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Five Minutes With Accidentally on Purpose's Ashley Jensen

BuzzSugar — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 16:00:41 PDT

New sitcom Accidentally on Purpose premieres tonight on CBS, with Jenna Elfman in the lead role as a San Francisco movie critic who becomes pregnant after a one-night stand (Elfman went totally Method: she just announced her real-life pregnancy). Playing her best friend? British actress Ashley Jensen. Jensen has struck comedy gold on both sides of the Atlantic, earning an Emmy nomination for her work alongside Ricky Gervais in Extras and making a splash as Betty's best friend (and Wilhelmina's surrogate) in Ugly Betty. Jensen and I chatted at the CBS/CW party at the TCA press tour about how she landed the role (after getting horribly lost on the way to her audition) and how she'll play a party girl despite being pregnant in real life. Here are highlights:

On her character, Olivia: "She's a party animal girl, sort of the cheeky, sassy, witty one who kind of is independent and doesn't need to be tied down. She seems to have a boyfriend in every place that she works . . . which is good fun to play!"
On playing pregnant on Ugly Betty and now being pregnant: "I've been pregnant for over two years! This [belly]'s a little bit more difficult because I can't remove it at lunchtime. I said to someone earlier, 'If I'd realized what it was like to be pregnant and wearing four-inch heels, I may have walked a little bit different in the last season of Ugly Betty.' I was just strutting about!"

To hear her Ugly Betty highlights, how she stumbled into meeting Ted Danson and how she feels about using her own accent on TV, just

On the highlights of her time on Ugly Betty: "Going to the Golden Globes at the beginning was quite exciting. We'd done maybe 10 episodes. . . . To find myself suddenly on a red carpet wearing dresses and diamonds and having people doing my hair, I'd never had all that before. So that was all incredibly new, and that was amazing, and for the show to have such an impact so immediately was very exiting. And going back to New York [last season] was exciting - I think that gave it an extra wee bit of like, 'Ooh!' Because I never went to New York [full-time] - I commuted. I found that quite exotic. I was like, 'Oh yes, I have to fly to New York for five and a half hours for my work.'"
On her best New York to LA flight experience: "I got to fly with Ted Danson one day, which was quite exciting. It was the day after the Emmys, actually, after I'd been nominated for Extras. And the [flight attendant] was like, 'Oh, you looked lovely last night!' And I was like, 'Oh, thanks,' and she was like, 'It's such a shame you never won,' and I could see Ted Danson going, 'Who's this?' And then I sat down beside him, and he was like, 'Were you there last night?' and I said 'Yes I was,' and he went, 'Sorry for being really ignorant - what were you in?' and I said it was Extras and he was like, 'Oh my God!' So Ted and I sat down, shared a bit of breakfast, watched a little movie, had a little sleep, exchanged restaurants in New York, and it was fleeting but beautiful. That was a highlight, going to sleep with Ted Danson."
On being one of the few UK actors to use her natural accent here: "The two jobs that I've done, I've gone in and used an American accent, and they go, 'Do it in your own.' And then they go, 'It's funnier. It's funnier in that strange little accent that you have.' I think it adds color to shows, doesn't it, when there's another accent in there. . . . I think comedy is easier in your own accent, as well - I've lived with this accent all my life, and I know the rhythms and the pauses that make it funny, so I think that absolutely helps."

Five Minutes With Jessica Lucas

BuzzSugar — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 05:45:13 PDT

Jessica Lucas seems to be the go-to girl for the CW's soapy remakes. After appearing on the big screen in Cloverfield, Lucas turned up on 90210 as an undercover cop posing as a transfer student. Now she's staying in the Aaron Spelling reboot family as newly engaged elementary school teacher Riley in the new Melrose Place. At the TCA press tour, Lucas had a few things to say about her new job:

On whether Riley's relationship with Jonah (Michael Rady) will last: "They're definitely going to be tested a lot. I think the environment they're in is very harsh.They're under a lot of financial stress. So I don't know how long they're going to be able to work things out. And I think, you know, Riley's really at a crossroads. I don't think she really knows if she wants to get married."
On whether her character is as good as she appears: "Like anybody in real life, she has flaws, and those flaws are going to start to come out a lot in the first few episodes. I think the main thing with her is, she is really nervous about getting married, and she doesn't know if she wants to, and that's going to cause her to maybe stray a little bit."
On how this show differs from the original: "I saw a few episodes of the fourth season [of original Melrose] and it was insane - like, people were blowing up the courtyard. I think we're going to try to keep ours a little more grounded. It's heightened reality, but it's very gritty, it's very dark. And I think it shows that really dark side of LA and how it can affect people and define who they are and change who they are."

To find out what Lucas thinks of the show's mystery twist and whether she'd ever do another Cloverfield, just

On how much she knows about the show's murder mystery: "Every time we read a script, we get a little bit more of a piece of a puzzle. But I have no idea who did it. Not too many details are emerging yet. . . . I think the chances of Riley murdering Sydney are slim to none."
On whether she thinks there could be a sequel to Cloverfield: "I think JJ [Abrams] talks about it every once in a while, but I think it's important to him if he wants to do a sequel that it be for a good reason and that it's for a good story, and I don't know if he's thought of something unique enough yet. . . . I think maybe an origin story about how that monster got there would be really cool. It would be so fun to do a sequel to that."

Kevin Williamson on Bringing Vampires to The CW

BuzzSugar — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 06:30:06 PDT

Kevin Williamson's Dawson's Creek helped make the WB into a buzzworthy network. Now, can The Vampire Diaries do the same for The CW? Williamson and writing partner Julie Plec will be bringing that other vampire book series to the small screen on the show's premiere tonight, and at the TCA press tour, he talked to me about what it's like to launch a new vampire show in a post-Twilight world.

Here's the question I'm sure everyone is asking: Why vampires? Why are they so big now?
It's all cyclical. I remember when I was growing up we had those Lost Boys, and then there were a few shows after that. . . . I'm sure there's some psychological ramification to the psyche of America and culture at the moment and politics and the state of the world. I'm sure we could go analyze it till the cows come home. But I think they're cool, they're fun, they're sexy, and they took off. Julie's the one who coined the phrase "They're the new James Dean," and she's got a point. They're the new version of a bad boy, and for a whole new generation.

With so many other vampires out there, what will make this show stand out?
I read the first book and was like, "This is Twilight. This is just like Twilight." . . . I was like, "No way." And then Julie was three books ahead of me and she was going, "Keep reading. Keep reading." And then I kept reading and was like, "Oh, OK, I get it." This is a different show. This is a story about a town. This is a story about a family. . . . The premise is the same but the themes are different. It goes beyond just a love story and really goes into everything that goes bump in the night. It's more sort of a Dark Shadows. This town has a lot going on in it, and we just start with the vampires.

Is it easier or harder to be the new vampire show right now?
It's really tough. We were just saying there's a hundred reasons that are working against us. And one of them is my favorite show, True Blood. . . . Is it a good thing? Is it a bad thing? I personally have room for one more vampire show in my lineup. It's a coming of age story, it's a drama show, I get to have a little fun with the humor of it, I'm trying to put our characters in the real world. They're in the world of it - these are high school girls who actually read Twilight. We just wrote the scene where one of the girls finds out Ian Somerhalder's a vampire, and her first comment is, "Why don't you sparkle?"

To hear about how Williamson cast the roles and how much of the books will turn up on TV, just

You don't have a big main cast at the start - it's really just Elena and the two brothers. So I imagine casting was really key.
It was so hard to cast these roles. We had to play with the ages and stuff. We're getting away with it with the two vampires, cause they're 145 years old. So OK, they don't look 16? But Nina [Dobrev, who plays Elena] - Nina came in for us one day to audition. She was sick, she had the flu, worst audition ever. We didn't even look at her a second time. And she went home, went back to Canada, and she was just miserable. She's like, "I was sick, I was just awful, I can do better than that." So she put herself on videotape and she sent that tape through and we put it in and we were like, "Who's that?" "Oh, she came in and auditioned." "No, she didn't." "Oh, the sick girl?" She was a totally different girl, totally. And so we took it to Warner Bros., to Peter Roth, and we said, "Look, we have all these actresses out in the hallway, or you can watch this." I had such luck with that with Katie Holmes back in the day, with videotapes, and so I said, "Let's see if we can get lucky again."

Have you given your vampires a distinctive look?
They're hot and sexy. We're not doing the pale thing. They look like they look. Paul Wesley comes with that olive skin, so he kind of has that vampire look anyway. Since the pilot he's been getting into vampire mode, which means he's been just working out. He looks great. And Ian is just a rock. They look really, really good. What we're doing differently is when they turn into a vampire . . . we're going with the philosophy that once they get engorged the blood starts racing to their body. They're angry - any sort of hot emotion, anger, love, sex, anything that's really heightened - and so the blood rushes to the eyes. You see the blood rush into the eyes, and then the teeth come out.

It seems like a pro and a con that the books come with a built-in fan base that's very passionate about the work. How are you dealing with that?
We've had to make some hard choices, and we've made some changes. But what I loved so much about what LJ Smith did was she created a world and a mythology that is a writer's dream. That is the hardest thing to do, is come up with the backstory. She's laying that there for me - she's there as a mine that I can just go to every week. We're going to keep the essence of her books, the themes of her books about friendship and betrayal and deception and redemption. All of those themes that were so prevalent in the first three or four books will 100 percent be on there. And yes, some of the plots will change and the Founder's Day ball may not happen exactly where it did [in the books], it may happen in episode three, you know, and the Halloween episode may be sixth and in the book it was reversed. We're plotting it out for longevity and we're plotting out all of the character arcs. If your character doesn't resemble the one that it did in the book, maybe we backed it up and started it somewhere else so maybe they can grow into that character, because we're a series and we have to tell a story every week.

Photos courtesy of Getty and The CW

Michael Rady on Moving From Cyprus Rhodes to Melrose Place

BuzzSugar — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 05:45:17 PDT

For a little while, it seems like Michael Rady has been everywhere, turning up on the small screen in Greek, Swingtown, and even Grey's Anatomy while also romancing Alexis Bledel in the Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants movies. At the CBS/CW party at the TCA Press Tour, I chatted with Rady about playing a nice guy, whether or not his Melrose engagement is doomed, and those Swingtown sideburns. Here are highlights:

How did you end up working on the new Melrose Place?
The first week of casting for Melrose Place, I went in, I didn't know anything about it, I think I had five auditions that day, and I left and they were like, "They want you." And I was like, "Really? No one wants me!" They were like, "Yeah, we like him." And then I booked it a couple of days later. And I was the first one cast. There was no script. It still hasn't quite sunk in yet - it's a little surreal.

When I saw you were cast in Melrose Place, I was of two minds about it - on the one hand, I was excited, and on the other, I was like, "Well, I guess I know what happens to Max on Greek."
Yeah - stumbling off drunk into the night, alone.

But then suddenly resurfacing here, a little more glamorous. Although Jonah seems pretty down-to-earth.
Yeah, he's the transplant from the East Coast and just comes from a grounded family, a good family situation.

Do you think he'll stay that way?
They swear up and down I would turn out good in the end. I think it's just this den of corruptibility, Melrose Place. So I think we'll get swept up here, and then spit out, and then swept up again, and then spit out.

It seems like there might be a chance on this show to play up the evil side.
It happened to Michael Mancini, right? No matter how much they swear I need to remember that: That this is Melrose Place and nothing is safe.

To hear Rady's thoughts on his Greek romance and those sideburns, just

Were you a fan of the original Melrose Place?
I was only really aware of its existence. My older sister watched it. I was just sitting on the couch, "What are we watching?" "Melrose Place." I remember Heather Locklear and Grant Show, just beautiful people around a pool.

Now you're one of the beautiful people around the pool.
No, I'm around the pool. There's beautiful people around me.

Are there any folks from the original you'd particularly love to work with?
I had the biggest crush on Laura Leighton, oh my gosh. She's just class, class, class and beautiful and amazing. Whenever she gives answers at press junkets we're all like, "She's so good. She says all the right things." I'd love for Heather Locklear to come back. I think that could be a lot of fun for the show.

Maybe you could have an affair, because you know Jonah's engagement isn't going to work out . . .
It's not going to turn into a happy marriage. That's a crashing bore, too.

That relationship was actually one of my favorite parts of the pilot, though.
But you would not watch day in and day out if they were happily married, eating popcorn, watching movies at nighttime and snuggling together. Crashing bore. You wouldn't watch that. So, I mean, troubled waters. Gotta be.

Speaking of nice guys - on Greek, you were coming in and breaking up the Casey/Cappie relationship a lot of fans want to see, but you were also such a good guy.
It was so funny, because they were like, "We can't do anything and not be hated here. Because you're so nice!" Spencer [Grammer] would be like, "All right, how can we do this, because everyone's going to really like him here, and no one is going to like me at all." That was actually a fun game to play with each other, like, "You have to win here. I'm going to be as nice as I possibly can, and you have to beat that."

You were done filming Greek a while ago, right?
Yeah, I think January, I shot my last episode with them. I got Greek while I was doing Swingtown, so that's why Max had long, long sideburns and crazy, long, curly hair. I ended up having really long, ridiculous hair for a long time - it was very frustrating. We took a quarter-inch off the sideburns, like, every month. And meanwhile they're writing jokes about the sideburns into the script.

Can you give us any hints about what's coming up on Melrose to keep us watching after the pilot?
They all die. No. I have no idea!

Photos courtesy of Getty and The CW

Five Minutes With Connie Britton

BuzzSugar — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 15:30:35 PDT

At every NBC TCA event, Connie Britton is one of my absolute favorite people to find. Once again, the Friday Night Lights actress took some time this Summer to talk about the upcoming seasons four and five of FNL. Read on for highlights:

On some of the drama in the upcoming season: "I'm still at the school that basically ousted my husband, so I think that we're going to have a lot of interesting conflicts in terms of that and the people in the town. I think that some of the Dillion High students are going to be moved to East Dillon and that might be a problem - infighting about the football team."
On having Tami become principal in season three: "I was so excited about her being principal and then it ended up being such a challenging year. . . . There were issues I had with, oh, you know, 'I feel like Tami would do this differently.' But at the end of the day, it was such a rewarding season. There were so many highs and lows and I feel like being principal added a dimension to all of the things that Tami had to deal with, being a wife, being a mother, being sort of a person in this town who people look to for things, and then on top of that having this sort of bureaucratic, political role where she's really idealistic and trying to do good.
On what's next for her relationship with Julie: "I just feel like this season we are really going to see her grow up, which is going to be great. I think that's going to be exciting, to see her really come into her own. And I imagine there's going to be some letting-go struggles. As a parent that would be heartbreaking. It would have to be."

To hear Britton's thoughts on the departing seniors and which character she'll miss seeing in season four (a little spoilery, that one), just

On seeing the graduating seniors again: "I think it's going to be an interesting mix of the old with the new in that great Friday Night Lights subtle way as only our writers can do. . . . I'm assuming that everybody will be back in one way or another. At the end of the day, it's a small town, so people always come and go. Because that's the great thing, too - these characters that we know and love, even though they're graduating and can't be at the school all the time, they'll come back to town, cause that's what you do."
On Adrianne Palicki, whose character became a big part of Tami's life: "I'm going to miss her a lot. She is going to be shooting Red Dawn the exact same period of time that we're shooting, but [the writers] do intend to have her come back in season five. So she will get her good-bye arc, but we're not going to get her this season."

10 Memorable Moments From the TCA Tour

BuzzSugar — Tue, 11 Aug 2009 16:30:13 PDT

This week, I've been sharing some of the highlights from my pilgrimage to Pasadena for the TCA press tour. Yesterday I passed along some quotes that got me chuckling, and today, I'm spotlighting 10 of the funniest, sweetest, and most surreal moments I experienced along my way. Among them: a great midseason TV show we previewed, a hilarious exchange on the set of The Office, and one very, very tall man.

Alison Brie Talks Mad Men and Community

BuzzSugar — Tue, 11 Aug 2009 06:30:37 PDT

When I first saw Alison Brie on NBC's comedy pilot Community alongside Joel McHale, I thought, "Good for her!" And then I had a second thought: "But wait . . . what about Trudy?" Brie also plays Trudy Campbell on Mad Men, and I was worried this new role spelled the end for Trudy. Luckily, I caught up with Brie at NBC's TCA day, and she put my fears to rest:

On balancing Community with Mad Men: " There were lots of phone calls made from one to the other, and luckily people have so much respect for Mad Men - it's like an institution - and for Matt Weiner that it didn't take too many phone calls for them to go ahead and OK me for a good portion of this season. Obviously my stuff on Mad Men this season is a little lighter because my first priority is Community, but because we started shooting that season a couple of months before Community started, I had some good time to get through and now we're still managing the popping back and forth for both."
On similarities between her characters: "I think their biggest similarity is that they strive for perfection. Trudy really has her ideas about marriage and what it should be and she really wants things to be perfect in that way. And Annie has her ideas about college and studying and what that should be, so in that respect they're the same. Trudy's much more fashionable, and . . . we've had a few seasons to see her grow and develop as a character. With Annie I can't wait to see the depth."
On whether she prefers drama or comedy: "I've flip-flopped on both throughout my career. When I was in college and growing up I was like, 'It's comedy for me! I'm so funny!' Yikes. Then when I started acting, right away it was drama, and with Mad Men it's my first success in television and obviously it's a heavy drama. What I like about it is, [drama and comedy] both appeal to both sides of me. Obviously to work on a drama you couldn't ask for a better lineup than Mad Men, and that appeals to my artistic side and the depth and there's so much under the surface. And [Community] just appeals to - it's just so much fun. It's like a child goofing off. It's like my class clown days in elementary school coming back."

Unfortunately, I couldn't get Brie to drop any hints about the state of the Campbells' marriage, but for a bit more of what she did have to say,

On meeting Joel McHale: " I was nervous to meet Joel. I love Joel. I watch The Soup all the time. He's hilarious, and he's also a cutie pie. I got in the van [on set], and Joel got in the van, and I thought 'Ohhhh.' I was nervous. I didn't want to say hi first, and he turned around and was just like, 'Hey, I'm Joel. I'm a big fan of you and the show.' And I was like, 'We're gonna be friends.'
On traveling between New York and LA to shoot: "On more than one occasion, in the same day, I've gone from a photo shoot with Community to shooting Mad Men to shooting Community to, the night before last, going to the Mad Men premiere - so it's such a funny thing, but there's no way I'm ever going to get [the characters] mixed up because they're so different physically. So it's so funny when I'm leaving one place and going to the other - they're like, 'What? That's not how we know you!'"
On becoming Trudy vs. becoming Annie: "Mad Men, I'm in the hair and makeup chair for two hours. Here, they use a flat iron for 10 minutes and I'm done."

10 Great Quotes From the TCA Press Tour

BuzzSugar — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 16:30:27 PDT

When you put a bunch of TV stars and creative types in a room with a bunch of snappy journalists, hilarity is bound to (at least occasionally) ensue. While not every panel at the TCA press tour is a barrel of laughs, there are always a few that keep us chuckling through the whole session. And even the duller panels can have a line or two that draws snickers all day long. So, without further ado, here are 10 of the quotes that got me laughing during my week in Pasadena.

Bill Lawrence Soothes My Fears About Cougar Town

BuzzSugar — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 12:30:21 PDT

When I first checked out Cougar Town, the new ABC comedy from Scrubs creator Bill Lawrence and starring Courteney Cox, I was a little concerned. The show was racier than I was expecting, and something in the tone seemed a little off. Apparently, I wasn't alone in that opinion - and apparently, Lawrence is listening. When he took the stage at TCA over the weekend, one of his main messages seemed to be that he knows he has some work to do.

"It's the first time I've ever written a show that I feel like I need outside input [to get right]," Lawrence told me after his session, adding that his staff now has more female writers than male writers. Though his wife (Christa Miller, who also stars in the show) and their friends provide him with a lot of material, he said he still has a tendency to see things from a guy's perspective - like a waxing scene he recently wrote that he said might have gone down the 40-Year-Old Virgin route if he hadn't been careful.

A number of the things that bugged me in the pilot have been reshot: He said the opening scene (which used to feature Cox and Busy Philipps's characters ogling guys at a high school football game) felt "like a cartoon" and has been changed, and he's toned down lines that make it seem like Cox's character couldn't get a date despite looking like, y'know, Courteney Cox. (Now it's more that - as a friend told him - "every single guy at our age is either gay, broken, or dating younger girls.")

To hear what Lawrence thinks of the term "cougar" and why he used it for the title,

Lawrence said he's honestly not sure if the term "cougar" should be considered a positive or negative word - "I’ve heard both sides of it, being a misogynistic word and a word of empowerment. I think it’s just a word." - and noted that Cox's character could, indeed, actually date men her own age. Also, women in the show are never called cougars, except for the "unbelievably big cheat" that cougars are the high school mascot.

About that title: "What we were hoping to do titling the show Cougar Town was set the bar so low that . . . occasionally, people would watch it and go, 'Wow, this is not as horrible as I thought it would be,'" Lawrence cracked on the panel. But, more seriously, he said that part of the game of TV these says is to come up with a "noisy" title that will make people take notice. He continued:

If this show were to be every week about what young man is Courteney going to sleep with, that’s the Samantha from Sex and the City show, and I don’t think people would respond to it, and I wouldn’t respond to it. And, in fact, it’s not the show.

I feel better about the show after hearing what Lawrence had to say - but what about you? Does the title bug you? Or do you think it's brilliant?

Meet the New Scrubs, Not Exactly Like the Old Scrubs

BuzzSugar — Sun, 09 Aug 2009 13:30:16 PDT

"Scrubs is over. I wrote the finale." That's what Scrubs creator Bill Lawrence told me Saturday night at ABC's party at the TCA press tour. It might seem like an odd thing to say, considering that the show is very much alive and well on ABC's schedule - so Lawrence explained a little more.

"I'm writing the first Scrubs like it's a new pilot," he said, moving the setting to medical school and introducing a new cast to surround a few of our Sacred Heart regulars. He even wanted to change the name of the show (to Scrubs Med), but that didn't fly with the network, which wanted to keep the Scrubs brand.

Viewers will see plenty of familiar characters, though: John C. McGinley, Donald Faison, and Eliza Coupe are all regulars, and Zach Braff will be around for at least the show's first six episodes. Lawrence and the show's production team built a new set, shooting medical school scenes in a building across from a slightly renovated version of Sacred Heart. And when the characters head out of the classroom and into the hospital, they'll see other familiar faces (including Judy Reyes, Sarah Chalke, Ken Jenkins, and Neil Flynn - who apparently wrote his own exit from the show) whom Lawrence can hire for an episode or two at a time.

Three new major characters will also be introduced; the "new, young actors" are testing with the network this coming week for their roles. And while the tone will be similar to Scrubs (actually, Lawrence described it as Paper Chase with a hospital set), the show's focus truly will be "21-year-old students in med school starting their first day of hospital care."

Lawrence promises Scrubs 2.0 won't be "a lame, pale imitation" of what we've already seen, and that certainly makes me more curious to tune in when the show returns next season after Dancing with the Stars finishes its next run. What about you?