Word: alleys
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1990-1999
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Nestled in NBC's coveted half-hour slot between Seinfeld and ER, it is the odds-on favorite to become the fall's new hit sitcom. But can Alley really succeed where other Cheers alums have failed? Though Kelsey Grammer's Frasier is a ratings hit for NBC, Ted Danson (Sam), Rhea Perlman (Carla) and George Wendt (Norm) have all bombed in series over the past year. NBC Entertainment president Warren Littlefield signed up Veronica's Closet for only 13 episodes, but he notes that Alley's producers, Kevin Bright, Marta Kauffman and David Crane, the creative team behind Friends...
...Alley herself isn't easily satisfied. While most of her Cheers mates made a run at new TV shows, she ruminated and shopped for the right producers. "I made a decision I wasn't coming back to TV unless I could do as good a job--or better--than Cheers," she says. "I'd take a meeting with someone and come out and say, 'Ugh, life is too short.' They were all too serious." She knew she wanted to do another sitcom, and she had strong opinions about the kind of character she wanted to play. "I wanted Ronnie...
Perlman, a friend since their Cheers days, describes Alley as "totally nuts, out of her mind. She's beautiful and wacked out at the same time." Alley's comedic strength, says Perlman, lies in her ability to play "a woman on the edge, about to fall apart, emotional yet with a sense of humor." Says Danson: "The more nervous she is, the more outrageous she gets. It's one thing to be terrified and stick your toe in the water but another to be doing a cannonball into the water. Kirstie does cannonballs...
...newly revived Wonderful World of Disney--playing a workaholic dentist turned tooth fairy. And at Christmastime, she will co-star in movies with two famous and funny Allens: Woody in Deconstructing Harry and Tim in For Richer or Poorer. The normally reticent Woody Allen, who had never seen Alley until he chanced upon an old Cheers rerun while surfing the TV for a baseball game last year, says he knew immediately he wanted her to play his neurotic psychiatrist ex-wife. "The character called for a kind of earth motherly, uh, what do I mean, voluptuous, well, not exactly voluptuous...
...Alley, now 46 (though she denies it), credits much of her good fortune to her participation in the controversial Church of Scientology. Growing up in Wichita, Kans., she dreamed of running off to Hollywood even though she was a daddy's girl (hence the large role of Robert Prosky, her dad on Cheers, as her fictional father in the new series). Sidetracked by cocaine and interior decorating, she dropped out of her acting studies at the University of Kansas. Then she read L. Ron Hubbard's Dianetics, which Alley believes changed her life by making her take responsibility for herself...