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A Royal Pains House Call with Actor Mark Feuerstein
by Troy Rogers
 If
you don't what a concierge doctor is, you will
soon thanks to actor Mark Feuerstein and his new
Royal Pains character, Dr. Hank Lawson. Although
Feuerstein is fresh off a dramatic role in the
Daniel Craig film, Defiance, the new USA Network
doctor is making a lighthearted and comedic house
call in the two-hour pilot of Royal Pains, which
premieres at 10pm on June 4.
Stepping into the untapped TV role of a recently unemployed hospital surgeon who becomes a reluctant concierge doctor for the rich and famous in the Hamptons, Feuerstein is an immediate good fit for the USA schedule, bringing a charming and comedic presence to the summer airwaves in a series that taps into two rarely seen worlds for its success - the freelance life of a concierge doctor and the elite New York region of the Hamptons.
Prior to the premiere of Royal Pains, we briefly
caught up with the new USA contract doc on a
recent conference call to find out more about
Mark Feuerstein, life in the Hamptons, the balance
of drama and comedy within Royal Pains, and
how Dr. Hank becomes a Robin Hood figure by
the third episode.
THE DEADBOLT: Hank seems like a very cool, nice guy. Is there anything about him that you didn’t like or that you’d like to change?
 MARK
FEUERSTEIN: Wow. First of all, in television
oftentimes the character that you’re seeing
portrayed is not so far from the people who
are playing them. In other cases, that’s not
so true, especially in the case of serial killers.
But in the case of Hank Lawson, you know, I
wish I were as noble and altruistic as he is,
but there are definitely things about who I
am that I try to bring to the table. So off
hand, my answer is, no, there’s nothing that
I don’t like about Hank Lawson, because he’s
me and he’s perfect.
But I will say that Hank might fall prey to the tendency to possibly think too much, to overanalyze a situation. There are many situations where professionally he doesn’t think at all, he just goes with his gut, and it works out for him. But there are moments in his romantic life and moments with his brother where he has a tendency to be either too good or too thought out and might possibly forego certain experiences in his life because he’s trying to do the right thing or plan too much. So that could be one thing that he could work on, sure.
THE DEADBOLT: Back in the day when you were a young bachelor; did your apartment ever smell like a moose mixed with Chinese food?
FEUERSTEIN: [laughs] All the time. It
was hard, because at the time I was in fact
a moose hunter, and I let all the carcasses
just sort of lie there, then I would pour the
beer on all of it. So that’s how it got that
smell. But I’ve since changed my ways and now
it’s just elk.
Other Conference Call Highlights:
Mark Feuerstein on what
made him want to get involved in the show:
 "Well,
first of all, I grew up in New York City, going
to first a public school, then a private school,
and when I got to the private school in Manhattan,
I learned of what we called "The Promised Land,"
which are the Hamptons. I’ve always had an affinity
for the Hamptons. I think it is one of the most
romantic, beautiful, pristine, exclusive - in
a private and kind of meditative way - places
on earth. So when I heard about a show which
was about a doctor set in the Hamptons, I jumped
at it. Then I found out it was my friend, Andrew
Lenchewski, who had written the script, and
then I found out that the role of Hank Lawson
was a guy who was a dramatic, comedic, and romantic
lead with all this dimension and everything
that a good cable show has to offer, and that
it was on USA, the number one cable network
- which supports its shows rather than makes
them crazy, as they do sometimes at the networks
- and I just decided that this was just my new
vision quest and I had to have it. A month later,
after a relatively rigorous audition process,
I got it, and I was in heaven and I still am."
Feuerstein on what he
likes about working with Paulo Costanzo:
"Paulo Costanzo is insane, and I love every part of his insanity. He is someone with no filter, whatever is appearing in his brain will come out of his mouth, and I love that about him and I love the way that that translates into his portrayal of Evan Lawson. Evan Lawson, as a character, is someone who - he’s sort of on some level the opposite of Hank. He doesn’t think about anything before he does it. He loves money. He loves the good life. He’s sort of living the Dionysian fantasy, and we’ve put him the perfect place to live it out. So Paulo Costanzo only is perfect to play a part like that, because he is Dionysus himself."
Mark Feuerstein on characteristics
of Hank Lawson's that might not be that obvious:
"What you don’t get to learn in the premiere, which frankly Hank doesn’t know, is what the heck he’s doing there in the Hamptons. You know he meets a girl he kind of likes, maybe loves, but beyond that, he was meant to be an emergency surgeon in a hospital at a good job in Brooklyn, and he lost it. But why wouldn’t he just go to another big city and find another job as an emergency room? Well, he’s landed in the Hamptons, and he’s going to stay here to see what it holds for him. He’s taken a turn in his life, where he’s decided he’s going to be more impetuous, less planned out, because the plan he had of the perfect life didn’t work out.
 "So
really every week we’re figuring along with
Hank what he’s doing there. In episode three,
it turns out that there are all these people
who are not rich who have been left behind by
the medical care system, and he and his love
interest, Jill, end up becoming like a Bonnie
and Clyde type of team, where there’s this pile
of papers of people who all have lost their
medical coverage, their COBRA’s have run out,
their Blue Cross/Blue Shield premium has gotten
too expensive, and I steal some of those papers
from Jill and decide to go find these people.
I find a guy who works on the docks in Montauk,
and he has hepatitis C, and I decide he’s going
to be my patient and I’m going to take care
of him, even though the system won’t.
So, at the end of the episode, Jill calls me the "Robin Hood of medicine," because I steal from the rich and give to the poor. When that phrase came out, which was actually the result of last-minute rewrites between Michael Rauch, our executive producer, and Don Scardino, our director, but when that phrase was born I said to myself, okay, now I have some sense of what Hank is doing there. He’s going to help use the system out there, all the money out there, to help all the people who don’t have it."
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