COULD it really have been so simple? A handsome Londoner arrives in Hollywood not far into a career as a writer and player on comedy shows like “Olivia Lee: Dirty, Sexy, Funny” and as half of the sketch duo Tommy and the Weeks. Soon he has sold a script to a major network and then snagged a leading role in one of the season’s most anticipated sitcoms on another.  “My life is just a series of mistakes and regrets of varying degrees,” Ed Weeks, the star of that fairy tale, said recently about his first foray into American television.  On Tuesday Mr. Weeks will make his debut as Dr. Jeremy Reed, an ob-gyn in practice with Dr. Mindy Lahiri, played by Mindy Kaling, on “The Mindy Project” on Fox. With his molten-chocolate eyes and accent designed for wheedling off panties, Jeremy offers Mindy, a self-described chubby workaholic with zero love life, a diversion.  “Do you want to hang out?” he asks as they recline on the sofa in the doctor’s lounge.  “We are hanging out,” she replies.  “Let’s hang out — deep,” he purrs.  Cue eventual sex on the exam table.  In a recent phone interview Mr. Weeks, 31, spoke with Kathryn Shattuck about his lonely childhood, charmed adult life and things that go bump in the night. These are excerpts from their conversation.  A. This is my first American job, indeed, and my first regular role on a sitcom. I turned 30, and I wanted to try out L.A., you know? I thought if I don’t try it out now, I probably never will. I’ll never have the guts to. So I came out to write initially. I sold a spec script to CBS last year, and then that didn’t move forward. And this script sort of landed in my in-box.  Q. You play the gorgeous one. Did they groom you for the role?  A. No, there’s been very little grooming. I wish there’d been more grooming. I’m dressed very shabbily right now, in fact. No, the only preparation we really had were rehearsals, and we all went out and got drunk and did karaoke with the cast and Mindy right before the pilot. Even though Mindy is incredibly successful, she never acts that way. She just acts like she’s your hilarious, occasionally dirty-minded friend.  A. He went to Cambridge, then for medical school he decided to abscond to the University of Hawaii and lay around on the beach with his chest all oily and converse with the local maidens. I think he’s this combination of very smart and disciplined. I mean, there are lots of similarities between me and him.  Q. You mean the smart, disciplined part?  A. Well, he was sent to boarding school when he was 7, as was I. We learn that when he was 10 years old his father told him to be a man and tell his mother that he wanted a divorce. That didn’t happen to me, I hasten to add. But there’s a slightly kind of stiff, repressed British upbringing, and I think he made up for that by moving to America and becoming a hedonist and a player and having a different partner in bed every night. He probably uses his pain as a form of seduction. Q. And you use your pain as a form of seduction?  A. Oh, my God, of course. What else does anyone have except for a collection of slightly painful memories?  Q. How hard was it to summon Jeremy’s essence?  A. The part was written as an American character, a Bradley Cooper type. And I remember reading it in preparation for my audition with my roommate, and she said, “I think you should try it in your own voice, because I think that British thing makes him sound a bit smoother, a bit Hugh Grantish, maybe a bit smarmier in a kind of a nice way.”  Q. I read on your Twitter feed that you just experienced your first earthquake.  A. Yes, I was watching some reruns of “Seinfeld,” and the whole building shook. I found it quite exhilarating. I probably wasn’t as nervous as I should have been. I was telling a guy the next day, and he said, “Well, I guess your building must be earthquake safe then if you weren’t scared,” and I said, “I have no idea, oh my God.” And I became retroactively terrified.  Q. I also hear it’s your ambition to become best friends with Mindy.  A. One day, one day. Me and the rest of the world. When she writes, you really feel like she’s talking to you. It seems like most of the planet has a huge crush on her. So I’d have to join a very long line.
Ed Weeks has moved to Los Angeles from London for his American breakthrough in the new comedy âThe Mindy Project.â