TV GUIDE, June 27, 1992, p.18-20

Goodbye Robocop Scum

Hello, silly sitcom role...and perennial punk Miguel Ferrer finally gets to lighten up

By Stewart Weiner

Jeff Katz

Don´t call him Mike. "I tried that Mike stuff back in high school," says Miguel Ferrer. "Mike," he repeats. "It sounded pretty stupid. I made up my mind right then and there - it´s gonna be Miguel." He pauses and affects the disdainful glare we recall from his role as a hateful yuppie in "Robocop." It seems to say: Get over it.

All right - we´re over it, we´re over it.

The star of ABC´s summer sitcom On the Air (Saturdays, 9:30 P.M. [ET] sits in a Los Angeles deli, half-awake and still punchy. He orders a cup of coffee and places a pack of cigarettes on the table. So far, nothing too menacing. But he´s definitely got presence. "I guess my reputation is a little threatening," he admits.

"It´s all of those early roles," he says. "Whenever I landed a part, I played the bad guy. I´d be the guy who sold heroin, or the biker. Or maybe there´d be a changer of pace and I´d be a rapist. But I always wore a leather jacket. And, of course, I always got greased."

Here in the deli, he wears a V-neck T-shirt, well-worn blue jeans, and a smile for the waitresses - hardly the image of a screen heavy. But he´s done heavy duty, and done it well. In an early Cagney & Lacey episode, for example, Ferrer played a rat-fink jailbird trying to cut a deal for a lesser sentence. He smolders and twitches, his snaking eyes making furtive contact with Sharon Gless and Tyne Daly. After watching this, you may need a shower.

"I complained about these horrible parts to my agent all the time," he says. "How come I´m never a doctor or lawyer? 'Miguel,' he´d say, 'no one´s going to believe you as a doctor or lawyer.' Now, I know I´m a strange looking guy, but I still thought: White Europeans aren´t the only doctors and lawyers in the world."

Then came "Robocop." In that landmark 1987 movie, Ferrer broke free from his seedy, heroin-crazed TV typecasting to play Bob Morton - the film´s loathsome yuppie scum. Morton was a creepy, coke-snorting greedmeister, yet Ferrer gave him a vulnerable side. We even felt a bit sorry when Morton´s pals turned on him with gunfire and a grenade. The performance assured that he no longer needed a leather jacket to make an impression. "In fact," he says, "I haven´t been out of a suit since."

One person who caught Ferrer´s "Robocop" turn was David Lynch. Lynch, the offbeat auteur behind "Blue Velvet" and "Dune," wanted Ferrer for a film he planned to make. The movie never got made, recalls Ferrer, "but David remembered me and called again when he decided to do a TV series."

The series was Twin Peaks, and Ferrer played Albert Rosenfield - the deadly serious FBI forensic pathologist. Ferrer´s Peaks turn - acerbic, commanding, clipped - earned him a cult following. On video, fans noted that he was the only bright spot in the otherwise dreadful sci-fi pic "DeepStar Six." And recently, he´s managed some memorable TV work - such as his terrific Jack Webb imitation in "Cruel Doubt."

Now he finds himself working with Lynch and his partner, Mark Frost, once again - playing TV network president Bud Budwaller in the sitcom On the Air. The series depicts the behind-the-scenes affairs on the set of The Lester Guy Show, a fictional live TV variety program, circa 1957. As one might expect, Budwaller doesn´t suffer fools. And fittingly, he´s surrounded by them.

Ferrer´s street-shtick belies his show-biz breeding. Son of Oscar-winning actor José Ferrer and singer Rosemary Clooney, Miguel grew up in Beverly Hills with his three brothers and two sisters. As a teen, he split most of his time between comic books and music. "All I ever wanted to be was a drummer," he says. "I started playing when I was 8 years old."

He recently married Leilani Sarelle - the actress who played Sharon Stone´s girlfriend in "Basic Instinct" - and the couple lives five minutes from the studio where On the Air is filmed. But convenience isn´t the only factor that makes him hope On the Air stays on the air. "I really hope ABC gets behind it," he says, hushing his voice to a conspiratorial tone: "It is a very different kind of television." Plus, they don´t make him wear a leather jacket.