SIMON TEMPLEMAN ON “THE NEIGHBORS”
By Abbie Bernstein
In ABC’s new half-hour Wednesday night comedy THE NEIGHBORS, the Weaver family, headed up by Lenny Venito’s Marty and Jami Gertz’s Debbie, move to lovely new home in a nice suburban cul-de-sac – where all of the neighbors turn out to be Zabvronians, extraterrestrials who’ve been on Earth for ten years and are now stranded here.
Simon Templeman plays the leader of the Zabvronian expedition, Larry Bird (the aliens have all adopted the names of human sports celebrities – Larry’s wife, played by Toks Olagundoye, is called Jackie Joyner-Kersee and their son is Dick Butkus). Templeman isn’t from quite so far away as his NEIGHBORS character, but as an Englishman living in Los Angeles, he has some sympathy for Larry’s situation.
“I was doing a play,” Templeman explains, “which originated in England and came out to Los Angeles, and then we went to New York and we did a run on Broadway.” Templeman was actually in two trans-Atlantic transfers to Broadway, the 1983 production of Shakespeare’s ALL’S WELL THAT ENDS WELL and the 1985 revival of NICHOLAS NICKLEBY.
