A few years ago, John Larroquette wasn’t eager to reprise his four-time Emmy-winning role of Dan Fielding in NBC‘s Night Court revival. A year’s worth of back and forth with costar Melissa Rauch (who was just an executive producer at the time) made him decide to take it on, but there was another key reason motivating his eventual yes. “I have a caricature that [Al] Hirschfeld made of Night Court in ’86 or ’87. I look at that, and everybody in that caricature has passed away except me,” he tells TV Insider ahead of the revival’s Season 3 premiere. The opportunity to honor the memory of his late costars is what sealed the deal.
“When I first was approached with this idea, I didn’t like the idea at all,” Larroquette admits. “And only because I thought egotistically, I don’t want to be compared to myself when I was 34 years old. I mean, who wants an old man to look back and go, ‘Oh, I was so happy and so handsome back then!’ Originally, [Rauch] was not going to be part of it. She finally, after we talked for about a year, said, ‘I think I need to do this with you.’ And then I thought, I have to do it if she’s going to do it because I love her. It was a big step though. It’s taken a while for me to be comfortable inhabiting this character again, considering his age and the time that’s passed.”
Larroquette’s loving his time on the revival now, and the tributes to the original cast that have been worked into each season make it more worthwhile. A tribute to Harry Anderson is baked into the show’s premise: Rauch’s Judge Abby Stone is his Harry Stone’s daughter, with her mother played by Faith Ford. Helping Harry’s kid is what pulled Dan out of his depression and back into the real world in the series premiere in January 2023. Dan had married and become a widower in the time between the two shows. In Season 3, they’ll explore the possibility of Dan being a father — a mystery that was teased in the Season 2 finale cliffhanger. That finale also featured the revival’s first tribute to the late Markie Post, who played Christine Sullivan in the OG comedy. Larroquette confirms that it’s important to him that they continue to sprinkle these tributes throughout the sitcom.
“I certainly don’t want to hit that too hard with a hammer or drive it into the ground, but I think when appropriate and can address a subject matter within an episode and present time,” they’ll add them in, he explains.
John Larroquette, Markie Post, Richard Moll, Harry Anderson, Charles Robinson, Marsha Warfield in Night Court (Warner Bros. Courtesy / Everett Collection)
The Night Court series finale famously featured Dan leaving his job to chase after Christine, who had been elected to Congress in Washington, D.C. Given that was the show’s ending, there was no knowing if Dan and Christine ended up having a relationship after. Christine and Harry had been romantic interests before that. The revival’s series premiere confirmed that Dan’s late wife was not Christine, nor was she Abby’s mother. Christine wasn’t mentioned until the Season 2 finale when her sister, played by Gigi Rice, showed up at Roz’s (Marsha Warfield) wedding. (Warfield and Larroquette are the only surviving stars of the original show, but Warfield didn’t make her debut until Season 4, making Larroquette the last original living star.) Larroquette thinks the Post tribute was “perfect” because of its layered purpose.
“I think having Gigi Rice come as Markie’s, Christine Sullivan’s sister was a great idea,” he explains. “And actually in the past, Gigi Rice and Markie Post played sisters in a movie for television that they had done. And Gigi I loved because me and Gigi worked together on The John Larroquette Show. It just was a natural fit to address that relationship between Fielding and Christine Sullivan and what happened after it was all over. It was perfect. Certainly when those opportunities arise, we’ll approach them with some careful love and heart and hopefully be able to do them again.”
Could the new Night Court continue to reveal what happened between the end of the first show and the start of the new one, like they did with Dan and Harry’s wives? Larroquette says, “It is possible,” but “I don’t know if it’ll happen because then you’d have to find, well, who else was part of that time and what story happens, et cetera. I don’t know.”
“Certainly it’s not a door closed, but it’s not a wide-open idea,” he continues, “since we have so much really still to learn about our guys. We still have to dig into Nyambi Nyambi‘s character’s life, and also now, Wendy Malick [as Julianne]—all of us except Fielding. He’s more set. We know a lot about him.”
Hopefully, original Night Court fans are still happy they get to learn more.
Night Court, Season 3 Premiere, Tuesday, November 19, 8:30/7:30c, NBC