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Photo by Paul Dri
MICHAEL ELKIN
Special to The Jewish News
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Stanford University senior Fred
Savage, the former star of "The
Wonder Years," got a TV series.
Now 20, and years beyond the
pinchable-cheek status he once had on
the TV series about '60s sense and sen-
sibility, the Jewish kid from Chicago is
now working on NBC's Wednesday
night comedy "Working," which pre-
mieres 9:30 p.m. Oct. 8.
In playing a newcomer to the job
market in this somewhat surreal new
series — what Entertainment Weekly
referred to as a "live-action Dilbert:
ordinary joe just out of college joins a
big anonymous corporation' — does
Savage relate to the whirl of the work-
place? .
Has he ever had a non-acting job?
"When I was 6 or 7," he laughs of
his status as a veteran actor. "There's
really never been a need for me to get a
job. I was a young kid [during the
series]. I was in high school," when
"The Wonder Years" ended its run in
1993.
"Hey," he says, with a mock defen-
sive arch of the brow. "I consider this
[acting] a real job."
What's real is a bio that bulges with
big-time acting credits, dating from
when Savage was. age 6 and starring in
vitamin commercials.
There have been multiple awards for
"The Wonder Years" and applause for
his other acting ventures in TV's "The
Boy Who Could Fly' and such features
as The Princess Bride and The Wizard.
If there's one thing he's a wiz at it's
English/creative writing, his major at
Stanford, where he's taken the fall quar-
ter off (making room for another
celebrity student — Chelsea Clinton).
But what if viewers fall for his char-
acter, Matt Peyser, and the rest of the
series' employees who make 9-to-5
seem like a jail sentence with laughs?
What happens if "Working" works out?
He'll continue punching the clock at
college. "That's not really a question,
whether or not I'm going to finish col-
lege," says Savage, who attended sum-
mer school this year at UCLA. "And
I'm going to try to take a class via cor-
respondence with Stanford while we're
Michael Elkin is entertainment editor
of the Philadelphia Jewish Exponent.
Fred Savage: "If I didn't continue going to Hillel at school and attending Shabbat
services and dinners, I'd never be able to face my grandmother."
"Workin
Stiff
Fred Savage, the wunderkind of
"The Wonder Years," debuts in a
new TV series.
filming in the fall, just because I know
I'm going to be missing a lot of school
doing the show and I don't want to fall
too far behind."
Should the series go a full year,
shooting will stop before spring quarter
at Stanford, so he'll be able to pack up
his "Working" computer just in time to
plug in a real one at school.
Even when he was just a tyke taking
the nation by storm in "The Wonder
Years," there was never a time for "Fred
Unplugged": No tantrums, ego trips,
trashing hotel rooms.
The "Working" star was always on
the job, ready to go. "I have a tremen-
dous debt to my parents who are won-
derful and really have raised me to be
an upstanding young man," he says
sweetly.
There are others in the family who
have kept him on the straight and nar-
row. "If I didn't continue going to
Hillel at school and attending Shabbat
services and dinners, I'd never be able
to face my grandmother," he smiles.
He faces the future knowing that the
sense of Judaism he grew up with has
had a major impact on his life. At
Stanford, Savage's sense of tzedakah has
served him well; he has been active
with pediatrics AIDS causes and with
"Best Buddies," a project utilizing col-
lege students as helpers for the mentally
challenged.
On the home front, best buddy
means playing a big brother role to his
younger sib, Ben, star of TV's "Boy
Meets World."
Did Fred, offer Ben tips when the
younger brother met the TV world for
the first time? What kind of advice did
he give him?
The two of them, says Savage, "have
gone through identical circumstances.
So he'll come and talk to me more
about social things or about going to
school and working at the same time
and how to handle that."
How does the former boy wonder of
"The Wonder Years" handle the
changes in network TV? Isn't
"Working" a different workplace than
that of his former TV series?
"The whole format is entirely differ-
ent," he says of going from a one-cam-
era shoot on "The Wonder Years" to
five cameras on "Working."
And so is life. Where once he spent
time with tutors ("My last uninterrupt-
ed year of school was second grade"),
he now relishes the all-nighters and all
the wonderful aggravation that comes
with being a college kid.
"School is the great equalizer, espe-
cially when people see you running to
class or pulling your hair out over a test
just like everybody else."
He knows his academic career will
stand the test of time. Whether it's
magna cum laude or magna cum come-
dy, if "Working" doesn't work out,
there's always work to do on that
degree.
"I live in a fraternity with a bunch
of other guys at school," he says of his
off-set study space.
"There will always be a floor I can
crash on."
10/3
1997
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