"21 Jump Street Adds A Handsome Rebel"

by Patricia Brennan, Washington Post, May 7, 1989

First, on "21 Jump Street," there was Johnny Depp, with Holly Robinson, Peter DeLuise and Dustin Nguyen--all good, young-looking actors playing undercover cops assigned to infiltrate high schools and gangs. And there was Steven Williams as Detective Adam Fuller, who reined them in at times. For two years, Fox Television delightedly watched the ratings climb among young viewers until the show was besting those of the other three networks at its Sunday night time slot.

"21 Jump Street" was--and is--an ensemble show, although square-jawed Depp immediately became a teenage heartthrob. He was mobbed in shopping centers, where fans collected his throwaway cigarette butts as memorabilia, and they lined the plaza of the Humphrey Building here when he came to tape a public service announcement with U.S. Surgeon General C. Everett Koop as part of an AIDS information campaign. And now there is also Richard Grieco.

Grieco, 24, joined the show this season as Officer Dennis Booker, sent from Internal Affairs to determine whether Tom Hanson (Depp) and company were clean cops. They were. But it was Booker himself who, it seemed, might be treading along the dark side. Antagonistic and outspoken, with dark, brooding good looks, Booker was a rebel who added a sharp edge to the series. Last month, Richard Grieco appeared at an anti-drug rally in Boston, then made his first visit to Washington. Sporting a mesh baseball cap (with a CBS sports patch) that he said Lyle Alzado gave him, Grieco opened his hotel room window to siphon off his cigarette smoke and talked about his role, his poetry, his causes (American Indians, the homeless), growing up in Watertown, N.Y., and both success and lean years in New York City.

"The addition of my character, I think, made it more real and added an edge to the whole show that it didn't have," he said. "I played him so he had some likable qualities. I didn't play him totally vicious and arrogant, and I think because I played him that way, that's why the audience started liking me more. Now my role has become more likable. He's much more vulnerable."

The teen magazines that many of "Jump Street's" viewers read have had fun with the arrival of Richard Grieco on Johnny Depp's turf. They both ride motorcycles, play guitar, sing. They dress similarly-- in interviews, both wore old jeans and tee-shirts, combat boots and earrings. And the camera finds their fine-featured faces irresistible. "We get along great," said Grieco. "The cast is so close-knit. When we do shows that are controversial, we have to remain close. I don't know how Johnny feels (about Grieco's arrival). I wasn't brought on to replace him. I was just brought on to add another dimension to the show. I think that what they want to do is make more shows with Johnny and I, more ensemble and B and C (secondary) story lines." Dennis Booker was so successful that he got an hour-long episode all to himself, called "Nemesis," in which he infiltrated a small group of teen-age druggies. As a narc, he was successful, but he had a personal problem: He couldn't bring himself to talk about his thoughts and feelings with the women in his life. "Nemesis' showed his vulnerability, a side of him which no one ever saw before," said Grieco. "He's always been up-front and never really showed his emotion, and "Nemesis" brought that out, showed that Booker is, like, a real guy, and he can cry."

Since he introduced Booker earlier in the season, said Grieco, the character has become less abrasive, more cooperative--he even tries to quit smoking. "He's been such a good guy, rebellious but in a good way. He just doesn't go by the book all the time. He just wants to get the job done any way he can, to be an individual. The smoking--that's going to stop. The only reason I smoked in the beginning was to add another antagonistic quality to him, and I quit on the show." In tonight's story, "Next Victim"--originally titled "Talk Radio"--Dennis Booker finds himself on a college campus where a blatantly bigoted radio announcer is nearly killed when his car is blown up. Booker takes over the radio show. "Suddenly, there's all this power," enthused Grieco. "People love me and hate me and I realize that I can really make an effect on these people. There's a fine line between my job as a cop and this radio job, between the radio job and what I'm really there for."

As many actors do, Grieco has made up a fictional background for his character: "My father was a cop who left, and I had a stepfather, and I was used to authority through the father who had left and who I rebelled against. The stepfather I had now had no authority. And I realized then how great my real father was, and there was always turmoil there. And I loved my mother very much but I never really spoke to her and had a hard time showing her how I felt. I was an only child. I loved my mom very much but always had a hard time talking to her; I didn't share my feelings with anybody." Grieco, on a roll, stopped momentarily and laughed at his own earnestness. "It's like I'm telling these things about me..."

The real Richard Grieco grew up in Watertown, N.Y., the eldest of four children in a family with Italian and Irish roots. His parents are "very middle class, labor-union oriented. Dad was president of CSEA (Civil Service Employees Association), which at one time was one of the biggest employees associations in the country, and I used to go to all those political things all the time with him." Those "political things" included a recent campaign of New York Gov. Mario Cuomo, he said. His mother worked with severely disabled children and sold real estate, but now she handles all his fan mail. Fox ships the letters to her in Watertown. He said he calls his parents every day from Vancouver, B.C., where "21 Jump Street" is taped.

Grieco attended Immaculate Heart High School, played football, lacrosse, and hockey (he's had four knee operations), and during his senior year, considered becoming a lawyer. He competed as a semiprofessional boxer and attended Central Connecticut College for a year, quitting in part, he said, because he thought "the teachers were teaching me what the government wanted me to learn. I used to tell the teachers, "Should I take this verbatim, because the text says it?" They didn't know what was really going on--they only knew what was in the text. They were only going through the motions."

When he won a "Best Faces of the 80's" contest, Grieco headed for New York City. He spent 3 1/2 years in the Big Apple, six months of them modelling for Armani, Calvin Klein, and Chanel, among others. "It's kind of mindless," he said. "For women it's profitable, but for men it isn't unless you stick it out and make it to the top." Tired of modeling, he worked as a bartender, moved furniture, "made money any way I could. A couple of nights I didn't have a place to stay so I stayed in a church at 39th and Park...But I met the greatest people who were homeless, didn't have any money, and lived in these old beaten-down shacks. They were the most creative people I've ever met. A lot of them just wrote, using their own experiences." During that time, he said he wrote "400-some-odd poems...I've been kind of keeping them secret. I've shown (Fox publicist Michael Peikoff) and my family and three or four people in the business. Now we're making a book of them."

He also decided on an acting career after he struck gold with his first audition and won a year-long stint on "One Life to Live" playing the rebellious Rick Gardener. Grieco reportedly received the largest volume of fan mail of the show's regular characters. Moving to Los Angeles, he won a singing role in "Rags to Riches," a comedic role as Tony Danza's Italian cousin on "Who's the Boss?," and a dramatic role on "The Bronx Zoo." But Grieco's favorite role appears to be the insider who likes to remain on the outside. "I don't do the Hollywood thing. I don't do anything in Hollywood. I just stay home and write, and write about people in Hollywood, and struggle, and what happens to people who fall into the whole game of things. I'm like an outsider looking in, who's really on the inside, who knows what's happening but who's on the outside and writes about it."

Last month, "21 Jump Street" aired an episode called "Blinded by 1,000 Points of Light," about homeless teenagers. "It's a great script," said Grieco. "It's very real. The homeless form groups together, like a family. It's about how they hustle, how they make money to sleep that night, to eat, how they hustle the next night. It's a real nice story. The writing was superb." In Vancouver, he said, while the episode was being taped, "I met this homeless guy in a wheelchair. He lived in his hole--he's a wino. He had one leg, two fingers of his right hand. (sic) He was yelling and screaming for an hour, a real angry man. And I came over and said, "Do you want a cup of coffee?" and he said, "Why are you doing this? Get out."

And I said," How about a muffin?" and he was yelling at me again, and then he looked at me and said, "Bring me two muffins and two coffees." So I went and got him some food and came back and he looked at me and said, "Why are you doing this?" And I said, "Cause I thought you might ne hungry." And he said, "But why?" And I said "I've been through stages in my life where I didn't have any money, in New York, and I sort of know what you're going through, at a different level." So then his eyes started watering up, and he goes, "Do you love me?" And I said, "What?" "Do you love me?" And I said, "Yeah, I love you." And he just started crying. It was beautiful. This old man, I don't think anyone's ever talked to him in 20 years. It was great."

Grieco, at least, will probably never have to stay in church shelters again: His role as Booker, first a guest spot, has earned him a contract for two more years. Booker has also brought Grieco teen-hunk status. Ten thousand people showed up at Boston Town Hall in April to see him and Steven Williams at an anti-drug rally. "This was the first time I've done that. This was like, wow, there is something out there. I'd been up in Vancouver shooting all the time. I'd try to speak: And I'd like to thank'...and they'd all scream... 'Boston' ...and they'd scream again...I kept getting embarrassed." His one evening in Washington he spent in Georgetown, where people is restaurants and on the street approached him for autographs. "The power of television is amazing," he said.

The series' season winds down with a two-part cliffhanger on May 21 and 28 called "Partners." "It's about a cop (Hanson, played by Depp) who goes undercover in a gang and shoots a cop--that's what they're saying--and ends up hiding because he gets so involved in this gang that he loses his perspective," explained Grieco. "The second part is, I go undercover with the partner of the cop who was shot to fine out it it's true."

"21 Jump Street" knows how to showcase its hunks: Part one, Johnny Depp. Part two, Richard Grieco.

COPYRIGHT 1989 Washington Post

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