David Alan Grier knows exactly who Ron is. He knows how to relate to men like him because he grew up around them.
In a private conversation with Where Is The Buzz, David Alan Grier shared that the veteran nurse he portrays in the third season of St. Denis Medical on NBC is coping with a kind of vulnerability he’s never felt comfortable sharing.
I wanted to get into the impact of caregiving on the psychological state of the characters. Ron has devoted most of his life to caring for others but was never ready to be vulnerable himself. So I asked Grier to elaborate.
“I think it’s a combination of a lot of things,” Grier said. “First of all, it’s generational.”
He recalled how his father was brought up in that way.
“I think my father was born in the 1920s,” Grier said. “He was a doctor. I saw him cry two times. I saw him cry when his father died and I saw him cry when his mother died. And that was decades apart. Those are the kind of men I grew up with and around.”
Grier himself is nothing like that man.
“So, it’s not who I am, ’cause I’m the opposite,” he said. “I’ll be like, you stepped on what? You stepped on a cricket that lived in your kitchen? Oh my gosh. Oh my gosh.”
He recalled that his father kept calm despite any tragic situation.
“My father be like, ‘Dad, the house burned down.’ ‘All right. OK, so what are we going to do?'” Grier said, quoting his father’s response.
When I joked that his father asked, “Well, what are we doing now?” Grier agreed.
“Exactly,” he said. “So, a lot of times, you know, as actors, people go, ‘Is that you?’ It’s not me, but I know of that person. I’ve experienced that person. I know him.”
Describing his character, Grier said Ron is a man who wants to open up but doesn’t know how.
“So, definitely that guy, he’s also the kind of man where a lot of men want to get loose. They don’t know how,” he said. “It’s like trying to tell a person, ‘Well, I want you to give a speech in Italian.’ ‘But I don’t know Italian.’ ‘Just give a speech.’ So, they literally do not have the language, the apparatus on how to open up and just be a little looser, dude.”
“So that’s a lot of what Ron is going through this season, man,” Grier said. “I mean, he’s had this health crisis. He’s trying to act like he’s the same, and everybody’s running around like, ‘You’re not.'”
Grier compared this trait to a situation familiar to everyone in the family.
“You ever had that thing where your grandmother, your mother bends down, the whole ‘Watch it, watch it, watch it, watch it’?” he said. “And it’s like, I thought I was OK. Clearly not.”
He described a similar episode in his own life.
“I remember my mother. I got married, and my mother was in a restaurant, and she was at the top of these stairs, backward, facing the stairs, and she was weaving back and forth, and I caught her gently,” Grier recalled. “She goes, ‘It’s all right, I had it. I wasn’t going to fall off.’ Like, OK.”
“Yeah, that is Ron,” he said. “‘I’m the same. I’m right back.’ No, you’re not, brother. No, you’re not. Just take a moment.”
The threat to the health of a man who had never been vulnerable made him realize his true weakness. Telling Grier that his performance was perfect, I asked if it changed Ron’s approach to life or just revealed the feelings he had been avoiding all these years.
Grier did not reveal much about that episode.
“You have to watch the show, but I’m going to tell you this: We would hope it would change his life,” he said. “It changed his life initially.”
Grier recalled the time when his father was in the hospital.
“You know, when my dad was in the hospital, I remember he called me one time. He said, ‘Will you come and visit me?’ I said, ‘Yeah, I’m on my way.’ He said, ‘Well, hurry up,’ and I’m like, ‘Why?'” Grier said. “Because he quietly told me, he says, they weren’t responding to him.”
“You know, my father was used to walking in the room, ‘Sit down, bring me this, do that.’ He was just an old man to these people,” he said. “When I walked in, now they saw me in context. And he didn’t want to tell me that they were excited when they found out who his son was, and at that point my father was like, whatever will give him leverage.”
“So I went in there and visited him, and he was like, ‘Oh my gosh. Thank you so much for coming in,'” Grier said. “You know, and we’re all caught in those vulnerable moments when we have to admit to help. I need help, you know, OK?”
When I told him how difficult it must be, Grier offered a more optimistic take.
“Yeah, it’s not impossible,” he said.
Grier’s comedy career spanned decades during which this kind of art changed in so many ways. I was curious whether today’s audience became more accepting of imperfect and complicated characters, or whether comics are afraid to share the truth about themselves.
“I hope not,” he said.
He quoted the comedian who inspired him.
“Richard Pryor was my major influence, and I loved when he would play these characters, like on ‘Blue Collar,'” Grier said. “A guy who is definitely funny but also really vulnerable and struggling like the rest of us. You’re trying to keep this relationship together; your kids don’t care, they don’t respect.”
Grier understands this struggle perfectly because it’s also on his mind right now. He just left his daughter at college.
“Look, I just dropped my daughter off to college,” he said. “And she said it was almost like she was on her deathbed; she said, ‘Some of the kids think you dress really great.’ I was like, ‘Really? They do? Who?’ She was like, ‘I don’t, I forgot.’ She didn’t want to tell me.”
When I suggested she probably thought she had said enough already, Grier agreed.
“Exactly. I was all like, ‘I’m coming back next week,'” he said. “She was like, ‘Please don’t. Please don’t.'”
“Yeah, man,” Grier said. “So, Ron’s going through all that.”
