NEED TO KNOW
- Ted Danson revealed that he and wife Mary Steenburgen will be onscreen lovers in season 2 of A Man on the Inside during a recent episode of his Where Everybody Knows Your Name podcast
- He called their chemistry on set “magical” and said they work well together
- The couple has been married for 30 years and began dating when they were playing a couple in the 1993 film Pontiac Moon
Ted Danson isn’t afraid to mix business with family.
Months after it was revealed that the actor’s wife, Mary Steenburgen, is joining the cast of A Man on the Inside for its second season, more details are coming to light about her role.
In the recent episode of his podcast, Where Everybody Knows Your Name, Danson, 77, revealed that he and Steenburgen, 72, will be playing lovers.
“It’s just magical,” he gushed. “We’re falling in love. The story evolves, but I’m just head over heels. My character is in love with her, and to sit there on camera and look into your wife’s eyes — and we’re nauseatingly in love in private life — and just disappear into her eyes in front of a camera is pretty astounding.”
“By the way, if we suck, it’s her fault,” he then joked. “I just want to go on the record.”
Danson and Steenburgen have shared the screen before.
The pair are no strangers to working together. They began dating when they were starring as a married couple in the 1993 film Pontiac Moon and went on to appear alongside one another It Must Be Love, Gulliver’s Travels and more.
“There was a long time where we couldn’t work together because, ‘where’s the surprise?’ kind of thing,” the Cheers alum confessed. “But this story is perfect. It’s about second chances, and somehow it works. Or it doesn’t, [but] it feels like it’s working and I’m too old to be superstitious.”
Danson said he wants his wife to feel welcomed onto set after he already starred in the first season.
Danson stars in the Netflix comedy as a widowed retiree named Charles who “gets a new lease on life” when he goes undercover for a private investigator to help solve a case in a senior living facility. Knowing he has experience on the show, he said that “part of my job is to host” the Back to the Future actress as a newcomer.
“You check your ego at the door,” he explained. “If she doesn’t have a wonderful time, I’m an a–hole, and that’s on me.”
“And that’s just attitude,” he noted. “But then Liza Esquibias Mike Schur has just written — he’s really good at having an idea for a character, then finding the person that he wants to play that character and then writing full out for that actor or actress. He knows what I can do well and what I can’t do well, and he very kindly writes to what I can do well, and the same for Mary.”
The couple have been married for 30 years but were in other relationships when they met.
Danson and Steenburgen first crossed paths in 1983 when he was auditioning to play her husband on Cross Creek, but both were married to other people at the time. It wasn’t until 10 years later that they developed a romantic connection before tying the knot in 1995.
“We both realized shortly before we met each other [for the second time], we both had the same thought: ‘Well, obviously I’m not capable of being in a relationship, I will f— up anything,’” Danson recalled. “That was mine. Hers was, ‘I know I look like I’d be good at relationships, but clearly I’m not.’”
“Anyway, this is me being embarrassed, but we consider it divine,” he continued. “I think we have angels that are putting us together. There’s no reason. I was such a hot mess when she met me, there’s no reason she should have taken a second look. And somehow, here we are. And we work at it, you know? But anyway, very lucky.”
Never miss a story — sign up for PEOPLE’s free daily newsletter to stay up-to-date on the best of what PEOPLE has to offer, from celebrity news to compelling human interest stories.
Season 1 of A Man on the Inside is available to stream on Netflix.
Read the full article here
