{alltv} Matthew Perry settles into new comedy arena in 'Mr. Sunshine'

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NEW YORK — Irony is not easily lost on Matthew Perry.

Settling down in a hotel lounge to discuss his new TV series, Mr. Sunshine, the actor, 41, neat but casual in a gray sweater and slacks, peruses the extensive list of coffee and tea items on the menu. "It figures that I would have just asked for something from the Starbucks across the street," Perry quips as a vanilla latte arrives at the table.

Fittingly, he is plugging Sunshine, which premieres tonight (ABC, 9:30 ET/PT), in the middle of an ice storm. Smiling at the gray Manhattan sky outside, Perry states the obvious: "The title is ironic. It's about a guy who struggles with happiness, because he hasn't yet realized what the key to it is."

Perry, who conceived the sitcom and also is co-writer/executive producer, stars as Ben Donovan, the manager of a San Diego sports arena called the Sunshine Center. In this evening's episode, we meet Ben on the cusp of his 40th birthday and watch as he struggles with a high-maintenance boss, played by Allison Janney, and the niggling question of his mortality — or at least, his emotional maturity.

"He's been whistling in the dark, thinking he's leading a full life," says Perry, who looks at once boyish and a bit weathered, with fine creases around his light blue eyes. "He's a nice guy, everybody likes him, but he's largely selfish. In the pilot, he realizes that he hasn't been living the right way." Twelve additional episodes, eight of which are scheduled to air this season, trace "the 9,000 mistakes he makes while trying to transform himself into someone who cares about other people."

Sunshine marks Perry's first return to series television since his stint on Aaron Sorkin's Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, canceled in 2007 after one season on NBC— where Perry rocketed to fame, of course, back in the '90s as a member of the Friends posse. He describes Sunshine as "an ensemble comedy" as well, but allows, "I'm at the creative center this time. I've never done that before."

His progress will be closely watched by industry insiders. As a midseason replacement for his former Friends co-star Courteney Cox's series, Cougar Town, Sunshine inherits the coveted time slot after Modern Family. That celebrated hit, as it turns out, was a prime factor in Perry's decision to place his series with ABC.

"NBC has terrific shows, and I have a long-term relationship with them, of course," Perry says. "But ABC had just proven that it could launch a comedy really well, and we thought that maybe they could do it again."

Bill Carroll, director of programming for the Katz Television Group, predicts that Sunshine will benefit from its scheduling and its star. "You have a personality that the audience already knows and likes, which always goes a long way," he says. "It doesn't matter what (Perry) did last; it matters where most people remember him last, and that's Friends."

Samie Falvey, senior vice president of comedy development at ABC, was sold on Perry before his new series had been fully developed. "We've been waiting for this moment since Friends ended. He's a huge television star; beyond the marquee name, he's someone we knew could carry a show." After seeing Sunshine, she was "blown away, not only by the great take he had on his character but by this whole comedic world he had fleshed out around him."

The Massachusetts-born Perry, who has been based in Los Angeles for more than two decades, came up with the idea for Sunshine in June 2009. He devised Ben's predicament before choosing a setting.

"When you're putting a comedy together, you want a place where a lot of funny things can happen, and I thought an entertainment arena would be that," he says. "If you go online to check out events, especially at one of the lower-tier venues, you'll be surprised to see what's happening on the non-big-ticket days. You can have everything from the circus to lingerie football to wrestling to religious events."

Dream team

Next came the search for co-writers, which eventually led to Alex Barnow and Marc Firek, a longtime team whose credits include CBS' Rules of Engagement and the former Fox series 'Til Death. The duo was suggested by Perry's old friend and former ABC and NBC executive Jamie Tarses, an executive producer of Sunshine.

"Matthew was interested in a man of a certain age making a journey," Tarses says. "I read a script by (Barnow and Firek) that was also about a man trying to move forward in his life, after a great crisis. The stories were different, but they both dealt with this certain rite of passage in ways that were funny and also poignant." Perry was so impressed with Barnow and Firek's script "that for a moment I thought, 'Maybe I should just do this show.' But there was one thing wrong with it: I hadn't written it. I really wanted to be a co-creator."

Casting proved similarly smooth. The role of Crystal, the Sunshine Center's controlling but gaffe-prone owner, was created for Allison Janney, with whom Perry and another Sunshine executive producer, Thomas Schlamme, had worked on The West Wing. "I was home one day and got a text from Allison — I didn't even know she had my number — saying she loved the script and was in. At that point I thought, 'Ooh, we might have something special here.' "

Perry tapped the cherubic-looking Nate Torrence, whom he had cast in an earlier pilot called The End of Steve— more on that shortly — to play Crystal's neglected but cheerful son, Roman. Andrea Anders appears as Alice, a pretty marketing director with whom Ben has a complicated friendship, and James Lesure plays another co-worker who is as beatific as Ben is curt.

"There are a lot of smart, funny people involved," Perry says. "No egos, no one tyrannical. That's the main reason I hope the show does well — so that we'll all get to work together again."

Perry doesn't expect Sunshine to be the kind of era-defining smash that Friends was. "I don't think it's possible for a new show to be as big a hit as that." Which is fine, he insists: "I say all the time that I'm glad I got to experience that level of fame so that I don't have to spend my whole life chasing it."

His overall career perspective has, in fact, shifted since that series ended its decade-long run in 2004. "When I finished Friends, I did this clichéd thing. I thought, 'I'm only going to be a serious actor now.' So I ended up being in a couple of independent movies that no one saw. And I did a movie for TNT that, like, didn't have a single joke in it."

Perry did earn Emmy, Golden Globe and SAG Award nominations for his role in TNT's The Ron Clark Story (2006), based on the true tale of a teacher working with disadvantaged youth. But he eventually found time for lighter fare, including his most recent feature film, 2009's 17 Again.

"I decided, you know what? I look at life in a sort of funny way. Why not take advantage of that? You hear all the time that comedy is the hardest thing an actor can do, but not for me. I've had more experience with it."

That's not to say Perry is an intrinsically lighthearted guy. "I tend to enjoy the dark side of things," he says, accounting for the "very, very dark" The End of Steve, which he wrote several years ago with comedy scribe Peter Tolan. "Our main goal was to put the meanest man in the world on television. Or maybe the second meanest: There was Adolf Hitler, then him."

Naturally, Perry cast himself as Hitler's runner-up; the pilot was rejected by Showtime.

"It was a learning experience. We were going to make the character a nicer guy in the second season, actually, but that's a long time to watch someone be really mean to people."

Perry acknowledges that he was initially tempted to make Mr. Sunshine's Ben "a little darker, more beaten down by life. But we toned it down, because I'm not sure that's the way people want to see me."

Asked to what extent he drew on his own life to write and play a single, 40ish guy with a dry sense of humor and a somewhat cavalier persona, Perry allows that Ben "is a slightly exaggerated version of myself. I think that's what most television characters are for people."

Dealing with fame

In the pilot, at least, Ben's life is neither as colorful nor as complicated as Perry's was at the peak of his stardom in the late '90s and early '00s, when his romances, drug use and weight flip-flops were tabloid fodder. The actor doesn't dish about his personal life these days, noting, "When I was in my 20s, if I changed my shoes, I let Us Magazine know about it. Now that I'm in my 40s, I've learned to be more private."

Besides, he points out, with a Ben-like smirk, "I'm less interesting to follow around than I used to be."

That has been especially true in recent months. Between September and December, while shooting Sunshine, Perry was so busy juggling his various on- and off-screen duties that he barely had time to hang out with friends. "I'd go home and start unbuttoning my shirt, and by the time I got to the bottom button, it was time to go back to work."

He expects that will change "if we're fortunate enough to get to make more (episodes). We'd do some scripts in advance, so I wouldn't have to do four things at once. I'm learning to delegate, too. The editing process is important to me, but now I care less about, say, what plant is behind Allison Janney's head. Someone else can take care of that."

So would Perry then describe himself, to use his parlance in evaluating Ben, as happy?

"Sure, I'm getting there," he says, without palpable sarcasm. "I certainly have many more moments of joy than I did in the past. As I sit here today, I'm pretty content."