1980s TV Shows: A Trip Down Memory Lane with… David Leisure (Charley Dietz in “Empty Nest”)

Exclusive Interview by Karen Beishuizen

“Empty Nest” was a television sitcom that aired on NBC from 1988 to 1995. It ran for seven seasons and 170 episodes. The series was a spin-off of ”The Golden Girls” and starred Richard Mulligan as the widowed pediatrician Harry Weston. Dinah Manoff and Kristy McNichol played daughters Carol and Barbara. David Leisure played the womanizing neighbor Charley Dietz who entered the house at all hours of the day helping himself with stuff he needed.

KB: “Empty Nest”: What was the show about?

It was about a pediatrician whose wife had died, and his daughters had moved out of the house, and he had a big red dog and an obnoxious mooching neighbor, which was me. However, in the first season, in the first few episodes, the writers had to lay pipe, as they say, creating reasons why the daughters would come home and see their dad. So they moved them back into the house so the nest wasn’t empty any longer, ha ha.

KB: How did you get the part as Charley Dietz?

I got the part of Charley Dietz by way of being Joe Isuzu on TV, which was a character I played selling Isuzu cars and trucks. Paul Witt and Tony Thomas put me in a pilot that we shot for “Empty Nest”with a complete set of different actors: Paul Dooley, Rita Moreno, Geoffrey Lewis, and me. And I was fortunate enough to be the only one that they kept in the cast when they revamped the show with Kristy McNichol, Dinah Manoff, and Richard Mulligan. Once again, I’m a lucky guy.

KB: What did you like about the character and how did you make it your own?

Well, I didn’t have to work too hard. I was already a lying, smarmy car salesman for Isuzu, so becoming an obnoxious, mooching next-door neighbor wasn’t much of a stretch.

KB: What was it like working with Richard Mulligan?

My dear friend Richard, I miss him so much. He was the captain of our ship. He considered all of us his actors, and he wouldn’t let us get away with any shenanigans on the set. He also wouldn’t let anybody mess with us. He protected us, he fought for us. He was a great man. I learned a lot about being a good person from him, especially on a set.

There was this one time we were doing a scene together, and it just wasn’t working, so Richard said to me that if I took his line, he took my line, so basically we were switching parts. Then the scene would work. When we got to notes, which is what you do when there’s some issue with the script and the writers rewrite it, he didn’t tell the writers what he told me, and I was wondering why he did that? Finally, it dawned on me that he was trying to get the writers to write it so they own it! So he was very sensitive to how people work.

He was also a comic genius. Once we were short 2 minutes of airtime, and the writers could come up with anything to stretch out the scenes. Doesn’t sound like much, does it? But two minutes is a lot of dead air! So Richard said, “I’ll fill your two minutes at the top of the show, but I’m only going to do it once!” So he made coffee and toast like Charlie Chaplin for two minutes, no dialogue, and it was the funniest thing you ever saw!

KB: How did a week on the set looked like from getting the script to filming?

That’s a very interesting question. You can read a script at the table while you’re all sitting down, and everything seems great. Every joke works. Everything seems perfect. Then all you gotta do is get up out of your chair, walk 10 feet to the set, and do the same thing, and somehow it doesn’t work! Then the writers have to rewrite it until it does work. It’s a weird phenomena. We would still get new dialogue pages on the set on film night sometimes. Another weird phenomenon is called a “swing set”. It’s where a scene is played on a set on the stage, but it’s around the corner and not in front of the audience, and invariably it’s a hard place to make people laugh when they’re not right in front of you, so it always came off looking bad.

KB: Where was the show filmed?

Right in the middle of Hollywood.

KB: Do you have a favorite episode where you starred in and why this one?

Yes, I do have a favorite episode. There was one where Dinah Manoff, who was my nemesis—or I was her nemesis—on the show, and she gets scared, and all of a sudden I’ve protected her from a bad guy, and I chased him away. We begin to cuddle, we have to kiss, and then we have an affair. It was so hard to get through that kissing scene because we cracked up! She’s like my sister, and we couldn’t get through the kiss hardly at all, especially with a Live audience who were screaming, it was a lot of fun and a lot of hard work to get through it without cracking up.

KB: Are you still in touch with the other actors of the show?

Yes, as a matter of fact, we see each other every few years at autograph shows and personal appearances. I’m also friends with some of the guest stars we had and I stayed in touch with over the years, but Dinah Manoff and Kristy McNichol, they’re my sisters, and very dear friends.

KB: Looking back now, would you have played Charley Dietz differently?

Nope. I did have to wear a lot of different, weird costumes on the show. Like one week, I’d be in a pirate outfit with a parrot on my shoulder. Or I’d be dressed like a guru. One week, I was wearing a shark outfit with my face coming out of its mouth, and as I was walking across the set, the warm-up guy (a warm-up guy is a comedian who keeps the audience engaged while they set up between scenes) asked me to answer some questions from the audience. So this woman asked me how I prepare as an actor for my part each week. I said, “Lady, if I was a better actor, I wouldn’t have to wear these fucking costumes!”

KB: How do you explain that this show is still beloved after 40+ years?

Well, all I can say is like “The Golden Girls”, which was also a great show, it’s just easy watching. It doesn’t take you too much to pay attention to it, and it’s a lot of fun. The shows are fun.

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