Tommy Lee is a tabloid fixture — a wild-living rock star with a beautiful celebrity ex-wife with whom he remains romantically linked. But after seeing “Tommy Lee Goes to College,” the reality show he filmed last year at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln which premieres at 8 p.m. Tuesday on NBC (WOWT channel 6), Lee’s hoping the public gets a different image of him than they see in the supermarket checkout lines or on trashy TV shows.

“I feel like people are really going to get to know me and maybe also dispel a bunch of this nonsense — preconceived notions and judgments about myself,” the Motley Crue drummer said in a telephone conference call.

“Those things tend to fly around when all people get are little blips and blurbs in magazines and those silly tabloid shows. I’m hoping people meet and get to know the real Tommy, not the one that’s sprinkled out there in the press. When I watched it, I was like, ‘This is cool. I think people are really going to get to know me and realize he’s a pretty cool guy.’”

What they’ll also see is Lee having a good time in Lincoln in the show, which, contrary to the expectations of some when filming began, portrays UNL and Lincoln in a positive light.

“It makes you guys look good,” said executive producer Eddie October. “We said that from the beginning, from our first pitch to NBC. But I can understand why there’d be some skepticism. But the joke really always was on Tommy more than anyone else.”

Lee agreed that making fun of rubes in Nebraska was never the intent of the show.

“My purpose there was to have a whole lot of fun, have a cool experience and definitely not make any sort of mockery out of anybody or anything there,” he said. “I just really came there to have a good time and make a great show for everyone to enjoy.”

The first two episodes of “Tommy Lee Goes to College” passed muster with UNL Chancellor Harvey Perlman.

“I think they’re fine,” Perlman said. “People who would take it really serious might find some things they don’t like in it. But it’s a comedy and I think it comes across well. It shows the university in a good light. It shows the faculty to be serious and our students are having fun.”

While Lee is the fish-out-of-water star of the show, UNL faculty members, including physics professor Tim Gay and English professor Fran Kaye, who said she’d never heard of Lee before filming started, play major roles in the story.

“We wanted the show to be filled with personalities,” October said in a telephone interview. “But they all took it seriously as well. They all got the notion that Tommy was trying to do this for real. He wanted to try and they wanted to challenge him. The best stuff is those kind of emotional conversations when he’s freaking out.”

While most of those conversations take place in the last half of the six-episode series, Tommy freaks out a little in the first two episodes that will air on Tuesday, swallowing hard when confronted with his English reading list, going blank in chemistry and throwing his drums to the ground in frustration at band practice.

“When I got there, I realized there was exams coming and I really had to study and I really had to work at getting into the drumline,” Lee said. “They weren’t just going to let me in because of who I was and being a drummer and all that. I had to pass. The same with the exams in chemistry and horticulture.

“It was a lot more work than I thought it was going to be be. I was stressing out a little bit. I wanted to go and do well. I didn’t want to go there and just kind of suck. I really wanted to prove to myself that I could actually get through it. As in everything I do, I give everything my full 120 percent all the time.”

So how well did you do, Tommy?

“I can’t tell you,” he said. “That’s sort of the premise of the whole deal. That’s what you’re supposed to watch the show for.”

In fact, the show’s primary story arc is set around Tommy’s academic efforts.

In the first two episodes, Tommy arrives on campus, finds a roommate in Matt Ellis, goes to class, meets his “hot tutor” Natalie Riedmann and tries out for the Cornhusker Marching Band.

Episode three also centers on the band and its performance at the NU-Baylor game, October said. But the final three episodes are more concerned with his upcoming tests and the pressure he feels to pass his classes.

The fact that he took his schoolwork seriously is what makes “Tommy Lee Goes to College” more than a one-joke show, October said.

“Sometimes I’m driven by fear of sucking,” Lee said. “That’s my motivation a lot of the time. I just want to kick ass at whatever I do — whether it’s music, going to college for a semester, being the best dad on the planet, being the best human being I can possibly be on a daily basis. It’s just the driving force I have. I want to do well.”

That drive peaked during the last few days of Lee’s stay in Lincoln when the scholastic pressures and his “end of the semester” party put him under some serious stress.

“He literally was taking tests the day of and the day before the performance at the Rococo Theatre,” October said. “He’s such a perfectionist. He wanted the show to go perfectly and he wanted to do as well as he could on the tests. Things got pretty intense those last few days.”

“Tommy Lee Goes to College” is a “semi-scripted” reality show, leading to a disclaimer in the credits that some scenes had been staged for effect.

“We’d start with a certain scenario and once that would begin, we’d freestyle it,” Lee said. “Whatever happened, happened.”

In the second episode, Lee is seen struggling to play the quad-toms, an over-the-shoulder rack of four drums that he was to use in the band. He’d last played them when he was in high school.

“It’s been a while since I’d done that,” he said. “In the show they dramatically draw it out a little more than it actually was, for drama purposes. But it certainly was difficult. God, I hadn’t read sheet music since I was in high school. It took me a couple days to refresh my memory with the note values and time signatures and just basically reading sheet music again. I wasn’t prepared for that when they dropped that bomb on me. It was, ‘Oh-oh, here we go.’”

In keeping with the “semi-scripted” feel, one of Lee’s favorite moments in the show couldn’t have been planned. His autobiography, “Tommyland,” made it onto the New York Times best seller list while he was in Lincoln.

“At the time, I was in my American Literature class, so the professor dissected a little bit of my book,” he said. “I just thought that was cool. I’m like, ‘Wow, this is wild, I’m sitting in English lit and my book’s on the New York Times best seller list and here I am in the classroom in an open discussion about the book.’”

So what did Kaye think of Lee’s book?

“She thought it was really cleverly done, actually, and funny and well done,” he said. “That was nice.”

“Tommy Lee Goes to College” stretches the truth a little here and there. Lee and Ellis lived off campus, not in Neihardt Hall, and he wasn’t in school for a full semester. But those exaggerations are all in good fun.

Being followed by camera for hours on end eventually began to wear on Lee — “After a while, you’re like, ‘There’s nothing interesting about me going to sleep, can you turn them off? It isn’t going to make fun television.’”

But he obviously enjoyed his time in Lincoln and the people that he worked with here.

“Professor Gay actually was a very interesting cat, to say the least,” Lee said. “All of his analogies in his class — and this is why Nebraska has football completely embedded in their brains — every analogy he used to explain anything in physics had to do with football. I just thought that was so bizarre. He was just a funny guy.

“The chancellor actually was really cool. He actually sent me a Christmas card. I took a photo with him and his whole family. He made me feel more than welcome. To get a Christmas card from him and to actually be on the Christmas card with him and his family was pretty damned cool.”

So, Harvey Perlman, did you ever expect to be called cool by a member of Motley Crue?

“I’ll try and get over that,” Perlman deadpanned. “I’ll put that up at home so my wife can see it. I’m sure she doesn’t believe that.”

Perlman might have a chance to hang with his new pal in upcoming months. So might Brinkman, Ellis and others whom Lee hung with during his six weeks in Lincoln.

“I have a bunch of new friends there, obviously, that I met while doing the show,” he said. “Hopefully, I’ll get back there and visit everybody. I was thinking about bringing out a couple of friends too — I think I’m in New York or New Jersey the day the show airs. It would be kind of fun to get everybody together to watch the premiere. Hopefully, I’ll see them then. If not then, I’ll get my ass back to Lincoln for a bit and go say hello to everybody.”

But don’t expect him to re-enroll at UNL if he comes back to town.

“After going and realizing how much work it was, I don’t know if I would go do a whole four-year run like that,” he said. “That’s kind of crazy at this point. I left there with enough of the experience that it satisfied my missing of the opportunity.”

But he said he would recommend UNL to prospective college students and their parents.

“Yeah, absolutely, it’s a great place,” Lee said. “It’s a quaint little place, which I think focuses on school, actually. It’s not a big major city where there’s all these other distractions. It’s kind of a sleepy spot. But it’s really dedicated to sports and education.”

“Tommy Lee Goes to College” wasn’t ever supposed to be about serious education issues. It’s entertainment, and all involved with the program feel that, on that level, it is a rocking success.

“We’re thrilled,” October said. “NBC loves the show and it was just a great experience to shoot it there. The network is happy and I think the students there and the faculty there will be thrilled. I love it. I have to say I’m really proud of the show. I’m excited for it to premiere.”

Reach L. Kent Wolgamott at 473-7244 or kwolgamott@journalstar.com.