When Jon Voight was offered the starring role in a 1979 remake of "The Champ," the story of a washed-up prizefighter and his adoring son, the Academy Award-winning actor wasn't much interested. But the movie's director, Franco Zeffirelli, made a plea: Just take a look at the screen test by the young boy he had in mind for the part of the son. What Voight saw was a performance he would not have thought possible of a 7-year old.
Twenty years later, Schroder is once again defying expectations, this time as the newest member of NYPD Blue's 15th precinct. He has proved an overnight sensation, winning critical raves and sending ratings soaring. And no one is more surprised that the child actor best known for riding a toy train through the family mansion in Silver Spoons is now sharing a squad car with Andy Sipowicz (Dennis Franz) than NYPD Blue's cocreators Steven Bochco and David Milch. Both had scoffed when the series' casting director, Junie Lowry Johnson, suggested Schroder as a possible replacement for the departing Jimmy Smits. "I was like, 'C'mon, Rick? Ricky Schroder?'" Bochco recalls. But skepticism began melting the moment Schroder walked into his first audition. "I thought, 'Here's a 28-year-old guy with a lot of miles on his face.'"
Some 50 actors had vied for the part of Danny Sorenson, a former narcotics detective; about a half dozen had been asked to try a scene with Franz. Most had crumpled in the formidable presence of the three-time Emmy winner. "But Rick got right up in his face," says Milch, "and that was what we were looking for." Adds Franz: "He was the only actor who went so far as to actually touch me." Encouraged, Milch proposed the two actors do some improvising. Franz's opening gambit, and the one line that made it into Schroder's first episode: "So that's what 14-year-olds are wearing now?" Without missing a beat, Schroder shot back. "You look," he said, "like you're about a month and a half from being eligible for half-price at Denny's." Says Bochco: "He knocked us out."
The knockouts have continued. On a recent afternoon, as Schroder enjoys a pastrami on rye at a Los Angeles deli and chats about what he calls "this fairy tale," he graciously accepts kudos from a steady stream of fans. "When we heard you were joining the show," says one 27-year-old, "my fianceé and I were like everyone else, 'What's up with that?' But you kicked butt, bro." Winning over the show's 18 million viewers might be the most impressive part of Schroder's success. When David Caruso left abruptly after the first season, the writers scrambled to devise a plotline, which had his character, John Kelly, quitting the force in disgrace. But Smits had given plenty of notice, and Bobby Simone took his leave in one of the most wrenching deaths ever portrayed on television. Meanwhile, around watercoolers and in Internet chat rooms, hostility toward Schroder ran high. "Of course Schroder belongs on NYPD Blue," sniped one Web writer. "It's a crime he's an actor."
All that changed with Schroder's debut on December 1. Viewers, apparently as mesmerized as critics by Schroder's portrayal of Sorenson, whose baby-faced exterior belies his gritty cockiness, have been watching the show in near record numbers. Ratings among the highly coveted 18-34 age group have leaped 26 percent. "I think a lot of younger viewers felt this was a middle-aged cop show," says Schroder. "Now there's a character whose problems they can relate to." And whose body they can admire. Schroder, following the NYPD Blue tradition, bared his derriere in his second episode. It was kind of nice to get it out of the way."
Nicer still has been the opportunity to prove he is not another fading child star. Since Silver Spoons' five-year run ended in 1987, Schroder had appeared regularly in TV-movies and miniseries, playing everything from a psycho teenager to a callow cowboy (his latest, the thriller What We Did That Night, airs January 18 on ABC at 9 P.M./ET). He was easily supporting his wife, Andrea, and their three young children, Holden, 6, Luke. 5, and 2 1/2-year-old daughter, Cambrie, on their 16,000-acre cattle ranch in Grand Junction, Colorado, his home since 1990 (he fell in love with the Southwest while shooting Lonesome Dove).
But he was dissatisfied with his low-profile career. "I'm happiest when I'm working productively, and that wasn't the case," he says. In 1996, Schroder decided he wanted to return to television in a dramatic series. His manager, he says, approached some shows, "but nobody jumped at me. So I just bided my time." When he finally learned he had gotten the NYPD job, "It was a very sweet, deep feeling. It went to the core of my soul."
For NYPD Blue's creators, Danny Sorenson was a long time in the making. The seeds of his character were planted in 1996 when Milch told Bochco he was writing an episode in which Sipowicz's son, Andy Jr. (played by Michael DeLuise), is murdered. Bochco resisted until Milch agreed that they would later add a young detective to the squad who would become, for Sipowicz, an Andy Jr. surrogate. When Smits announced he was leaving, Bochco immediately knew he wanted Franz' new partner to be something of a rookie. "If you're gonna make a change," he says, "take a risk."
On-screen and off-, the relationship between Franz and Schroder is a mix of filial affection and respect. "I'm just in awe of Dennis and how solid he is," Schroder says. "Every morning when he comes into the makeup trailer at 6:30, he's singing country songs. I'm still waking up, and he's bright-eyed and bushy-tailed." Perhaps one day Franz will ask Schroder to join in a duet of his favorite - "Stand By Your Man." For now, "When I see Rick might be getting overloaded," Franz says, "I pat him on the back and let him know he's doing great."
Schroder got his first taste of the rigors of NYPD Blue last summer when he spent 16-hour days observing real-life New York cops. The murder scenes were especially grisly: a female crack addict had been tied up and thrown off a 30-story building; a decomposing body was discovered in a vacant lot. "I couldn't sleep for a couple of weeks," says Schroder. "Images of these people who had died these violent deaths would pop into my head."
After spending the summer building a 2,500-square-foot log house on his ranch, Schroder reported for his first day of shooting, on September 28, on location in New York City (most of the show is shot on the Twentieth Century Fox lot in Los Angeles). The scene Schroder was shooting was complex, and Milch, unhappy with what he was seeing, rewrote it on the spot, then went back to hammering his new star. "I was unforgiving," Milch admits. "I wanted him to feel that if he had found three levels in the character, maybe there was something else still to find. We really let him have it. And Rick just didn't back down."
Schroder smiles at the memory, "That first month was like boot camp," he says. "They wanted to break me down a little bit, push me and pull me and stretch me and see what I was made of." Schroder toughed it out. "I'm a survivor," he says, attributing his resilience to the fact that he has been working almost from the day he was born. His mother, Diane, a New York City homemaker, started taking him to auditions as a baby. He did his first commercial when he was 3 months old; by the first grade, he had appeared in dozens. "The Champ" made Schroder an international star, and at 12, he was cast as Silver Spoons' Ricky Stratton. By the third season, he was tired of playing the Richie Rich clone. "When you're a teenager," he says, "you get really insecure about how you look, and it's hard to go in front of a camera." In 1990, three years after the show ended, Schroder was shooting a TV-movie, Blood River, in Calgary and met Andrea Bernard, a waitress. The two wed in 1992. Schroder says the best part of his week is boarding a plane Friday night to head home to his wife and family.
Weekdays, the actor, on his own for the first time ever, feels lonely and a bit bewildered. "I'm doing my own laundry now, cleaning my own house, feeding myself," he says. "All those things take adjusting." Most nights, dinner is a can of Franco-American spaghetti or a bowl of Frosted Flakes. While missing home, Schroder says he's not much interested in the glamourous life. At December's gala Fire & Ice Ball, he raced through the gauntlet of reporters. "Everyone's yelling your name," he says, "and there's flashbulbs by the thousands popping. It's intimidating."
Joining a close-knit cast also has Schroder feeling like a misfit. "In the mornings, they have so much to talk about," he says. "I don't have much to say. In that sense I'm very much like Sorenson. He's still an outsider, and so am I."
At the moment, however, he seems totally at ease, picking caraway seeds from his bread. When a twentysomething fan asks for an autograph and begins singing, "Here we are face to face... Hoping to find we're two of a kind," Schroder laughs without hesitation. And then, to his admirer's delight, television's newest dramatic star joins right in singing the Silver Spoons theme song.