Move over Saul Goodman, there’s a new Slippin’ Jimmy on TV. On last week’s Season 2 premiere episode of Fox’s “The Mick,” Scott MacArthur’s character bummed around for days at a luxury hotel — the faux “Fairbanks” — of which he wasn’t technically a guest.
How’d Jimmy pull that off? Simple: He wore a bathrobe everywhere, always had wet hair and walked with purpose.
The hilarious premise wasn’t without danger though — both to MacArthur’s body and the real Westwood W Hotel’s ceiling one floor below. We’ll let the writer-actor explain all that to you just like he did for us.
As MacArthur (pictured above, left) told TheWrap:
“In-between takes we would take the robe and sink it into a giant bucket of water. And then I would be standing there in this nude-colored Speedo, and people would be checking into the hotel, looking over, you know, of course [wondering] what the hell was going on.
Right before ‘Action’ — because we wanted it as wet as possible — they would give me a cue. The robe would come out of the bucket, it would go on. And then… one of the guys that worked at craft services — because it was so much water — he would hand me a giant bucket of water, I would dump it on my head a la the ALS Challenge, and then I would turn the corner to go talk to the boys, but multiple times I would turn the corner and just eat sh– because the floor was marble. So, that kept happening… I kept eating sh–.
As soon as I’d turn the corner… everyone on the crew would very quietly have to mop up this water because it started collecting and we were actually told by the hotel it was becoming an issue on the floor below.”
The problem there was the Chernin Brothers’ constant insistence on going “wetter” — as if that’s actually possible after one if already drenched — as well as the production’s choice of “pool.” MacArthur would do the bucket-dump standing in an old fountain filled with black stones and fake ferns, he told us.
“I would like kinda stand on the stones, thinking that if it was an old fountain it would be waterproof,” MacArthur explained. “But it turns out that it actually wasn’t.”
His second mistake (of many) was hitting “the entrance of that scene hot,” in MacArthur’s words. That doesn’t mix well with a flooded upscale L.A. inn and at one point he nearly took co-star Thomas Barbusca (pictured above, right) down with him.
Like many of Jimmy’s quirks, MacArthur’s real-life antics inspired that plot line: There was an entire year in college where the guy only wore a robe, “heavily inspired by ‘The Big Lebowski,’” as he told us.
“I did notice that people treated me a little differently,” MacArthur recalled.
Guess how well that worked out? Right, about as well as it did for Jimmy, who is now back to living in the Pemberton’s burnt-out mansion. Keep reading.
“I wore the robe everywhere I went. I had a red mohawk and a I wore a robe,” MacArthur said. “And I was in school in New Hampshire and I refused to wear shoes and it was winter — and then I just started getting strep throat and I reexamined my whole situation.”
“And here I am… I wear clothes and I no longer have tonsils, so it all worked out,” he concluded.
See more of Jimmy’s capers tonight at 9/8c on Fox’s “The Mick.”