Naturally, the fishing industry lobby -- and lots of New York sushi restaurants -- went nuts, claiming Piven's illness was nothing but a fishy story concocted to let Piven break his contract and leave the run of the play. Even Mamet weighed in on Piven's supposed sickness: "I understand Jeremy is leaving show business," Mamet told Variety, "to pursue a career as a thermometer."
Back in January, the New York Times ran a fascinating feature story about testing sushi-grade tuna and finding high levels of mercury.
The other day, I saw a friend of mine pausing at the refrigerated seafood case at Cosentino's Brookside Market and picking up a plastic tray filled with neatly arranged pieces of prepared sushi. I walked up to him and said, "What do you think of Jeremy Piven getting mercury poisoning from eating sushi?"
He put the sushi container into his cart, turned to me and said, "Who in the hell is Jeremy Piven?" A thermometer? -- Charles Ferruzza
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I'm sure this could happen if you ate contaminated sushi twice a day for years, but the key is for it to have all been contaminated. Unless he was eating at the same restaurant, and even then I'm sure not all of any restaurant's shipments of tuna would be high in mercury, I guess it could be possible.
But, we know he films Entourage in California, has a family theater in Chicago and was doing this in NYC, so it seems unlikely to me that all those sushi restaurants would have the ability to consistently serve him enough mercury tuna to do this.
But, I'm no doc.
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