An Ideal Husband: DAVID CONRAD

by Steve Pond

David Conrad and Jennifer Love Hewitt are rehearsing a scene from this week’s episode of GHOST WHISPERER in which they rescue a neighbor from an irate spirit. During run-throughs, Hewitt tries gingerly to lift a heavy ladder off the man---but when the camera rolls, Conrad simply grabs the ladder and flings it away in one motion. "That’s so cool, that you can just pick it up like that," Hewitt says, grabbing the upper arm of her on screen hubby. "David," she adds with a grin, "you’re so manly."

And she’s womanly, to say the least, which is what makes the two stars of CBS’ Friday fright-night hit one of TV’s hottest couples. As Melinda Gordon and Jim Clancy, a wife who talks to ghosts and the paramedic husband who supports her offbeat talent, Hewitt and Conrad not only have an easy rapport but throw off enough sparks to wake the dead.

"We have instant chemistry," Hewitt says. "I’m a high-energy, perky person, and David’s calm, grounded and not nearly as perky. He brings a real foundation both to me and to Melinda."

Which is not to say that the 38 year-old Pittsburgh native doesn’t have his silly side. "I think people would be surprised to know how goofy he is," Hewitt says. "They don’t get to see him in the hair and make-up trailer in the morning, running around in his underwear wearing a cowboy hat, or putting on a blonde ‘80’s wig and dancing like he’s David Bowie." She pauses and giggles sheepishly. "And he’s going to kill me for telling you about it."

Actually, viewers have gotten a few glimpses of Conrad in his underwear, sans the cowboy hat or Bowie wig. As the first season has progressed, Hewitt’s tops have gotten lower and her nightwear skimpier---and Conrad has joined the skin show with the occasional shirtless bedroom scene.

"Of course they’re going to want Jennifer to be wearing less and less," he says. "So I thought, ‘If she does it, I’ll do it, and then we’ll be even.’ And also, I watch things like "Sex and The City", and some of the girls have sex with their clothes on. Nobody has sex with their clothes on. So when I go to bed on this show, which is my underwear or nothing."

The series isn’t the first time Conrad has been supportive of a partner with paranormal powers. "I had a girlfriend in drama school who truly had this astonishing sixth sense about so many things; it was mesmerizing. Once you get past your freak meter, you can’t help but be enamored of it."

Still, he doesn’t completely buy the show’s premise. "It’s not only a reality show," he says. "It’s about myths and what we wish for." Conrad’s the pragmatic type: Born in Pittsburgh, PA, he still keeps a house in that city, sports a Pittsburgh Steelers sign in his trailer on the GHOST WHISPERER set and swears, "I just want to marry a girl from my hometown and have kids."

In the meantime, the graduate of Julliard’s prestigious drama school (also an Alma mater, he points out, of MEDIUM costar JAKE WEBER, TV’s other paranormal husband) has kept a quiet film and TV career going for dozen of years, with plenty of hiatuses for his true passion: theater. After his much hype but short lived 1996 RELATIVITY, for example, he turned down offers for BOOGIE NIGHTS and BAND OF BROTHERS in order to perform in far lower profile stage productions. (In the past two years, he’s done HENRY IV in Pittsburgh and RICHARD III in Madison, New Jersey.)

"I had a lot of offers to do film stuff," he says with a shrug. "I went off and did plays, and people were like, ‘What is this guy doing?’" He laughs. "I’ve made a lot of dumb choices, and it screwed up my career. But I like to be on stage---I’ve got to stand in front of real human beings."

Ever restless, he figures that even if his current show is a long running hit, he won’t last. "In a show like this, husbands are an endanger species," he says, philosophically. "If I make two years, I’ll be happy."