WITH AN EYE ON . . . : David Anthony Higgins is right at home as 'Ellen's' resident cynic

WITH AN EYE ON . . . : David Anthony Higgins is right at home as ‘Ellen’s’ resident cynic

By N.F. MENDOZA

July 16, 1995 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

Bitter. Dark. Not exactly a typical description of a sitcom character. But when “Ellen’s” David Anthony Higgins adds, “like a cup of coffee,” there’s an obvious smile that follows. Because Higgins plays Joe, the resident cynic--and “master coffee brewer”--on the hit ABC show.

Joe’s an apt foil to star Ellen Degeneres. From the San Fernando Valley home Higgins shares with girlfriend Kim Berry, he says it’s nice “that someone isn’t going to just be a yes man” on “Ellen.” “I think anytime you have somebody”--such as Joe--”who’ll shoot you down to Earth, that’s necessary. I think everybody has friends like that.”

And Ellen’s had her share: Higgins joined the show in a recurring role midseason during the show’s troubled first season in early 1994. (It was then called “These Friends of Mine” and included Holly Fulger and Maggie Wheeler in the cast. Cast and name changes for the next season brought in Joely Fisher and Higgins. During the second season, Joe’s cynicism was toned down. Higgins has “no idea at all what the new season will bring.”

“It’s a time of changes,” Higgins says of the upcoming third season. He’s hopeful that new executive producers Eileen Heisler & DeAnn Heline and Vic Kaplan will give the show “a real focus.”

“People really like the personalities” of the show’s characters, he says. “They genuinely like Ellen and are interested in what happens to her.”

The Des Moines, Iowa, native, 33, got an early start on performing. The middle child of five, Higgins won a scholarship to the local community theater in the fourth grade. “My father did high school plays and worked as a broadcaster, and my mother was the biggest movie fan there ever was,” he says of his early interest in the craft.

While Higgins dislikes the moniker “class clown,” he acknowledges, “I used to joke a lot. I was somewhat disruptive, but teachers enjoyed it. It wasn’t the type of thing where they didn’t like me.”

Higgins took to performing right away. His enthusiasm spread to the rest of his family. His two youngest brothers are now comedy writers, his sister runs a psychic hotline in Phoenix and his older brother is in computer graphics: “I’d say we were all in the arts.”

Post-college, while working at a local grocery, Higgins joined the now-defunct Iowan Summer Operetta Workshop, one of the few companies doing exclusively Gilbert & Sullivan operettas, and there the Higgins Boys & Gruber was born.

The Higgins Boys & Gruber featured Higgins, younger brother Steve (now a writer, along with youngest brother Alan, on the recently canceled “The Jon Stewart Show”) and friend Dave Gruber Allen. The trio took their sketch comedy on the road, which wasn’t an easy task--”no one was to pay three airfares”--but their perseverance paid off.

“The Higgins Boys & Gruber”--with the trio as stars and writers--landed on the then-Comedy Channel (now Comedy Central). The show took them to Manhattan and ran for a year-and-a-half, yielding 170 hourlong episodes. “It was a half-hour of our material and then we showed clips,” he explains. The show’s pilot received a CableAce nomination for best special.

But, “we were killing ourselves,” Higgins recalls. Moving to Los Angeles, Higgins worked for several years as a stage hand at UCLA. The Higgins Brothers & Gruber continued their act.

Each also ventured out on his own. “We’d always auditioned separately for things and this time”--”These Friends of Mine”--”I got it,” Higgins says. “We just usually didn’t get things.”

Still unsure of what the new season will bring, Higgins continues to write, work on projects with partners as well as his brothers. “Whatever happens, you hope you’ll do the best you can.”

But as for “Ellen’s” Joe, he says, “he’ll, hopefully, remain acerbic” as ever.

“Ellen” airs Wednesdays at 8:30 p.m. on ABC. This fall, it moves to 8 p.m.