June 6, 2010
In playing Dr. Hank Lawson, a concierge doctor who caters to the Hamptons’ wealthy denizens in the USA Network hit “Royal Pains,” Mark Feuerstein frolics in a world of excess. He knows the territory.
“I grew up in Manhattan and went to a nice, private school on the Upper East Side,” he says, referring to Dalton School.
“We didn’t have the kind of money the kids I went to school with had, but they had birthday parties and weekends in Montauk, or someone’s estate in East Hampton,” says Feuerstein, 38, who calls the Post in between takes from “a beautiful restaurant on the shores of Strong Island.
“So I got to see the world that’s depicted in ‘Royal Pains,’ but I was never part of it — just like Hank Lawson.”
In the show’s pilot, Lawson was a star doctor at a city hospital who suddenly lost everything when a hospital benefactor died in his care. When his brother Evan, played with a goofball alacrity by Paulo Costanzo, hauls the depressed doctor off for a weekend of heiress hunting in the Hamptons, Hank saves a girl’s life at a mansion party. Soon, the area’s affluent — and slightly unhinged — residents are clamoring for Hank’s smart, thoughtful and, most important of all, discreet kind of medical attention.
To prepare for the role, Feuerstein tailed a doctor who showed him some of the more challenging aspects of the medical profession.
“I followed a brain surgeon into surgery,” he says. “He was standing over a man’s open scalp, and I was looking into the center of who this guy is. It was both terrifying and amazing.”
The experience doesn’t really help when Feuerstein has to pronounce “the insane ten syllable words like Glossopharyngeal Nerve,” but then “Royal Pains” is less about medical minutiae, and more about blending the right mix of bling, babes, and banter we’ve come to expect from USA.
While all of that makes for a pleasant shoot, at this point Feuerstein is simply glad to have a show people like.
He’s appeared on hits like “Sex and the City” and “Ally McBeal,” and had a recurring role on “The West Wing,” but he’s also well acquainted with the sting of unfulfilled promise. He starred in a number of short-lived sitcoms, including the long forgotten “Fired Up,” “Conrad Bloom,” and “Good Morning Miami.”
As such, he went into “Royal Pains” with guarded optimism.
“I remember people saying that USA doesn’t shoot pilots that they don’t air, so that was positive,” he says. “You get so thick-skinned after all the rejections and shows that don’t amount to much that you prepare yourself for the worst.”
It so happened that “Royal Pains” became, according to USA, the top-ranked first-year scripted series in cable history, averaging 7.5 million viewers per episode.
For season two, which premiered last week, the series has added Henry Winkler as Eddie Lawson, Hank’s ethically questionable father, who left the boys when they were kids.
The experience of working with Winkler, a legend since his time as Fonzie on “Happy Days,” was a thrill. It also helped Feuerstein add a deeper dimension to Hank.
“It was playing this hero,” Feuerstein says. “In the stage directions, it was described that ‘Hank Lawson will make an entire new generation of kids want to go to medical school.’”
But in the first season, Hank was a bit too perfect. With his constant saving of lives, and having gorgeous women flock to his door unannounced, the character was developing an unrealistic halo. Feuerstein is excited for the chance, with Winkler’s help, to tarnish that angelic quality.
“Eddie Lawson is this foil for Hank. He brings out the Hank that has a lot of rage about the fact that he was abandoned as a child,” Feuerstein says. “I even said to the writers at one point that it would be great to see a little more dirt under [his] fingernails.”
So Feuerstein, who lives in LA with his wife and three kids, heads into season two feeling fulfilled in several ways — finally enjoying a show with a future, while doing so in a place that feels like home.
“My brother and I sat reading Hamptons Magazine on the beach 10 years in a row,” he says. “Now I’m gonna be on the cover.”
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