Night Court is back in session and Dan Fielding is back on the case… though now he’s on the other side.
John Larroquette returns as the smug defense attorney in NBC’s new revival, reprising the role he played on the 1984-92 courtroom comedy. The actor admitted to reporters at the Television Critics Association winter press tour that he was initially wary of “the idea of trying to revive something that we did 35 years ago when we were young, fast, acrobatic and maybe funny. Trying to get back into it at 75 seemed like a real lapse in judgment on my part if I said yes.”
But he was interested in the prospect of how Dan Fielding had changed, and perhaps even grown, since he had last seen him; And how long was that journey and what happened to him in his life… So it became an interesting problem to solve.”
Times have changed, of course, and Larroquette admits that “some of the humor that Dan Fielding introduced in the 1980s might not be funny today.” (He was a notorious womanizer and chauvinist, for one thing.) “He still thinks he’s the smartest man in the room,” but “he doesn’t have the hunger that young Dan Fielding had…Whatever fantasies he had about his life. All 35 are gone.” Dan is now a widower in the new series, he adds. “He’s an old man who’s pretty much gone. … So it’s been a journey to find the jokes again.”
New look Night Court An amazing new role is also playing for Dan. the former prosecutor is now the night court public defender. “He has to change gears, which gives him a little exercise that he has to do intellectually, show empathy and compassion for the people he’s protecting.”
Larroquette also remembered her late co-star Harry Anderson, who starred as Judge Harry Stone in the original series and died in 2018. “He was always performing for us,” she recalls. “When you’re doing a sitcom, obviously you sit down a lot, so we’ve had a lot of time to just be friends and talk to each other.” He noted that Anderson worked as a street magician in Larroquette’s hometown of New Orleans in the 1970s, though they never met at the time. “It was always fun on set with all of us.”
Larroquette is the only cast member from the original Night Court back to the NBC revival. (Along with Anderson, actors Charles Robinson and Markie Post have died in recent years.) The big bang theoryMelissa Rauch stars in the revival as Judge Abby Stone, daughter of the original series’ Judge Harry Stone. The new series premieres this Tuesday at 8/7c, “Judge Abby Stone follows in the footsteps of her late father, Judge Harry Stone, as she takes over the night shift at the Manhattan courthouse,” according to the official description.
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