"Every Picture Tells a Story" casts Guillaume -- who gained great popularity in the '70s playing acerbic butler Benson DuBois in both "Soap" and its spin-off "Benson" -- again as a butler, who works for race-car driver Carter Tibbitts (Jason Priestley), for whom he used to be crew chief.

Asked how he came to be on the show, Guillaume says, "Well, I guess it must have been John, because we'd worked together in the '70s, because we were both on ABC at the time. A role came along, and I suppose they said, 'Well, why don't you get Bob?' Somebody said, 'Well, that sounds like a good idea. Is he still alive?'"

Guillaume describes his character as "Benson revisited," and there's even a tenuous connection between Guillaume and Priestley. "We worked together on something," he says. "We were both trying to figure out what it was, and we couldn't quite come up with it. It was something starring Stephanie Beacham."

That project may have been the 1989 NBC series ?Sister Kate," which starred both Beacham and Priestley.

On top of all this, " 8 Simple Rules ..." films in the same place at Disney Studios as Guillaume's last regular series, Aaron Sorkin's " Sports Night."

" Exact same place, Stage 6," Guillaume says. " It was nice. It was one of those things where you say, 'Whoooo ...' whatever that sound is when we don't quite understand what's going on."

There was one unhappy connection with the studio, though. During filming of " Sports Night," Guillaume suffered a mild stroke in his dressing room. But Guillaume said he had no reluctance to revisit that area. " Of course not," he says. " I'm not superstitious."