PLAYBOY: Who are they?
LEARY: My character is based on two good friends of mine. One is the technical advisor to the show, Terry Quinn, who I've known for 20 years and who's still a firefighter. I've never told the other guy that we based part of the character on him, and he's always telling me, "I don't know where you got that, but that's so fucking true." He doesn't see any of it. A lot of the shit you see on the show is literally what people went through with him, and we're afraid to tell him. The thing about television is that people project their own experiences onto the characters but don't necessarily come out and say they could be based on themselves or someone they know.

PLAYBOY: Your character gets regular visits from Jesus and from fire victims he couldn't save. When did Denis Leary last see God or dead people?
LEARY: I used to be incredibly cynical about people who talk about after-death experiences and how people came back in certain ways, but my experience has been that they do come back. It's actually an occupational hazard for firefighters because a lot of guys see people after they've failed to save them, especially co-workers. One time we were shooting a scene in which a little girl dies, and my character thinks she's still alive. We were rehearsing, and the little actress had to go to the bathroom. While we were waiting, a real-life fireman standing next to me said, "God, she reminds me of this little girl who died on me last year. I've been seeing her every morning before I go to work." I asked, "What do you mean?" and he goes, "I just see her, man." A lot of firefighters who were down at ground zero tell me that's what they hope for, a visit or some sign.

PLAYBOY: Women love firemen, and you're playing one. How are you dealing?
LEARY: For years Terry Quinn and I have known Matt Dillon, who's a goodlooking guy. But we have been places where women would walk right by Matt to get to Terry because he was wearing a firefighter T-shirt. We'll go to a premiere or something, and women go fucking crazy. It's fucking insane in a good way. We kind of laugh about it, but I'm not complaining at all.

PLAYBOY: You've been married since 1989 to Ann Lembeck, who wrote episodes of your earlier TV show The Job, as well as the memoir An Innocent, A Broad. Does she complain?
LEARY: If it were the reverse, I'd fucking kill somebody. It sometimes bugs the shit out of her, but she's also a mom, so she's thinking that my getting attention is a good thing for our two kids. I think it's really fucking hard--almost impossible, in fact--for most straight men to live with most straight women. Then on top of that, to keep the initial spark going is also hard. Obviously when you have children, it's this never-ending fucking story. But it helps if you've built that kind of life with somebody with a good sense of humor who knew you before you had money and fame and all that stuff. My wife is really fucking funny and gorgeous, which helps too. You've got to feel like you have an intellectual equal, because otherwise you just get fucking bored. Our relationship has always been another storm or a fucking land mine or something, but it's never been fucking boring.

PLAYBOY: Rescue Me is on FX, but it pushes the envelope like an HBO show in its language and situations. What do you make of the FCC slapping a $3.6 million indecency fine on CBS's Without a Trace?
LEARY: It's the sort of cyclone the religious right and conservatives have been pouring money into starting for ages. With the Bush administration in power, they feel they can take advantage of the atmosphere right now. Every time I see these people talking on C-SPAN, my reaction is always "Fuck you. I'm a parent taking care of my own fucking kids. You're in charge of yours." I think this is a battle they will ultimately lose. If the religious right and conservatives get everybody involved, either they're going to get a different conclusion from what they expect or we're going to live in two different worlds, one where there will be TV for fucking grown-ups and one with these incredibly inane networks that conservatives can watch.

PLAYBOY: You mean networks with endless reruns of Little House on the Prairie?
LEARY: Yeah. Radio as we once knew it is already dead. I got satellite radio a year ago, not because of Howard Stern but for sports and music regular radio won't play anymore. The same thing can happen to regular network TV, which I don't watch either because it's so fucking bad. But I have friends whose shows I watch because I have to.

PLAYBOY:What's must-see Leary TV?
LEARY: Kiefer Sutherland on 24. The King of Queens because Kevin James is so fucking funny, he makes me die laughing. I'm trying to catch up on Lost because I like it. The Sopranos is my favorite. When I saw this season's first few episodes, I went, "There go all the acting awards." Then I saw Thief, which is fucking unbelievable television, so now I think The Sopranos has some competition. FX has Thief, The Shield, Nip/Tuck and our show because the president of FX, John Landgraf, came from other big networks, where he said, "I don't like any of this stuff. Why are we making it?" Now he does only the shows he loves. I wish my writing partners and I could come up with bad TV-show ideas so just one could become one of these pieces of shit that make money on a network for fucking 15 years. We're incapable, so we'd have to hire retards to do it for us.

PLAYBOY: What kind of clout have your show's Emmy and Golden Globe nominations brought?
LEARY: The Emmy nominations definitely make a difference in the show's profile. An Emmy win might make a little more difference, but just being in that mix is good. Fuck it, this award stuff isn't a horse race where the fastest horse wins. It's partly political and partly handshaking and all that. I voted for Matt Dillon in Crash for last year's Oscar because I thought he was brilliant but also because he's an old friend. I voted for Philip Seymour Hoffman, but if somebody else in the best actor category were a good friend, sorry, my friend would get my vote.

PLAYBOY: Your TV show keeps firefighters' problems--their job burnout, how little they're paid, how underequipped they can be--in the public consciousness. How much money have you raised through the Leary Firefighters Foundation, the organization you started in 2000?
LEARY: We're at about $7 million or $8 million. We ask the New York City department, "What do you guys need that isn't in the city's budget right now?" Last year it was a giant tank. It cost $1 million, and we turned it over directly to the department. It has satellite equipment that allows the chiefs outside to communicate with the guys instead of having to wait to go into the building. It felt great to watch CNN and see they had driven the tank down to New Orleans after Katrina.

PLAYBOY:You became famous as a standup comic. Do you miss it now that you're doing the series?
LEARY: Once you've fallen in love with stand-up, you always want to go back to it. Doing a television series has made it impossible for me to tour, so I keep my comic muscles strong with charity gigs like the yearly one we do in Boston with my friend Cam Neely, who's a Hall of Fame hockey player. I host that, which means I have to do at least 30 minutes up front and another 30 along the way. I also do a yearly event in New York. Sometimes I do Michael J. Fox's private foundation event for Parkinson's, and this year, when I went overseas to push Rescue Me, I did a 10,000-seater in Dublin. I usually bring some young comedian the audience hasn't necessarily seen or who is about to become a star, like Dane Cook, who we had before anybody knew who he was. These gigs are high-pressure. It's not like you just go out there and fuck around. You have to make them laugh.

PLAYBOY: Do you prepare much?
LEARY: I make bullet points and just talk those out when I get onstage. I might think about five things in the course of the week or day--stuff that's in my head, stuff that's in the newspapers--but once I get onstage and say something about Bush or whatever, 18 other thoughts about him that I'd forgotten just come right out. That adrenaline kicks in, you're making those connections, and if the audience is with you, you go, "Aw, fuck, what about this and that?"

PLAYBOY: What compares with the thrill of doing stand-up?
LEARY: The closest thing to it is boxing. It doesn't matter what mood you're in, you've got to have your fucking wits about you or you'll get your head hit, which doesn't feel good. I don't know a more democratic process than stand-up. Somebody brings you onstage and you say whatever the fuck you want. You have total freedom of speech--no interference, no editing, no limitations. It's my favorite thing, just you and everything in your brain versus everything in the audience's brains.

PLAYBOY: How did you get into stand-up?
LEARY: I went to St. Peter-Marian High School, and my grades were Ds. But this one nun, Sister Rosemary Sullivan, saved my life by forcing me to audition for Mame when I was 13. I got the part, and after that she talked me into doing other plays. My family didn't have any money and I didn't have much else in my back pocket, so by the time I was a senior, one of the nuns said I should go down and apply to Emerson, an arts college in Boston, where you audition and write an essay and SATs are secondary. I was like, "Yeah, whatever," but I fucking got a full scholarship. After graduation I wanted to act, but there aren't many theater jobs in Boston. Everybody was working shit jobs so they could get work onstage. Lenny Clarke's brother was running this talent show in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and I fucking couldn't believe it when I heard that Steven Wright, who lived around the corner from me, was getting paid 25 bucks a set. Lenny was doing a kind of stream-of-consciousness comedy onstage too, but he was basically a street-fighting maniac. Steven was the most incredibly shy, quiet guy, though he was really funny, and the comedy he was doing was like haiku. I thought, Fuck, if he can do it, I'll go up and talk. I don't give a fuck what happens. I'll get 25 bucks. I figured I'd get $50 for both Saturday shows, and then I could always work the door for tickets.