Word: alleys
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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...
Twelve hours later, with midnight fast approaching, Alley and the cast are still on Stage 25 finishing up Episode No. 5, in which her top executive, Olive (Kathy Najimy), persuades Ronnie to be a role model for a new anatomically correct doll (its breasts sag, and its butt protrudes). By this time, everybody is getting punch-drunk tired. Alley starts singing "I am woman, I am role model, I am whore." No one seems to notice. She smiles. She's happy, really happy, to be back...
...Ronnie is the latest in one of TV's perennial fall lines: the expert at work who can't control life at home (cf. Newhart, Home Improvement). With writer-producers Marta Kauffman and David Crane (Friends) polishing the assembly-line gags until they're hand-tooled, and with Kirstie Alley in fine form, Veronica's Closet deserves to last as long as Bob's and Tim's sitcoms...