“Night Court” Goes to Night Court

In all the time that the sitcom “Night Court” has been on the air—for nine seasons beginning in 1984, and now again, in an NBC reboot that’s in its third season—the show’s star John Larroquette never visited an actual night court. That changed on a recent Wednesday, when Larroquette was in town. He arrived on a street corner near City Hall just before 5 P.M. and eyed 60 Centre Street, the classical Roman-style courthouse with Corinthian columns and a sweeping staircase. “It isn’t that one,” Greg Gomez, a public defender who had agreed to show him around, said. “That’s the nice courthouse you have in your opening credits.” Gomez gestured across the street toward 100 Centre Street—the criminal courthouse, a cheerless Art Deco building the color of cinder blocks.

Larroquette has played a lot of lawyers: Joey Heric on “The Practice,” Carl Sack on “Boston Legal,” and, on “Night Court,” the dour womanizer Dan Fielding. In the original show, Fielding was a prosecutor; in the reboot, he is a public defender. Larroquette initially turned down the reprised role, he said, but then he thought, I used to be funny—maybe I can be funny again.

Larroquette, filming “Night Court” from a soundstage in Burbank, never saw a need to do intense character research. “Hopefully, it’s twenty-two minutes of decent jokes—that’s how I always thought of it,” he said. “I just memorized my lines and tried not to walk into the furniture.” He is a youthful seventy-seven, with a grin that forces his eyes into horizontal crescents; he wore black jeans and a navy sweater. “When my character was an A.D.A., I could be as misanthropic as I wanted,” he said. “Now that I’m playing a defense lawyer, I have to, like, try to help people.” He continued, “As a prosecutor, I never lost a case. Now Fielding loses. Is that realistic?”

Gomez laughed. “Yeah, man,” he said. “That’s all realistic.”

Passing through security, Larroquette removed his watch and wallet, paused before a metal detector, and gallantly asked, “May I?” The guard waved him through. Approaching the courtroom, Larroquette looked around. “It’s dingy and drab and run-down—just like our set! Do you have a gross cafeteria, too?”

Elizabeth Bender, a public defender who was helping with the tour, said, “I’d kill for the cafeteria on that show.” They entered the courtroom, and Bender pointed to a crumbly part of the ceiling.

“Just a little asbestos,” Larroquette said.

Suddenly a court officer announced, “Everyone quiet down! AR3 is now in session, the Honorable Rachel Pauley presiding!” Larroquette folded his six-foot-four frame onto a seat. The first case was a man facing a misdemeanor charge for allegedly violating an order of protection. He had made a statement to the police: “Just take me to jail—it’s too cold out here.” The judge released him without bail.

A second man, accused of possessing three vials of crack, pleaded guilty to a noncriminal infraction, and the judge ordered him to report to a Brooklyn court the next morning. “He just spent his fiftieth birthday in custody, Judge,” his lawyer, Matt Daloisio, said. “Can we give him the weekend?” The judge assented, but warned of the consequences if he failed to appear on Monday.

On “Night Court,” Larroquette said, Judge Harry Stone would have ruled the same way. “Though,” he added, “Stone may have made the whole courtroom sing ‘Happy Birthday’ to the guy.” Between cases, Larroquette sat with Gomez and Bender, whispering questions: Were there really jail cells under their feet? (Yes.) Did all defendants have to be handcuffed? (Yes.) Is cash bail still a thing? (Oh, yes.)

During a lull, Larroquette approached the bench. “Welcome to night court!” Judge Pauley said to him. “I’m old enough to remember the first series.”

Larroquette thanked her and said, “I hope I’m not disrupting things here.” On the original “Night Court,” Judge Stone was a bighearted prankster who performed magic tricks from the bench. “Do you do any magic at all?” Larroquette asked.

Pauley smiled and leaned forward. “I have absolutely no talent!” she said.

Afterward, Larroquette wandered into the clerks’ office, where he met Aston Ellis, who said that, whenever anyone asks him what he does, he says, “Just think of Mac on ‘Night Court.’ ”

Larroquette demurred: “But it’s a vaudeville act. We had horses in court! Do you have that?”

“Sometimes it smells like it,” another clerk said.

Recently, Daloisio said, a judge berated a lawyer for being distracted by a pigeon that had flown into the courtroom.

Larroquette brightened. “In the new series, we had a whole invasion of pigeons! Some were well trained enough to fly to their perch. Others were improvising, and not very well.” ♦