In making the raunchy sitcom Call Me Fitz, there was no humiliation Jason Priestley would not endure.
Playing a slimy used-car salesman, for three months he was slapped, kicked and called every filthy name in the book. To top it off, he spent the better part of his time during filming in Nova Scotia forced to prance about in tighty whities decorated with tractors and cars.
And he loved it. He revelled in the lewdness - downright relished playing a bad-boy loser with a potty mouth, a drinking problem and a dysfunctional family. In fact, the B.C. native describes Call Me Fitz one of the most entertaining and challenging acting experiences of his 20-year-plus career. "You know what they say, dying is easy … comedy's hard," says Priestley, who at 40 still has the boyish good looks that brought him fame in the early nineties as do-gooder Brandon Walsh on Beverly Hills, 90210.
"The hardest thing for me was finding the right comedic moment, and holding onto it: playing it straight, keeping it real," adds the actor, dressed in a brown sweater, jeans and construction boots, and sharing a table at a Toronto restaurant with Call Me Fitz writer/producer Sheri Elwood. "Getting kicked around and crashing cars was the easy part. Hell, I've been doing that since I was old enough to walk."
It was Priestley, Elwood is quick to add, who came up with the idea of having the lay-about lead, Richard Fitzpatrick, strut about in nothing but his gitch - which were the brand Ginch Gonch, an underwear manufacturer in Montreal. "Ginch Gonch helps to symbolize the little boy that Fitz really is," Priestley says. "They're perfect for Fitz, a guy who is arrested as an adolescent, and has never really progressed past 15.
"Fitz always just does what he thinks is his next-best move, without ever thinking about the future consequences or ramifications. But he's fun. And he's doing the best he can, like all the rest of us who are just trying to muddle through."
Shot in the Annapolis Valley village of New Minas, N.S., the 13-part Call Me Fitz - slated to air on The Movie Network and Movie Central this summer - begins after Fitz botches a test drive and puts his customer in a coma. He then encounters a new salesman on the lot, Larry (Ernie Grunwald), who serves as Fitz's moral conscience. Carnage ensues.
"If you put The Hangover on the psychiatrist's couch, that's what this show is," says Elwood, who also wrote and produced the CTV series Defying Gravity. "It's a raunchy show that is really about eviscerating this man's psyche. Larry forces him to take a look at what's going on in his life, and Fitz doesn't like what he sees."
Elwood, who grew up on Nova Scotia's South Shore, wrote Call Me Fitz several years ago as a comedy sample. Approached several times to turn the pilot script into a series, she balked until now because "all the pieces never quite fit."
When TMN signed on, even finding the right Fitz was a dilemma - one Elwood didn't resolve until she happened upon a YouTube interview of Priestley with CBC Radio's Jian Ghomeshi. "I think you'd stumbled in from the night before, in an old T-shirt and a couple days' worth of growth," she ribs Priestley. "It was filmed with a hand-held camera and posted on the Internet. And I was like, 'Oh yeah, that's my guy.'
"The writers and I tried our damnedest to embarrass Jason during the shoot, but nothing fazes him," says Elwood of her star, who also plays in multiple sex scenes (including one where he is exuberantly spanked). "This is a true cable show in every sense of the word. And TMN gave us the artistic freedom to take it far as we thought it needed to go. So we [went]for it."
Since 90210 went off the air, Priestley has worked consistently in Los Angeles - as an actor, director and producer - on shows such as My Name is Earl, Hollywood & Vines (Priestley is a real-life wine lover who has a stake in the Okanogan, B.C.'s Black Hills Winery) and The Secret Life of the American Teenager.
He says he took the part of the bumbling Fitz because Elwood's script was laugh-out-loud funny. "The show also has a lot of heart, a lot of pathos, so it was a pretty easy decision," adds Priestley, who came up to Nova Scotia to start filming last October, accompanied by his wife, Naomi Lowde, and their two young kids.
"The locals loved us," says Priestley, adding that 1,500 auditioned for various parts. "It was refreshing to come to a place where people were actually happy to see you. So often now, people see the trucks roll in and they say, 'Crap, traffic's going to be backed up.' Here, they appreciated the business, and the work."
Elwood says she brought her show home to the Maritimes for a simple reason: It "made the most financial sense."
But there were other factors that made it appealing as well. "We found a wonderful location in a small, working-class town that fit perfectly for our ugly/beautiful aesthetic. Plus, my mom got to stop by with her homemade cookies, made with 17 pounds of butter, that the cast and crew devoured.
"All except you," she adds, jerking her head at Priestley. "Because you had to be in your underwear all the time."
Much as he loved those Ginch Gonches, Priestley says, he left his 20 pairs with wardrobe. It was a gesture not of generosity but of convenience, he explains: "I'm going to wear them when I go back for season two."