Schroder likely to replace Smits on NYPD

Nothing official, but you can “ipso facto” this: Former kid star Rick “Don’t Call Me Ricky” Schroder will replace Jimmy Smits on ABC’s NYPD Blue.

Schroder, 28, who shot to fame as the adorable moppet of NBC’s Silver Spoons from 1982 to ‘86, had lunch last week with NYPD boss Steven Bochco, a Bochco spokeswoman confirms.

The company line is that no decision has been made. The real deal is that Schroder’s the guy.

The blond Schroder is light years away from Smit’s swarthy Detective Bobby Simone, Andy Sipowicz’s (Dennis Franz) partner for four years. Smits will leave the hit drama early next season after six episodes. (Good news: Simone’s bride, Kim Delaney’s Detective Diane Russell, is signed for the season.)

NYPD will be Schroder’s first series since Spoons, in which he played the only child of a immature millionaire (Joel Higgins) with a house full of toys.

Schroder knows from toys. The Staten Island native began his career doing TV commercials at 3 months. In 1979, at the age of 7, he made his big-screen debut as Jon Voight’s son in Franco Zeffirelli’s remake of The Champ. The role won him a Golden Globe for best new male star.

Looking to change his image, Ricky became Rick for Lonesome Dove, CBS’s acclaimed miniseries based on Larry McMurtry’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel that starred Robert Duvall, Tommy Lee Jones and Anjelica Huston.

In the ‘94 CBS sequel, Return to Lonesome Dove, Schroder reprised his character. A string of TV movies followed, including ABC’s 1996 Detention: Seige at Johnson High. He portrayed a flunkee who gets revenge on his former classmates by taking them hostage after he’s fired from his job.

In ‘97, Schroder, married and the father of three, starred opposite Judith Light in CBS’s fact-based Too Close to Home as the object of his mother’s obsessive love. When his lawyer character’s wife and unborn child are murdered, his mother is the prime suspect. He defends her.

Back to Blue. Bochco and his partner, David Milch, have looked at “hundreds” of NYPD wannabes, according to a source on the set. Titus Welliver, Officer Jake Lowry on Bochco’s cancelled CBS drama Brooklyn South, is considered a dark horse. Welliver appeared on NYPD Blue last season as Sipowicz’s cancer doctor. But sources say there won’t be any Brooklyn crossover.

Another dark horse is The X-Files' Nicholas Lea. He plays the recurring role of Alex “Rat Boy” Krycek, nemesis to Agent Mulder (David Duchovny). Lea has been an X-man since its second season.