http://www.tvsquad.com/2008/03/04/in-the-limelight-andrew-mccarthy/


While the casting for the ladies to play the power brokers on NBC's
Lipstick Jungle was imperative, no less attention was paid for the
men with whom those women would be romantically entwined. For the
character of Joe Bennett, the enigmatic, high-powered, complicated
Prince Charming with a dark side, producers had to be looking for
just the right combination of sexual appeal and sensitive
undercurrent. They found the right guy when Andrew McCarthy was cast.
The former Brat Packer could be the find of the TV season; the new
McDreamy.

Being the hot commodity is nothing new for Andrew McCarthy. He was
just 19 when he made his feature film debut in Class as Rob Lowe's
(Brothers and Sisters) prep school roomie who had a fling with Rob's
mom, Jacqueline Bisset. That was 1983; and just a couple of years
later, McCarthy and Lowe were part of St. Elmo's Fire, the
quintessential Brat Pack movie. The Brat Pack was a group of
attractive, young Hollywood stars seen as taking the industry by
storm. McCarthy was a key component in other Brat Pack pics, like
Pretty in Pink with Molly Ringwald, Jon Cryer (Two and a Half Men)
and James Spader (Boston Legal), and Less than Zero, again with
Spader. But it may have been the goofy comedy Weekend at Bernie's
that brought him new fans, as did Mannequin with Kim Cattrall (pre-
Sex & the City) and Spader once again. Both Bernie and Mannequin
showed that McCarthy could be cute -- and funny, too. Ironically, the
films were bigger hits on video than in the theaters, and today are
sort of cult classics.

Doing films and theater work occupied much of Andrew McCarthy's
career in the 1990's, with an occasional foray into television. In
1991, he appeared and wrote an episode of Tales from the Crypt for
HBO, and in 1996, he was directed by Sally Field (Brothers and
Sisters) in an ABC holiday telefilm called The Christmas Tree. On the
personal side, in 1999, he married his high school sweetheart, Carol
Schneider, 20 years after they first dated.

McCarthy scored critically on Broadway in the Tony-winning play Side
Man, and while in New York he did a Law and Order, then a Law and
Order: SVU. But in 2003, something went awry and Andrew was fired
from a gig on Law and Order: Criminal Intent. Producer Dick Wolf said
McCarthy was responsible for a tiff with actor Vincent D'onofrio.
McCarthy shot back, saying, "I was fired because I refused to allow a
fellow actor to threaten me with physical violence, bully me and try
to direct me." Whatever the bad blood at the time, it's now all in
the past. Just last week, McCarthy starred in an episode of L&O: CI
as an over-ambitious A.D.A.

TV has enjoyed more and more of Andrew McCarthy since 2000, although
he was recently featured in Neil Labute's off-Broadway play, Fat Pig
with Jeremy Piven (Entourage), to critical acclaim. He starred in the
CBS's military drama E-Ring; guested as a killer on Monk; and had a
memorable turn as Dr. Hook in the TV series based on Stephen King's
Kingdom Hospital in 2004. In 2007, the actor signed for Lipstick
Jungle after doing the big screen children's film, The Spiderwick
Chronicles.

Being an admirer of Sex & the City and Candace Bushnell, the creator
of Lipstick Jungle, is what led him to take on the Joe Bennett
character. He told reporter Troy Rogers, "I was a big fan of
Candace's sort of world and her voice. And I thought it was a really
interesting show that treated women with a real regard, that I don't
see on television too much."

As for the imperious Mr. Bennett, McCarthy said of his new
character: "I think he's just direct and follows his own sort of
agendas without being encumbered by anything that society would put
on him, because that's what money does. It buys us freedom from
having those constraints. But I guess we'll just have to see where it
unfolds, you know. I think that's the thing about television until
you - certain relationships and certain dynamics start to work, and
so then they're written for. And other ones work less well so they
sort of phase out. And it's just sort of a movable feast, always."