Golden Child

Once the darling of Gainesville theater, Malcolm Gets went to Yale, and now he's headed for prime time TV

Anyone who saw a play in Gainesville in the 1980's saw Malcolm Gets. He stood under the lights of the Hippodrome, the Gainesville Community Playhouse and the Constans Theatre, acting, singing and dancing his little thespian heart out. Everybody always said that Malcolm, a bottomless well of talent, was destined for the big time.

Well, since he left town eight years ago, Gets has been on Broadway and off-Broadway. He went to Yale, won an Obie Award and a Drama Desk nomination.

For Gets, however, the real big time begins Sept. 21.

"Caroline in the City," one of the crown jewels of NBC's new fall schedule, premieres that evening in the catbird seat between megahits "Seinfeld" and "E.R." Film actrees Lea Thompson stars in the snappy comedy series about a young cartoonist living the single life in New York City.

Caroline's colorist is Richard Karinsky, a dour, cynical young man who shares none of her passion for life. Richard, the yin to Caroline's perky yang, gets all the best lines in the show. He's played by Malcolm Gets.

"I love Gainesville, says Malcolm Gets. "Gainesville believed in me long before I believed in myself. In my time there, I was lucky enough to work with all those people - I worked with Dance Alive, and the Florida Players and the Hippodrome. And the music school. I always felt there was a really wonderful sense of the arts in Gainesville, which I don't think happens in a lot in small towns."

"I still can't fathom what it will be like," the 31 year old Gets admits from the Los Angeles set of "Caroline," where he and his fellow cast members have been taping one episode per week since last spring. "Especially because of the time slot it has - almost the first episode will guarantee that it'll finish in the top shows. I dwell on it enough to be grateful."

"Caroline" is produced by the same people who do "The Larry Sanders Show" and "Dave's World." James Burrows (of "Friends") is one of the series' directors.

Although he's done TV before - guest spots, mostly - Richard Karinsky is Malcolm Gets' first recurring character. "When I'm on the set, and we're doing the shows, it's just like anything else I've done," he says. "You have little moments where you think 'Oh my God, it's going to be on film, all these people are going to see it' - but in some respects we're just actors and a director. We have lunch and we talk about the same things. It's just that the stakes are higher.

"But when I see the commercials for 'Caroline,' that is a different thing for me. Then it's like, 'Oh my God, this is really gonna happen.' Otherwise, it's like we're doing a play for however many people come into the audience."

Born in Chicago, Gets spent his ealiest years in New Jersey before his family relocated to Gainesville. He was 5 years old. His father, Terry, is a college textbook representative for a Boston-based publisher; mom Lispbeth is assistant principal of Sidney Lanier School.

One of four Gets children, Malcolm began playing piano for the Gainesville Community Playhouse while a student at Fort Clarke Middle School, and acted in his first GCP play (he thinks it was "Annie Get Your Gun") at age 14.

Gets says he pretty much knew from the start that he was footlight - bound.

"The reasons always seem to change for me," he says. "People are always saying, 'Oh, you're so lucky, you do what you love.' There are times I hate it.

"But I do it because there are times I love it, and it seems to be what I was meant to do. You get on that track, and you just..." He pauses, reaching for the right line. "Believe me," he finally blurts out, "there are times I think I want to open a gas station in Tucson."

Academics were never an issue for young Malcolm. He skipped the eighth and 12th grades, graduating early from Buchholz High and enrolling at the University of Florida at the tender age of 16. "I was really impatient," he recalls. "I think my parents would've had me go slower."

It would take him six years, off and on to get his degree in theater from UF. He was always working - with the Hippodrome or with the Florida Players at UF. Finally, he graduated and took off for New York. It didn't take him long to tire of what he saw as the "conveyor belt" of tiny, no-name musicals and cheesy holiday spectaculars, and he made up his mind - at the age of 24 - to get into the prestigious Yale Drama School and become a real actor.

The experience changed his life, he says. "It is true that a lot of casting people will see you just because you went to Yale or Julliard. But it was just as important for me in the personal vein. Because for three years, it was as much like being in a really great acting company as being in a school.

Along with a full compliment of intensive classes, the Yalies were required to be in several shows - at the same time. "With no disrespect to any of the people I studied with at Florida, being at Yale is a real test," Gets says.

"Because I think all of us had grown up in small towns across America where we were like the golden children; and then suddenly you land in this school in Connecticut, and everybody thinks they're the golden child. So you fluctuate between ferociously competing with one another, and reeling in the fact that you're in the company of these really strange, wonderful people."

From Yale, Gets went off-Broadway to a production of "Juno" at New York's Vineyard Theatre. He starred in "Martin Guerre" with the Hartford Stage Company, and "Hello Again" at Lincoln Center.

He had lead roles on Broadway in "Two Gentlemen of Verona" and "The Moliere Comedies," and played the singing, dancing Franklin in the York Theatre Company's 1994 revival of Stephen Sondheim's "Merrily We Roll Along" (a part he felt he was "born to play.")

He won the Drama Desk nomination, and the Obie Award for Best Actor in a musical, for his work in "Merrily." The production was supervised by Sondheim himself, Gets' longtime idol. He was in seventh heaven.

Where to go from there? Gets went looking for the next step - and found it at his "Caroline" audition. Gets says he was encouraged that the show's producers agreed to re-write the character of Richard around Gets' own personality. Originally, Richard was supposed to be a much younger, generation X-type.

He loved Richard Karinsky, more or less, from the first script he got a look at. "I was so taken with what a little oddball he is," he says.

Gets loved the idea of playing against his usual type. "Can you imagine the relief for me? Because most of the frustration I felt in the last couple of years was that onstage, people still want me to play the wide-eyed Romeo. They still want me to be like the romantic youth, falling in love for the first time in his life.

"And I've had such a full life, it gets harder and harder to erase that knowledge from my being. And one of the most thrilling things about playing Richard is like, talk about a lifetime of cynicism right there on the table! And I love that. It's such a relief. I think Richard is so bright and well-read and all those things. It's such a relief to be that instead of bouncing around."

He knows there's no such thing as a guaranteed hit, but early media reviews of "Caroline" single him out as one of the show's bright lights. Maybe, just maybe, he thinks, the series will lead to a shot at the movies.

He's keeping his fingers crossed.

"Even though there are times I want to believe it, I have no control over it," he says. "What can I do? All I can do is do the best I can, and even then I'm one character on a show which is part of a huge thing called prime time television. I think one can really go crazy trying to second-guess how it's going to be received.

"Again and again, I take a deep breath and say to myself, 'Oh well. Just be here for now, and we'll see what happens.'"

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