says Abbott, for whom Shameless is partly autobiographical, spent a great deal of time on the set and was “thrilled” with what he saw.

While no remake pleases everyone, this new Shameless more than acquits itself and could become just as iconic in its new home. Whether someone is watching and meticulously comparing it to its predecessor, or coming at it completely unburdened, in the end it will be the family itself that resonates.

“As dysfunctional as the Gallagher family is, there’s warmth there,” Macy says. “You get a really warm and fuzzy feeling from it. I guess it sort of speaks to how families come in all different shapes and colors and sizes and sometimes they work, and it’s really hard to tell how they work. Which is not to say that the Gallagher family works, but it does survive.”

Photo: Credit: Norman Jean Roy/Showtime

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