Tucker's new turf

HOLLYWOOD -- Jonathan Tucker might just be the next actor in his age group to break out and hit big. But serious acting cred aside, at 24 he is anything but overconfident. In fact, right now he's a hand-wringing wreck, albeit one who laughs easily and often at his own anxieties.

Tomorrow night should be better, or worse. That's when "The Black Donnellys" debuts on NBC. The one-hour drama by Paul Haggis of "Crash" and "Million Dollar Baby" fame features four working-class Irish brothers who will do anything to protect their turf and each other. Tucker -- Tuck to pals -- plays Tommy Donnelly , the brainy, brooding brother around whom the series set and shot in New York revolves.

The bloodshed is groundbreaking for network TV, and it's on Tucker to put the heart in this modern mob-torn world of Hell's Kitchen. If audiences don't buy him as a sensitive art school student forced to kill for his family, the entire premise falls apart. Hence his nerves.

"My fear is it's a great show and no one will watch it," he said. "Totally that can happen. You just don't know."

To make his case for viewers, Tucker shows up alone at the fabled Chateau Marmont hotel on Sunset Boulevard, no handlers, no hangers-on. His hair is buzzed from another role he just finished filming for Haggis, as an exemplary Iraq war soldier who goes AWOL in the upcoming "In the Valley of Elah." He orders English breakfast tea. Despite a dozen years in the business, no one seems to notice him. Then again, actor Jude Law is dining a few tables down. He's the sort of recognizable that might be around the corner for Tucker, who insists he won't ever live in an acting-induced bubble.

The freebies of fame aside (and he admits the swag is sweet), Tucker remains a Boston boy at heart. It's obvious in the accent that grips him the more he talks -- and Tucker is a talker -- and in the subjects he talks about: hometown politics, hometown sports, and hometown radio. One subject that gets him going is neighborhoods remade by gentrification, which he saw firsthand growing up in Charlestown as the son of renowned UMass-Boston art professor Paul Tucker and marketing analyst Maggie Moss-Tucker .

But Tucker wasn't a neighborhood kid. He commuted to Brookline to attend the Park School . He asked for ballet lessons and landed at the Boston Ballet, eventually dancing "The Nutcracker." He says he could have had a career in tights. Instead he caught a casting director's eye and by 11 had caught the acting bug.

"I was like, 'Mom, do you know what an agent is, because we need to get one of these, ' " he recalled.

From there his career trajectory was all upward. First came a national commercial for fruit roll-ups, then a spaghetti western whose title he can't remember ("Botte di Natale" ), then the movie "Two If by Sea" with fellow Bostonian Den is Leary. Then "Sleepers," "The Virgin Suicides," and "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre," among others, plus everything on TV from "The Practice" to "Law and Order" to "CSI." Of course he didn't get every role he went for; Tucker recalls sitting on Demi Moore's lap a decade ago, auditioning unsuccessfully to play her son in "The Juror." He landed in "Two If by Sea" instead and learned a lesson at 12 that he says is even more valuable at 24: a great script doesn't guarantee even a good movie.

"I've been rejected and failed so many times," he said without any self-pity. "I've done so many movies that just don't work or get panned. . . . But I always had school and my family and my friends and I always knew that the only thing I can control was me and my work."

Getting Tucker to talk about "The Black Donnellys," his most challenging role to date, is no simple task. He's well read with eclectic tastes and craves bookish conversation. He also repeatedly mentions the people who helped him over the years. With a smile they love over at Teen People , Tucker all but begs to have two Bostonians mentioned, so here goes: casting director Carolyn Pickman , who first saw something in him, and dance instructor Sidney Leonard , who taught him to take direction.

Only then does he focus on "Donnellys," which forced him to confront his own biases about television. But he figured if Academy Award-winning partners Haggis and Bobby Moresco could devote themselves to the small screen so could he. Plus his non-acting girlfriend is in New York.

"In retrospect I can't believe how much I worried about it," Tucker said. " I called in the wagons and said please talk to me, please give me advice. . . . I worked so hard at diversifying my work. I love transforming myself. And the thought of playing one character for potentially the next five years, or even for six months, was like whoa, wait a second, this is not what I got into this to do. But it was such a fantastic ride."

For his part, Moresco says they never considered anyone else for Tommy after Tucker walked into the room, and they'd seen plenty of young actors. With his dark wavy hair and wiry frame, he looked the part, right down to the jagged scar on his chin, the result of a motorcycle accident a year and a half ago that required 62 stitches on the face that earns him his living.

But what sold Moresco was Tucker's response to a story Moresco told him about growing up in a tough section of New York City near Madison Square Garden where the New York Rangers play. Tucker's response: "I'm from Boston. I don't give a [expletive ]."

"I knew right then this guy gets the guy we want him to play," Moresco said. "Tommy would've said that. He wouldn't have been intimidated. That clinched it."

The show requires what Tucker calls "monster physicality," and he set out to fit physically into the world of street thugs and mob men. At 5'10" and 150 pounds, he says he had to figure out a way to command authority. So he ate right to keep up his energy and did push-ups by the hundreds. When he strips down to his underwear onscreen, the payoff is obvious. He's beyond buff, but he's also bummed to hear it might be too much, since his character is never seen doing so much as a sit-up.

"I'm [angry] that you said that," he said. "Not really. But I'm all about the truth, that's what I care about the most. That's why this show is different. When I hear people say 'You're doing TV,' what I hear is 'What's it like to give up the truth?' and I don't feel like I've had to sacrifice the truth at all."

In fact, "Donnellys" plays almost like a miniature movie, with the multiple story lines and moral conflicts that appear in much of Haggis' s work. Beatings are bloody. Bullets fly. But it's also intentionally comic in parts, with a narrator whose nasal rat-a-tat delivery will either amuse or annoy.

If the show does break through, more people will see Tucker in the coming month than have seen him in all his movies combined. That's the nature of successful series television. The loss of privacy is a tradeoff Tucker is ready to make, and one he's already had a taste of as a working actor. He says he'll just emulate Matt Damon, whose acting career he admires, and keep living his life as a guy from Boston.

At that, he launches into a pitch so unexpectedly earnest it's worth printing, if not in its typical-Tucker-run-on sentence entirety:

"I know you've got your shows, you've got TiVO, you've got your four or three or five shows, and how do you put another serial drama into this? But going to the movies, going down to that Boston Common theater or one out in Worcester, you're going to be paying $7 or $8 to $10 or $12 a ticket and you'll be driving there and paying for that gas and gas is $2.50 a gallon or whatever and you'll go to the parking lot and pay $4, $5. You go to the concession stand and pay $10 to $12 to $15 bucks . . . If you're making $10 an hour, which a lot of people are, you're talking about putting 10 percent of your hours into going to see a film which half the time isn't even going to be good when we'll offer you that same quality of storytelling for free every week.

"So if you could just give us the opportunity, just watch the pilot. Please."