David Schwimmer may be the star of AMC’s new drama “Feed the Beast,” but an opening scene of Sunday’s premiere episode is all about a pig, as the camera zooms in on a swine being expertly butchered in a meat market.
For executive producer Clyde Phillips, the scene, which was shot at King Solomon Foodsin Sunset Park, Brooklyn, felt like home.
“Going to that market was like going back to my childhood,” says Phillips, who grew up the son of a butcher in Boston. “I could still break down a side of beef.”
Phillips, whose previous credits include “Dexter” and “Nurse Jackie,” has a personal connection to his latest project. The show, which premieres Sunday at 10 p.m., follows two best friends — an alcoholic sommelier (Schwimmer) and a coke-addict chef (Jim Sturgess) — who dream of opening a restaurant in The Bronx and become indebted to the mob.
David Schwimmer stars in “Feed the Beast”Photo: Frank Ockenfels/AMC
Growing up in Beantown’s Dorchester neighborhood, Phillips, now 57, started working at his father’s meat market in Haymarket Square when he was 10. In addition to being a butcher, his dad, Mike, was also a “low-level crook.”
“He made $150 a week and would bet $25 on the horses and lose,” Phillips says. “And the interest would be $5 a week, so that $25 became $30, became $35, and he got in trouble with the mob.”
In the series, Dion (Sturgess) owes $500,000 to local mobster the Tooth Fairy (played by “Mad Men” actor Michael Gladis), so-called for his preferred intimidation method of pulling teeth. Though the character is drawn from the Danish series on which “Feed the Beast” is based, memories of his childhood helped him understand Dion’s desperation when trying to repay his debts.
“I didn’t realize what was going on when I was a kid. But [later], when I became of age, I understood what all the lies were about, why the phone was always ringing at night, why things of mine were disappearing — because he was hawking them,” he says.
The Mafia eventually pushed his family out of Boston when Phillips was 13; they moved to Southern California. His dad opened a new meat market in Los Angeles where Phillips continued to work through his teens and in his college days at UCLA. His father’s gambling troubles continued, and he died at age 65 of lung cancer.
The job gave Phillips an understanding of what it takes to get food to the table that he wanted to bring to “Feed the Beast.” The show’s opening title sequence, which Phillips co-wrote, tells the story of a lamb going from a meadow to a forkful of meat in someone’s mouth — a process Phillips grew up witnessing firsthand.
“People, they [usually] don’t have to think about the process,” he says. “As someone who tells stories, I want everything in there.”
But despite a childhood spent in food service and running a TV series about a restaurant, Phillips is hardly a cuisine connoisseur. He even gave up meat to become a pescetarian 10 years ago for health reasons.
“I am a nonfood-guy,” he admits. “Today for lunch I had a banana and a health bar. I don’t understand how people can eat a steak at lunch and continue working — I would go to sleep.”
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