James Van Der Beek stopped by to chat with Parade about his new series, Friends With Better Lives [Mondays, 8:30 p.m. ET, CBS], achieving fame at such a young age, balancing fatherhood, and more.
Tell us about Friends With Better Lives.
“It’s about six friends all at different stages in their lives. They’re all looking at each other wondering if they have it better and driving each other crazy, but also supporting each other at the same time.”
It seems like you guys have a blast on set.
“We got really lucky. This is a great cast of super-talented people. Kevin Connolly, best known for Entourage, Brooklyn Decker, Zoe Lister Jones, who was on Whitney and is a comedic genius, Majandra Delfino, who is hilarious, and Rick Donald, who is a new guy from Australia, nobody knows him here, but he’s fantastic. When you start a show like this you really hope you get along with people and this cast just bonded instantly. We get on chat threads all the time, they’re always blowing up my inbox, we’re just getting along.”
What do you like most about your character’s stage of life?
“I think I have a better life playing Will. This is a guy who thought he was going to be married for the rest of his life. He married his college sweetheart and is blindsighted by this divorce, and now he’s a single doctor, which you think would make him very datable, but the question we had to answer is why is he not because he has absolutely no game whatsoever. He has not asked a girl out since the invention of the text message and a lot of the comedy comes from him being really bad at dating.”
You poked fun at yourself in Don’t Trust the B—- in Apartment 23. What inspired that self-deprecating humor?
“I was lucky enough to step into some crazy fame in my early twenties, and amidst all that craziness, I just laughed at it and made fun of it and I kind of developed this alter ego character — like if I couldn’t get a table at a restaurant, I’d be like, ‘does that waitress have any idea who I think I am?’ It was something I did amongst my friends to make them laugh and keep it real, but I couldn’t do it publicly because people would look at me and say, ‘what an ungrateful little brat!’ But then enough time passed and it felt like it was time I could let everyone in on the joke. That’s what Don’t Trust the B—- in Apartment 23 was about, to just get out and slay my own ego every day and just have some fun doing it.”
What was it like growing up in Connecticut?
“It was great. I came from a really good family, had a very normal childhood, so I had to do something abnormal to get out of that, which is why I started coming into New York City at age 15 and auditioning for theater. I started out doing theater here and then when I was 20, I got this pilot on this tiny little network that we didn’t get at my college at the time to shoot this thing down in North Carolina. The next thing I knew we just blew up, and when I think about that experience, I think about the crew and the people I made the show with.”
How do you balance being a father of three with filming a sitcom?
“The really nice thing about a sitcom schedule is that it allows you to be there for your family. It’s been really nice. The kids are less than impressed by any celebrity that I may accrue, so it’s great to have that home base and make it as normal as possible. My kids have seen me on TV on talk shows and stuff and go, ‘Daddy!’ They get excited, but I think they probably think it’s just normal and that everybody’s dad is on TV.”