Are you hoping at some point that’s the last thing people refer to about your acting?
I’ve been really lucky with the way people have accepted what I do and been able to allow me to be an advocate and an activist and an actor at the same time. Because everything that I do is made possible by the reaction that people have to it.
It’s like I always say about celebrity, celebrity doesn’t belong to me. I don’t own my celebrity. You own my celebrity. If you don’t give a damn then I don’t have it. It belongs to you. It doesn’t belong to me. So anything I achieve with the foundation doesn’t belong to me, it belongs to you, it belongs to whoever supports the foundation. Everything is just a privilege.
One of your greatest assets is comic timing. Does Parkinson’s interfere with that at all?
Physically sometimes, but not really because, first of all thanks for saying that. It’s kind of like Mark Twain said, “comedy’s like a frog. If you dissect it, you’ll find out how it works, but it will die in the process,” so I don’t spend a lot of time analyzing it. I read material and there’s a rhythm that I read it in and a rhythm that I perceive it in and calculate it and process it, and then it just comes out the way it comes out.
When “Family Ties” was on, there were only three networks and you may have had 30 million viewers. No matter how successful “The Michael J. Fox Show” it’s going to be a different, smaller audience. Have you thought about that?
I’ve thought about that, but also the thing now is there’s a shelf life beyond the initial airing. There’s secondary airings, there’s the internet and streaming. I buy shows all the time on AppleTV so there’s a life that goes on. I know it won’t be like those 30 shares and 40 shares that we used to get, but if we get a loyal audience that just sticks with us and enjoys the show, I’ll be happy.
How was Chris Christie as a guest star?
He was good. He was very friendly and very funny. He just came in, he was on his way to the All Star game and he dropped by the studio and was just great. He was like an actor. He went through the process and makeup and rehearsal and he was great.
Did he get it in one take?
We kind of goof around a little bit so it’s hard to say whether it was one take because we did four or five takes simultaneously, but he was really great and he was a good sport.
How close are your real kids to the kids on the show?
There’s that universal kid thing that all kids have in relationships with their parents as they’re teenagers. It’s a strange relationship because we’re aliens and they’re embarrassed about us. There are some things that are taken from life, for example my youngest daughter, when she went to camp a couple years ago, took us aside and said, “I’m gonna warn you, when I go to camp and you get pictures on the internet, I’m trying out a new smile. I don’t want you to think anything’s wrong.”
We transposed that to the daughter breaking a new run because she didn’t like the way she runs so she comes in and rehearses a new running method for us. It was just little snips and pieces of the experience of raising teenagers that we use.
How did your kids come to terms with dealing with Parkinson’s?
They were great. My kids were so young. My three youngest kids were all born after I was diagnosed so they grew up with this. It’s reality for them. For them it never took up more space than it needed to either. I always say about my kids, if you ask them about me, it’s where that line in the show comes from, if you asked my kids to describe me probably the last thing that they’d say would be that I have Parkinson’s. It just wouldn’t occur to them.
You make fun of the heroic slow motion promo. How much are they actually playing off that?
It’s a little meta. We’re deliberately playing on that. It’s funny, you want to go back and the struggle with Mike on the show is the same struggle that I had. You want to go back and you want to do work. You don’t want to be a novelty and I think Mike Henry avoids it like I avoided it by just taking the work seriously and working hard to do the best show we can do and not cruising on any kind of perceived good will.
What have been your experiences with strangers coming up and sharing their stories with you?
It’s a unique privilege. It’s really great and to be able to give someone encouragement or empathize or relate to something they’re going through, even if it’s just in passing, is a really unique privilege.
