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You probably know him as uber-geeky Wheel of Fortune fan Ed Grimley. Or maybe from roles like Franck, the over-the-top wedding planner in the 1991 remake of Father of the Bride. But if you happen to see him on the new series Damages, well, you may find yourself doing a double take. Forget funny guy, or even comically bitchy guy – this is Martin Short as one seriously nasty piece of work.

And he didn’t hesitate to take the part. When the producers of Damages, a Golden Globe and Emmy-winning drama that debuted in 2007 and launched its latest season last weekend, asked Short to play Leonard Winstone – an unscrupulous attorney representing a family modelled on Bernie Madoff – he jumped at the chance. Not only could he dive into an unusually dark character, the ripped-from-the-headlines script – about clients stuck in the largest investment fraud in Wall Street history – made for a creative production process with a cast that includes Glenn Close (as an equally ruthless lawyer) and Lily Tomlin.

Martin Short in Damages

“I like the unpredictability of a series like Damages. I’ve signed up for the 13 episodes of Season Three – but who knows, I could be killed off next week. They map out the shows in their heads so they don’t necessarily tell me everything in advance,” says Short, who was born in Hamilton, Ont., but now lives in the Pacific Palisades with his actress wife Nancy Dolman (Annie Tate on ABC’s Soap) and their three kids.

“It’s almost like a form of improvising: They shoot the first show, look at the dailies, get a nuance of what they like about that performance, and then they write in that direction. The style of this show is to shoot many takes, and I’m always a little different in every one. My job is not to determine what the character is. My job is to give them an ample array of paint colours for their palate. I love that process.”

To play this part, Short rented a friend’s sublet in Greenwich Village, a neighbourhood he’s loving. “When I did SNL here, we lived around Central Park. But the village is like living in Paris.”

As for the work, the plot of this season centres on Patty Hewes (Close), who represents clients bilked of billions in a case against the powerful Tobin family – father Joe, who is under house arrest (Campbell Scott), and his wife Marilyn Tobin (Lily Tomlin), who laments having to live on tuna while puffing her 50th cigarette of the day. Short’s Winstone is the Tobin family’s legal pit bull.

Also starring Rose Byrne as Hewes’s protégé Ellen Parsons, the veteran cast of Damages made for a set Short describes as “not about panic, and all about working on the floor.”

“Glenn is a real pro. And it’s not like she shows up, saying I’m only to be addressed as Patty. When you’re very good at it, and you’ve done it for a while, you appreciate the process and the people you’re working with.”

In fact, Short insists that Close is “very playful,” and Lily is “just a funny person, in her demeanour and in her charm. For a heavy, dark drama there’s an enormous looseness on this set.”

And a role that looks at the ugly side of human nature isn’t as out of place as it might seem for Short.

The 59-year-old trained to be a social worker before he got the acting bug in a production of Godspell in Toronto – where also he met his wife and cast members such as Victor Garber, Gilda Radner, Eugene Levy, Dave Thomas, Andrea Martin, and Paul Shaffer, who was musical director.

“I never practised social work,” he says, “because I was always interested in acting too. I wanted to take a year to explore that, primarily because I didn’t want to be that guy, trapped at 30, not knowing if what I was doing made me happy.”

Eventually, of course, Short joined Saturday Night Live, and his steady rise earned him a stream of work, both in Hollywood and in live theatre, where he won the 1999 Tony Award for best actor in the Broadway revival of Little Me. In recent years, the actor has also filled his days (and nights) with concert tours, which he loves.

“Not being on the stage feels like not going to the gym, if that’s a constant part of your daily routine. The longer you stay away, the more that ease [on stage] evaporates.”

Over the course of his 30-plus-year career, Martin has jumped easily from hilarious sketch comedy to high-brow theatre. In Damages, he's dabbling in something new, yet again. And it's light years removed from Ed Grimley, the prancing nerd in armpit-high pants and frontal cowlick.

Damages airs Sundays at 10 p.m. on Showcase.