Why has That '70s Show struck a resounding chord with TV audiences young and old? As Torey Marcus discovers, you don't need to look any further than the six young stars who have connected on and off the set--with themselves and that '90s audience.
It's coming up on 10:30, Monday morning. Time for the first run-through of the script. They call this the "table read" here in Studio City, which--with its breathtaking views of the Hollywood Hills and endless supply of sunshine--is the furthest place in the world from the flat terrain and gas shortages of Point Place, Wisc., circa 1977.
And while the read is just minutes away, work is the last thing on the minds of the cast of That '70s Show. Cut 'em some slack, hiatus has kept them apart for a week. The way they're carrying on, though, you'd think they haven't seen each other since the Carter administration.
Ashton Kutcher arrives on the scene, donning a ridiculously large cowboy hat. He immediately runs up and high-fives Topher Grace and Danny Masterson. Wilmer Valderrama sneaks up behind Laura Prepon, and squeezes her waist. And there's Mila Kunis, the baby of the bunch. It's impossible to make out what they're all saying--glass doors and about 50 yards of distance provide an insurmountable sonic barrier--but their hysterical laughter is easy to make out. With nary a camera in sight, it's clear that the six young stars are tight on and off the set.
"We just have so much fun," Prepon reveals later in the day. "And people say that it comes across in the show."
Indeed, it does. Plucked from relative obscurity and, for the most part, possessing little acting experience, Kutcher (Michael Kelso on the show), Grace (Eric Forman), Valderrama (Fez), Prepon (Donna Pinciotti), Masterson (Steve Hyde) and Kunis (Jackie Burkhardt) don't act so much as play off their own budding friendships.
"We're not acting that hard," Grace confesses. "At the beginning we were acting hard--got all sweaty." He pauses, not to choose his words carefully, but because an acting epiphany is forthcoming.
"We understand each other. The character evolves to become a lot of you."
Nostalgia's a Terrible Thing to Waste
It seems all we do these days is look back. Maybe it's out of fear. What happens after we've partied like it's 1999? Perhaps we want to slow things down, to stave off information overload. Or maybe the media-controlling boomers are thumbing their noses at Gen Y by glorifying their own youth. Detroit Rock City, Dick, Freaks and Geeks, all of VH1's programming, Lenny Kravitz's entire oeuvre--the list goes on. At a time when the pre-Reagan years are fetishized beyond belief, That '70s Show wisely eschews the nostalgia trap.
And by drawing from their own recent late-teen experiences--Kunis is still in high school and just passed her driver's test; the rest are old enough to be in college--the stars of That '70s Show have nailed what it means to be young, suburban and bored. And that goes for any decade--the '70s, '80s, '90s, whenever. Which explains why the show is, in its second season, such a hit, not only with the late boomers who came of age during the time of fly collars, Saturday Night Fever and Jimmy Carter, but also with today's teens and twentysomethings. In fact, the season premiere was watched by more 12- to 34-year-olds than any other show that entire night.
"I think the family in the show has a lot of similarities to parents today," says Valderrama, who moved to the States from Venezuela only four years ago. "The choices that the kids make [on the show] relate with the way kids have been raised today."
True, hard-ass fathers, bitchy older sisters, hand-me-down cars and sex in the back seat are as '99 as they are '77. Still, it's a bit ironic that a comedy set in the '70s manages to keep it real when many of the au courant dramas created for the teen and twentysomething set seem so forced. Masterson has few kind words for one of those shows.
"Dawson's Creek--I don't know half the words they're saying, and I'm 23 years old." Slightly annoyed, he maintains an easygoing nature that suggests a drug-free Hyde. "I've never met f**king kids who have all that crap. Everything's a problem, everything's dramatic crap. I mean, yeah, once in a while s**t gets you down, but you bounce back."
So much for diplomacy. So much for All the other shows are great, too! But with no handlers hovering, who cares? Masterson's a pro--as a former child actor, he's got more experience than the other five combined--but he's also on a roll, and telling it like he sees it.
On That '70s Show, he continues, "there are no high-school dilemmas. We live in the middle of nowhere. We've got nothing to do but sit in the basement, so we entertain each other."
And down there, in Eric's Point Place, Wisc., basement, geeky, scrawny and likable Eric makes out with Donna, the tomboy next door, while Hyde, the fro-wearing, disco-hating conspiracy theorist, pines for her. Dim-witted Kelso tries to break up with possessive, self-absorbed Jackie--again. And Fez? Poor Fez. The exchange student from who-knows-where just sits there, calling everybody a whore, getting most of the laughs, feeling everything in his loins. Ahh, high school.
"It's reality-based," Kutcher says, still decked out like an urban cowboy.
"It's not the Cleavers. There's no BS in our show."
"It's not The Brady Bunch," offers Valderrama.
That's for sure. Throw on Nick at Nite, and you'll be hard-pressed to find the very un-Brady episode in which Greg and Marcia sit around in the basement, get high, make toast and record all their seemingly profound statements.
But Enough About the Show
Off-camera, as on the show, there's constant ribbing:
So, are you guys anything like your characters?
Kutcher: "I get plenty of ass."
Grace: "I'm a lot like Eric."
Kutcher: "He is Eric Forman. Topher Forman. Eric Grace."
Grace: "I always said what's interesting about this show is, what if you had a totally normal Midwest thing, and the one mathematical equation that made it different is that the 'Donna' wanted to date the 'Eric' of the group? In my life, and I think in most people's experience, that never happens, at least in high school."
Kutcher: "I don't know. When I was in high school, I had a buddy who was kind of a dork like you, and he had a girl."
Grace: "That's cuz he had a f**kin' c**k the size of a football."
It's jarring to witness Grace and Kutcher's locker-room discussion, and then catch up with Kunis. "I'm 16, and I'm having the time of my life--hey, Jennifer Love Hewitt's new series!" Kunis veers between such peppy, Beck-worthy non-sequiturs and the rest of the cast's friendly teasing. "If you look up to anybody in the cast, you're gonna be screwed for life," she says, probably half-kidding. "Topher abuses me constantly."
Kunis and her five costars are not only tight, but they display an ambitious streak (see "The Young and the Restless," p. 33) that their shiftless TV alter-egos would find downright shocking. And you can't help but admire that.
For now, at least, their focus remains on That '70s Show, which is not a problem when work is such a joy.
"We love getting the scripts and knowing the s**t is right on," says Masterson. It's hard to disagree with that claim. Starting with the season premiere in late September--in which Eric's and Donna's parents eat Hyde's "special" brownies, and all parent-child roles are reversed--it's clear that the show is really hitting its stride. Who knows? Maybe That '70s Show will surpass The Brady Bunch in popularity and become a future fixture in syndication.
"I'm kind of a pessimist," says Grace. "But that's just always been me." He switches gears. "I have confidence in the show. I think I'm gonna be like the Ropers. They went off on their spin-off."
What will yours be called? "Just Eric. Two episodes."
Just Shoot Us
If there's one part of the job they hate, it's this. Their long day--the table read, the rehearsal, the interviews--is winding down, but now they face the photo shoot. The six of them have been jumping on a trampoline for 20 minutes now. "One, two, three, jump," the photographer enthuses, emphasis on jump. The six of them, holding hands and goofing around on a crowded trampoline in the hot California sun, comply. Click. "One, two, three, jump." They do it again, in unison, as a team, to the Fatboy Slim breakbeats. Click. "One, two, three, jump." Click.
"You want to see some Pokemon?" Grace asks nobody in particular. He strikes a cartoonish martial-arts pose, and playful pushes follow. Click. Valderrama turns to Prepon, grabs her and faux frenches her. Click. Kutcher, who was reluctant to do this--it's a long story, well, actually an old trampoline injury--is soaring the highest, working the camera like the former CK model he is.
Now it's going on half an hour, and the smiles have faded between shots. Masterson's sweating in his intergalactic space suit; Kunis looks exhausted. A silence has fallen on the trampoline. They're still holding hands, but there's no jump in their "one, two, three, jump." Then, out of nowhere, Valderrama, the boy who cried whore, gets everyone back 'N Sync. "It's tearing up my heart," he croons in his not-so-thick accent, and nobody--not his five costars, nor the photographer or the Fox publicists--can contain their laughter. Suddenly, there's jump again. Suddenly, just like on That '70s Show, everybody's a happy extended family again.
The Young and the Restless
What the stars of That '70s Show do when they're not parading around in bell-bottoms.
Kunis, who goes to public high school and plans to attend college, played the young supermodel Gia in HBO's critical smash of the same name. What's more impressive, however, are her two appearances in the critical flop Baywatch. You ever get the urge to put a bathing suit on and run in slow motion along the beach? "God, how many times have I done that with my friends!"
Valderrama graduated from high school last summer, and also plans to go to college. "Right now," he says, "I want to spend time on my career and build it up to a point where if I go to college, when I come back to the business, it's not gonna hurt me." For now, he'll be making guest appearances on other TV shows, including Chicken Soup for the Soul, based on the book series of the same name.
Grace was in the middle of midterms at the University of Southern California when he began auditioning for That '70s Show. "I really blew it on midterms," he says. Still, Grace would like to go back. He never declared a major, which allowed him to "just check out everything, but in a really serious manner, so if you took a cinema class, you'd actually learn quite a bit."
At 23, Masterson's the oldest of the six. As a kid, he acted in over 100 commercials. His favorite was a Tide ad he did when he was nine. "All I did was play baseball," he says. "All day, it was me slidin' into home, me hittin' the ball, me making diving catches. It was incredible." Lately, Masterson has been busy on the indie circuit. "I'd like to work harder," he says. "We did this movie, Lunch Time Special, that Soleil Moon Frye wrote and directed. We shot that thing in, like, 18 days, working 18-hour days straight through. I love working 18-hour days."
Prepon recently completed her first movie, The Pornographer: A Love Story, in which she stars with Martin Donovan.
Kutcher, who grew up on a farm in an Iowa town of 100, graduated from high school a year early before enrolling at the University of Iowa, where he majored in biochemical engineering. "I wouldn't mind going back for writing," he says. For now, Kutcher can be seen in the upcoming Reindeer Games, Down to You, with Freddie Prinze Jr. and Selma Blair, and Texas Rangers, a Western that also stars James Van Der Beek and Usher. "I'll probably never be the best actor in Hollywood," he says. "But I hope I can be the hardest working."
That Pre-Millennial Show
You've seen the show, you know the characters. Here, for the very first time, the That '70s Show reunion.
Twenty-two years from now, there's a That 70's Show reunion, set in 1999. As your character approaches 40, what's he or she like?
Valderrama: "I would see [Fez] owning a disco club [and] a Trans Am, and...just surrounded by beautiful women."
Kutcher: "I think [Kelso] owns a very special restaurant chain called 'Everything Special,' where everything is special."
Is he with Jackie?
Kutcher: "Married to Jackie, yeah."
Grace: "And he's still saying, 'I'm gonna dump her!' Hyde's in and out of jail."
Masterson: "For threatening to bomb the White House."
Grace: "I have no idea what Eric would be. [He's] based on [That '70s Show creator] Mark Brazill, so I think it would be that Eric moves to LA and writes a sitcom about all his buddies."
Kutcher: "Danny'll be in jail, too. Not just Hyde."
Kunis: "[Jackie] has had a lot of plastic surgery. She's the president, has two kids, drives a Porsche and is married to a Brad Pitt lookalike."
Prepon: "[Donna] would be really successful, doing her own thing and living a great life."
Is she with Eric?
Prepon: "She's an independent, successful woman."
Masterson: "Successful in what manner? What does she do for a living?"
Prepon [to Masterson]: "What was your f**kin' answer?"
Masterson: "Hyde's in jail, dude."
Prepon: "All right, so Donna's visiting Hyde in jail."
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