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6/21
2002
78
After years as second banana, Scott Cohen
gets a starring role in new Showtime series.
GERRI MILLER
Don't Forget... The Sheik caters all occasions
It
Taking it
To The Street
f you watch TV; you'll probably
recognize his face from minis-
eries like The 10th Kingdom and
his recurring roles on NYPD
Blue, Gilmore Girls and The Practice.
His name may not be quite as famil-
iar, but that could change soon.
Scott Cohen will be visible weekly
starting this summer in the new
Showtime series Street Time, a gritty
drama about the federal parole system
that premieres 10 p.m. Sunday, June 23.
For Cohen, whose resume of charac-
ters range on the nice-to-nasty scale
from likable teacher Max Medina on
Gilmore Girls to rogue cop Harry
Denby on NYPD Blue, his new char-
acter, parole officer James Liberti, is
harder to classify.
"He's troubled, not quite prepared
to handle the things that come his
way," says Cohen. "He has a gambling
problem. He has a family, a wife and
three kids, and it's really difficult for
him to do this job.
'And at the same time, he came from
a world [where] his father was a criminal
and he wants to break out of that. He
wants to do good, but he's having a hard
time breaking out. He's conflicted."
Another kind of conflict plays out in
the adversarial relationship between
Liberti and a recently sprung parolee
drug dealer portrayed by Rob Morrow.
"We have children that go to the
same school. We live in the same area.
The idea is that it is two sides of the
same coin, that I could be him, and he
could be me," says Cohen, relishing
the on-screen drama and career oppor-
tunity, even if it does come with a
catch: Street Time shoots in Toronto.
"It's hard. My family is in New
York," explains the Bronx-born actor,
who rents an apartment in Canada
during production.
Nevertheless, Cohen feels "blessed
and lucky" to be working steadily,
since he has certainly paid his dues.
The son of a jazz musician, Jack
Gerri Miller is a Los Angeles-based
freelance writer.
Cohen, he originally planned to be a
pianist but shifted his aspirations to
theater while at the State University of
New York at New Paltz.
Returning to New York City, he
honed his skills on stage while working
variously as a substitute teacher, a wait-
er, a messenger and a toy demonstrator.
Paying His Dues
Following his first screen appearance
in a short film called Many Wonders,
Cohen made his feature debut in
Jacob's Ladder in 1990 but returns to
the stage whenever he can, most
recently in a play written by his wife,
Anastasia Traina.
He has acted in several productions
at the Williamstown Theater Festival
over the years and appeared with West
Wing's John Spencer in Glimmer eT
Shine at the Manhattan Theatre Club.
"I'd like to direct a play," says Cohen,
who considers theater his first love.
However, he's grateful for the screen
exposure in films like the recent
Kissing Jessica Stein and miniseries like
Perfect Murder, Pe7fect Town and The
10th Kingdom, a fantasy he names as
his favorite.
He has starred opposite Camryn
Manheim twice, in the TV movie Kiss
My Act as her love interest and on The
Practice as an assistant D.A. friend
who betrayed her.
His resume also includes the crime
dramas Oz, Feds, Law Order and
NY Undercover.
But — Stein's Josh Myers aside —
he's played few Jewish characters.
"Nobody thinks I look Jewish.
Everybody thinks I look Italian," says
Cohen, whose current character and
such roles as Gene Gotti in the 1996
Gotti TV movie underscore that notion.
"I used to get really frustrated with it
because I'm a Jew and know how to do
these characters. But they want curly
hair, bespectacled. I look more like an
Italian gangster from the Lower East
Side," he says, noting that while he was
not raised in a religious home and did-
n't have a bar mitzvah, he "grew up
culturally Jewish. I continue that."