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Trying for a TV comeback three years after walking away from instant stardom on NYPD Blue, the actor says he's learned lessons he'll apply to his new job, headlining this fall's legal drama Michael Hayes.
The lanky, 41-year-old redhead blames burnout, misunderstandings and stardom that struck like "lightning" for his crash and burn departure from NYPD after only its first full season, a parting so unpleasant that one of the show's executive producers still refuses to publicly speak Caruso's name.
"It was like being shot out of a cannon," is how he remembers it now.
"I had never starred in something before and there were times that I probably did not make the right choice in the moment, and I could have been more of an adult. I could have been a leader."
Asked specifically how he could have been more of an adult, he quipped, "I could have gone into another business."
At the time, Caruso became a symbol for TV newcomers who quickly demand huge salary increases and actors who abandoned hit series to seek movie fame but never found it or another TV hit again, such as Cheers's Shelley Long and M*A*S*H's Maclean Stevenson.
Caruso insists now that money wasn't the issue -- he wanted longer production breaks instead because he was exhausted, working 56 weeks in a row that first season on NYPD and the movie Kiss Of Death -- and that, ultimately, he felt he had no other choice but to quit.
Kiss of Death and his other feature film, Jade, flopped, and Caruso says he found himself "put on hold" by the Hollywood community.
Although he joked darkly that he's considered suicide -- "I ruled that out within an hour," he says -- he never gave up.
"I never stopped believing in myself," he says.
"I knew there were things I hadn't shared yet with the public and I wasn't going to abandon the process."
To return to TV, Caruso had to offer a more private mea culpa, persuading NYPD executive producer Steven Bochco to release him from a contract that barred him from returning to the medium until 1998.
"I just saw him the other night and we're kind of on the mend," Caruso said of his former boss.
Although it diverted most of the time and attention of the 45-minute press conference away from his new CBS drama, Caruso stoically answered every NYPD question put to him. The one remark that visibly angered him came not from a journalist but from Paul Haggis, one of the show's executive producers.
As Caruso reflected lengthily on how his NYPD experience had evolved, Haggis quipped, "There's a shovel around here somewhere, David."
Reporters snickered and Caruso flushed red.
"I meant for digging yourself out," Haggis rallied, but Caruso's jaw clenched.
Caruso had praise for another co-worker -- Michael Hayes' other David, Canadian actor David Cubitt, who will play Hayes' ex-convict brother as much as his schedule on his Toronto-based series Traders allows.
"Every once in a while you'll kind of run across someody who has got a very original presence and approach to this," Caruso said.
"He's great. We're very lucky to have him," he said.