Mark Feuerstein Talks 'Royal Pains,' Daughter's Illness

So when you walk into those mansions, can you believe the wealth?
It's crazy, and then you meet the owners and they tell you that they try to get there for a few weeks of the year -- a house that costs as much as 50 homes that your middle class American family would live in year round.

So have you filled out your application for the Communist party?
Yes, I'm going the way of Karl Marx, absolutely.

Seriously though, doesn't it make you think things are a little unfair?
Things have always been a little unfair but they're even more unfair these days, yeah, absolutely. You have incredible wealth right next to really average socio-economic standing America in Long Island. It's all the money coming out of New York City to live the good life. It's the dream, and it's why our show does well -- it's the aspiration of the life we could live at our best.

So if the show goes on for what, another 20 years, you could afford a home there.
Yeah, maybe in 20 years I could afford a place north of the highway, which is not where you want to be. It's a little buggy and a little warmer in the summer.

Your family lives in LA. That must be hard.
Well here's how I would say it: I am off for five months that I'm currently enjoying right now, and in that time I am so hands-on as a dad that I am spending 12 to 14 hours a day from cooking breakfast to lugging three children around to slinging poopy diapers left and right. So in March I will have to stop that. I call it my workcation. I'll only be gone for two months till my entire family will descend upon me here in New York, and we'll go to the Hamptons and the beach, and they'll be here for three months so it's not like we're apart for the entire stretch.

Your youngest child was very ill last year.
It was the most challenging experience of my life. In the context of 'Royal Pains,' I can't tell you how weird it was to go from spewing medical terms on set to literally talking to real doctors about my daughter, talking about my own child in context of the medical verbiage that I am always spewing on the show. If I thought I appreciated what a doctor or a nurse did it was nothing compared to how I appreciate them now. I now think of surgeons as saints and nurses as the best of humanity. The surgeon went in like a god, like an expert genius and reconnected her tubes and then two months later, after a not successful recovery, repaired her mitral valve and because of his two hands and his ability to manipulate the human body with his tools, he saved her life -- with his brain and his hands and his skill and his acumen and his people skills, as well, to talk to us. You just cannot appreciate it until you go through it how saintly these men and women are.

How long was she in hospital for?
Eighty-nine days. The gift -- in addition to her life, which is the greatest gift -- but every time I look at her, every time I look at any of my children now, but particularly Addie, when she stands up, which she's just beginning to do, pulling herself up, when she eats a good meal, when she gains 3 ounces, I appreciate it more than most parents could ever appreciate it because I know what it's like when your child is not gaining weight and you don't know why.

Are you going to tell me you can satisfy your wife unlike your 'Sex and the City' episode?
The problem between me and Miranda was that I was so bad in bed she had to fake it. The answer is I am nothing like that character. I am incredibly successful in that regard. I resent the implication!

Did you get recognized like crazy for that part?
I did and I loved it! It was hysterical. I'm a nice Jewish boy from the Upper East Side of Manhattan. My father already had to see me in some independent movie where I'm masturbating to my own drawing, and now I'm on 'Sex and the City,' which he told the rabbi at our synagogue to watch.

Did you talk to the rabbi after the episode aired?
He said, "Mazel Tov Mark, we're really proud of you. Don't ever do that show again or at least don't tell me."

You worked with Mel Gibson on 'What Women Want.' Did he ever make any anti- Semitic comments to you?
He never said anything to me. He couldn't have been more of a gentleman. He couldn't have been more generous or kind. When we were shooting I complained about my shaving issues and he got me the Bump Fighter razor. Perhaps he secretly wished I'd be cutting my own throat, but honestly he was such a gentleman. I was shocked to learn that this guy I worked with every day for three months, who I had worshipped from afar -- 'Braveheart' of all people -- is harboring latent if not so latent anti-Semitic feelings, and then he's also incredibly violent and disrespectful to the woman he was with. Maybe there's some incredibly mature separation to be found between the artistic and chaotic personal life of Mel Gibson. Frankly I can't imagine ever looking at him the same way after what I know.

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