Which, of course, is not the case. But before then, at least, he has found someone worthy of his time. Someone not a million miles from the Niles, actually. In Julia, the new Sky / HBO luxury series for massive TV chef Julia Child (played by Sarah Lancashire), which made French cooking popular in America in the 1960s, Pierce stars as her husband, Paul. Paul is a snob. Elegant, a little turtleneck. He knows his burgundy and will go crazy if you combine a buffet with beer. Sometimes it is unbearable. We come to take care of him deeply. So far, so much the older version of Grammer’s brother pernickety. And yet, the more you watch Julia, the more Paul looks a different kind. “Niles is a person who lived despite his body,” Pierce explains patiently. “And Paul is a man who lives entirely in his body.” Is true. Niles struck with lust and intensity. Paul is so relaxed that he almost shakes. As for Pierce: Well, I can only see his head and shoulders above the Zoom, but they look pretty well adjusted. It’s the day after his 63rd birthday and he has slightly twinkling stalks and wide-open eyes skating from end to end as he composes his answers. He is smart and agile and funny. Yes, he says, he knows the similarities. “Both performances are about the family. About the literates. It was written by literate people. However, they are both very affordable and do not have a high price. “ Frasier was proudly knowledgeable and extremely popular: huge scores, 37 Emmys, four for Pierce. He knew he had become a unionist when a garbage collector shouted “Niles!” to him on the street. “I thought: Okay, I bet he’s not someone who thought of Frasier as a TV date. But now it must be dinner time. People who may not have thought this was a show for them say, “Oh, I got it.” “The line between food and sex was blurred for them” David David Hyde Pierce as Paul Child and Sarah Lancashire as Julia Child in Julia. Composite: HBO Max “It’s very exciting for me. The same can happen with Julia. You do not have to be a Julia Child fan or obsess over French food to go: “Oh, that’s really interesting.” There is definitely a lot to put your teeth into. The marriage of children, for a start: without children, few regrets, plenty of neck. “You look good enough to eat,” Julia tells Paul in the opening scene. Both sides are enthusiastic, the appetite is slightly reduced by menopause. “The line between food and sex was blurred for them,” says Pierce. “I do not mean that they had an inappropriate relationship with food. “They were sensual people.” To take advantage of this, Pierce began designing. Paul turned to art in writing. When he sketches, he says, “time stops around you. There is something very literally sensual about this. “Your senses feed you.” What does he paint? Anything. Take a look, but there are no examples. Nothing on the wall. His apartment is not hectic: it is exactly aligned between two empty white doors. The effect is half Beckett, half Brian Ricks. He will sketch what is there, he says. A glass. Bread. The same? Only once. “One half seemed extremely expensive and the other half less so, and there’s probably a reason for that. Or it reveals a deep psychological secret “. The other day he revealed a portrait he had drawn, at the age of 16, of his father. “I promoted to reconnect with my younger self!” He describes it excitedly: his father, with his glasses on, reads the paper. “I clearly loved the man. And if you look at Paul’s artwork – and especially his photos of Julia – it’s pure love. “ And it’s what – more than malice – really unites Paul and Niles. Their devotion to another person: in the case of Niles, Daphne, the suffocating physiotherapist played by Jane Lives. Is he particularly good at it? “It simply came to our notice then. I’m totally committed to one person, so I know what that’s like. He is also the example I grew up with with my mom and dad. That’s how it instilled in me. “ Pierce was born in Saratoga Springs in upstate New York in 1959, the youngest of four children. His parents, Laura and George, were insurance agents. As a boy, he was involved with Gilbert and Sullivan and enjoyed going up the stairs theatrically. He studied music at Yale at the time, realizing that it was not enough for a piano concerto, and changed to English and drama. He spent the first decade of his career juggling Broadway pieces by selling ties at Bloomingdale’s. At an audition 40 years ago, she met another actor, Brian Hargrove. have been together ever since. “We continued to exchange positions on who was more successful, who brought money. Having been on a major national television show for 11 years, I ended up with more public recognition than Brian [who moved into TV writing], but through all this we managed to always be next to each other and support each other. Without much hassle, I have to say, “Why? We were made for each other,” he says, in essence. So when Pierce calls the Childrens “a mutually supportive organization,” he knows his stuff. The time of Julia’s sudden fame was crucial, he believes. “It was not like they were children in their 20s and suddenly one of them is on the Titanic. It was another chapter in a well-written book. “ His own narrative was a touch more meta. When Frasier took off, the paparazzi started grabbing him and Hargrove walking their dogs. Interviewees asked if she was dating anyone. “My life is an open book,” he replied, “just do not wait for me to read it to you.” Just three years after the end of Frasier, he began explicitly mentioning his partner, who became his wife in 2008, at a time when California was taken by surprise by the ban on same-sex marriage, Proposition 8. “When you work in the theater,” he says today, “no matter what your private life is, no one cares. There is something about this TV medium, perhaps because it has to be marketed in such a massive way, that suddenly the backstage on the set, the backstage in your life, what is happening behind your curtains. part of the story. That was a shock to me. “ In fact, all of these stories were happy. Frasier’s cast was very close. Gramer calls Pierce the brother he never had. Along with the late John Mahoney, who played their father, Martin, Pierce is the godfather of Leeves’s son. “David is a very easy man to love,” he emailed Leeves. “It makes everyone around him better.” It does not mean only professionally. “He has a rare blend of generosity, compassion, intelligence and elegance.” Joe Keenan, one of Frasier’s lead screenwriters, adds: “I’ve never worked with another actor who combines his amazing technical skill with comedy – fractional timing, subtle facial expressions – with emotional sincerity.” “It helped give Frasier a toned range that could range from prank to tear, sometimes in a single episode, and made even the wildest flights of comic absurdity (like fainting at the sight of blood) feel absolutely true.” . Revolutionaries… David Hyde Pierce, Peri Gilpin, John Mahoney, Jane Leeves and Kelsey Grammer in Frasier. Photo: David Rose / NBC / Getty Images In Frasier, Pierce gives perhaps the most exquisite sitcom show of all time: incredibly funny, silly moving. A perfect balance of what Samson Harris calls “flights of fancy and perfect taste. It is an element of self-calibration. Always perfectly placed. “ His comic heroes, he says, are Alec Guinness (for dryness and subtlety), John Cleese (absolute conviction) and Buster Keaton (unflappable deadpan) and something about alchemy is gold dust. Watch the show again today and it may take your breath away, especially for how it was queer on the mainstream comedy arena. satirizing intolerance while lovingly mocking everyone. Thanks in large part to Keenan’s landmark episodes – The Matchmaker, Out With Dad, The Doctor is Out – there is an ease in sexuality as well as a willingness to joke about what looks revolutionary. When I suggest that Fraser changed the world – without explaining exactly why – Pierce mocks with joy. However, more than most, its impact must be remembered forever. Walking once in New York, says Sansom Harris, they met him in love on every building block. “He was so sweet with everyone. He said: “This could go away with a heartbeat.” He treats people with great respect and expects it as well. “ In addition, he is a dedicated cheerleader for the arts and is particularly excited about a cellist who has seen Bach play on the streets of Ukraine. “There is a reason why Yo-Yo Ma was playing Bach cello suites in the middle of the pandemic. “The most sparing, most basic kind of music you would not think of as popular entertainment – because it was not, it was soul.” Incredibly funny, silly moving… Pierce in 2021. Photo: Broadway World / REX / Shutterstock Music is more fundamental to him than acting, he explains, slightly shy. But television also “came to the rescue” during the pandemic. No reality – “naked people in swamps eating bugs. I can take it home. ” And not comedy, it turns out. In fact, they were live streams of the St Luke String Quartet. However, the lockdown offered an opportunity to re-evaluate his life and …
