Michael J. Fox mines health issues for laughs

Gary Levin | USA TODAY

Michael J. Fox has had a long, public battle with Parkinson's disease, but now he's mining it for laughs in a new NBC sitcom.

The Michael J. Fox Show, due on Thursdays in September, stars Fox as Mike Henry, a local New York news anchor (an NBC station, naturally) who leaves his job to confront the disease and, like Fox, returns to work years later.

Fox confronts his health issues head-on: Several jokes in the pilot episode address his disability, including shakiness on the air.

"There's nothing horrifying about it to me," he says. "I don't think it's gothic nastiness. There's nothing horrible on the surface about someone with a shaky hand. The way I look at it, sometimes it's frustrating, sometimes it's funny. I need to look at it that way."

Everyone has issues to deal with, Fox says. "We all get our own Parkinson's, our own thing, (and people will say) 'I need to laugh at that, too.' If someone wants to be outraged, they can. I don't think it's that outrageous."

But the show won't dwell on it in future episodes: "It's always going to be there, but it's not going to be the spotlight," says executive producer Sam Laybourne.

The show blends work and family life, with an emphasis on the latter. Betsy Brandt (Breaking Bad), who plays Fox's wife, says that as that intense series was ending, "I was really hoping I would get a comedy. I didn't want to chase the next Breaking Bad, because there may never be one."

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie is among the real-life news subjects. Fox's real wife, Tracy Pollan, guest-stars in the third episode. And Anne Heche has been cast as Mike's nemesis, who will show up in later episodes, Laybourne says. "There's a disputed incident that happened 20 years ago in Orlando and the Everglades where she might have used Mike to get ahead, and now she's back as an anchor, and they butt heads."

Fox became famous as the conservative son on Family Ties and acted in a string of movies including the hitsBack to the Future and Teen Wolf, but he quit ABC's Spin City in 2001 to deal with his newly diagnosed illness. (He was replaced by Charlie Sheen.) Though he's guest-starred on Rescue Me and The Good Wife, the new show marks his full-time comeback. Medication has helped improve his health to the point where he feels comfortable working full time.

Hotly pursued by rival networks, the show has been given an unusual full-season commitment (new series generally have 13 tries to prove themselves).

For verisimilitude, NBC's Matt Lauer, Savannah Guthrie and Al Roker appear in the pilot. Why the cross-promotion for the network's no-longer-No.-1 morning show instead of making Mike's employer a fictional network?

Says executive producer Will Gluck: "Because a fictional network didn't give us 22 episodes."