Don’s ‘Nash’ gets rehash
From 1996 to 2001, Don Johnson played San Fran’s Special Investigations cop who nailed bad dudes on CBS-TV’s “Nash Bridges.” It’s now back as a two-hour movie.
“It’s set again in San Francisco which is now in a slump since the pandemic,” he told me, “but we’ll get it going again. First episode’s a two-hour movie in the fall. USA Network. I deliver it end of August and more episodes are contemplated. I’m executive producer. I own half the show’s copyright.
“Great is I got them all — Jeff Perry, Cheech Marin — the whole old crew back together again. I started them. I trained them. Even my writers wanted in on this. I kept all the phone numbers. So I sent word out and everybody got back wanting in on it. The story — I myself worked on the script — is contemporary. It’s 10 years later in the lives of the characters. And it’s a diverse cast. We’ve got a trans woman in it.
“A star of our original show was that yellow Barracuda — a 1971 Dodge — that I always drove. The thing was old when I found it. I was actually now able to locate it, and I bought it back in an auction. The thing had been in a museum in Ohio. Soon as the locals in San Francisco saw me riding around in it again, they yelled, ‘hey, it’s effing Don Johnson . . . effing Cheech.’
“Aug. 9, I start my second season of ‘Kenan’ on NBC. But right now, soon as I finish this, I’m off to Europe — Greece, Italy . . . and what am I going to do? Just bop around.”
A P.S. Don once hung up on me — just to watch “Once Upon a Time . . . In Hollywood.”
It’s another film about Jackie
Even Jackie Kennedy’s coming back. Again. In yet another screen incarnation. This time, Brit actress Gemma Arterton plays her. Why an English actress, I don’t know. I’m lucky I know this. This new film, “37 Heavens,” is about Jackie’s relationship with highly born Brit nobleman Baron David Ormsby-Gore Harlech. Proper gent. A diplomat. Britannia’s ambassador to Washington. Also a little ambassadoring to Jackie. He’s gone now, but it’s based on private letters unearthed when his lockbox got unlocked — or handed down — or brought out. Harlech will be played by Guy Pearce. In leaky Washington, following the death of JFK, the thought was this baron might have been her next. He was for sure her confidante. Or whatever.
Listen up . . .
Another retread is “The Nanny.” Onetime superhit TV series, created by and starring Fran Drescher, it’s wheezing back. On Broadway. As a musical. Drescher won’t star though. Me, myself, I was on “The Nanny” 100 years ago. And I just got a residual check — $12 . . . Fresco by Scotto reopened with party planner Larry Scott’s new streetside annex. At the opening, every diner was comped. No check for anyone. Courtesy of the Scottos welcoming them back.
Speak up!
DJT at a rally called Cy Vance a political hack who’s persecuting him and his family. When you’re at someone else’s mercy — or mouth — risky to poke him in the eye. Tali, front-runner for Manhattan DA, with the backing of Dem representatives Torres, Velazquez and Espaillat, even fielded a question about Donald with: “We are constrained as prosecutors not to go in and prejudge anything, and not to casually talk about legal arguments.” Chicken. Talk of laying an egg.
Good guess
“Big Sky’s” Brooke Smith called Vanity Fair, Variety and me to bitch Emmys maybe omitted her. “They say they only nominate series regulars.” So? “So in my last scene I killed my husband and went to jail. So I guess I’m not coming back.” OK.
Visitors sometimes say our city isn’t friendly. Not true. Where else can a mugger knock you down, heist your wallet then tell you, “Have a nice day.”
Only in New York, kids, only in New York.