They met five years ago: “Kirstie picked me up in a bar. And when neither of us is working, we spend all our time together: on the house (an 8,000 square-footer in Encino, built by Al Jolson), the animals (a miniature horse, bunnies, birds, dogs, cats, ducks) and seeing friends.
So we make lots of phone calls, get on lots of planes. You get on location and you’re disconnected from everything you don’t even feel married anymore. “I think that’s the killer in this business, why marriages don’t last. “Those can be horrible,” he said bluntly. (On television, they both appeared in “North and South, Book II,” but not together: She filmed in town for two weeks, he was away on location for six months.) Lately, with Alley working days (on “Cheers”) and Stevenson nights, catch-up time is generally limited to weekends and early-morning coffee. Stevenson is having a ball doing the play-his first in four years, since he and wife Kirstie Alley co-starred in Ernest Thompson’s “Answers” at the Burt Reynolds Dinner Theatre in Jupiter, Fla. And having enough breath after those runs to come in and not be winded-since I’m playing a character who shouldn’t be winded.”Īll of which are bearable concerns. But the hardest part is remembering where and who I’m supposed to be when I step on stage. “You can’t get from up-center stage to stage right unless you go all the way around stage left, through the lobby and around the back of the theater. I just walk behind the screen, come out-and I’m the other guy.”
So now, in the same show, I get to do both.
But for the last five years, I’ve enjoyed playing less predictable characters (including a drug addict on “Falcon Crest”). For the first 10 years of my career, I basically played Frederic types: sincere, clean-cut and well-meaning. “I can’t remember the last time I was asked to play twin brothers. I loved the idea of the two characters,” said the actor. Now Parker Stevenson is doing it on the stage, playing snotty Hugo and gentle Frederic in Jean Anouilh’s “Ring Round the Moon” (at the Colony through Sept. Patty Duke did it on television with her “Patty Duke Show” in the ‘60s. But what if you’re playing both leading roles: going off stage as one character and coming back in the next second as the other-identical twins who don’t walk, talk or act alike? Most actors have a hard enough time remembering their lines, hitting their marks and reaching the back of the house.
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