BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. _ When actress Briga Heelan was growing up she was too shy to express herself. The star of NBC's "Great News" thinks acting helped her overcome that reticence. "I've always had a hard time just being angry or just being really sad � the bigger emotions," she says, easing into a wicker-backed chair in a bustling coffee bar here.
"I've had a harder time expressing them in real life until my adulthood surely; so I think the thing that attracted me (to acting) as a kid was that not only was I allowed to do that, it was necessary," says Heelan, whom we've seen in sitcoms "Ground Floor," "Cougar Town" and "Undateable."
"I think acting asks you to be present in a way that a lot of times it's easy to not be present in real life," she says. "When there's not 1,000 things going on in your head except what's happening to you and another person, and what you want to get _ there's simplicity of that moment between two people that if you're not living in it, you're not really doing your job. So I just strive to feel that simplicity all the time."
Heelan grew up in Andover, Mass., where her mother was an actress and her father a writer. She says she didn't consider becoming an actress, she just assumed it. "It was never 'I like doing this.' It felt like I NEEDED to do it. Watching my mom in musicals and singing with her in musicals, and reading my dad's stuff, and I'd go watch stuff that my dad directed. It was all kind of in the mix from when I was born," she says. "It was right there in front of me."
Though she transferred in her junior year to a performing arts high school, it still wasn't easy for her to make the transition to professional acting after college. "My path took some twists and turns that I didn't anticipate, and I found myself disenchanted with a lot of things," she sighs.
"And I think I was searching for my identity in my real life. And once I got closer to who I really was, it was very clear to me that I should absolutely continue doing what I was doing. I never wanted to quit."
Still, she had reservations about her choices. "I was in New York and was pursuing musical theater, and it didn't feel right. I felt I was forcing myself to do things and be things that I wasn't, all the time. I wasn't listening to what I wanted to do. I was listening to what I thought I SHOULD do. So the switch was about putting that stuff down and stop trying to reach for identity and just ask myself, 'What do you really want? What feels good to you when you're doing it? And what feels bad to you when you're doing it? And go where the light is."'
The light, it turns out, was comedy. But Heelan stumbled a few more times before she found it. "I'd moved back to L.A. and was sharing a studio apartment with my friend. We were sleeping in bunk beds and life was great � but we were really doing the L.A.-newbie thing.
"I remember being denied a protein bar that I went in to buy. I was so hungry, and it was before an audition, and I ran in and tried to buy this protein bar. And I checked my bank account and it was negative 17 cents. I remember calling my mom � my parents are so unbelievably supportive and so great at finding the humor in it. I remember being frustrated. And I remember getting on the phone with my mom and laughing that I have negative 17 cents. I said, 'Mom, can you throw me five?' She said, 'Briga, I'll throw you more than five.'"
Finding that simplicity she was talking about is even more difficult now. Not only does She play the hassled TV producer on "Great News," (returning on Sept. 28) but she and her writer-actor husband, Rene Gube, have a 6-month old baby girl.
The couple met on "Ground Floor," in which Gube costarred and wrote three of the episodes.
"We just became friends and co-workers and got to watch one another and see one another's different colors, because that comes out when you're working," she nods, resting her left hand on the table.
"You're frustrated, you're elated, all of these things. So we got to see each other as just 'people' before we were romantically involved. I just remember I kept watching him and going, 'I need someone who makes me laugh like that.' 'I need someone who cares for people like that.' I kept looking at this man going, 'I need somebody like that," says the 30-year-old Heelan who's wearing a black dress and red-and-black high-heeled pumps.
"My dad came to the pilot shooting of 'Ground Floor' and after my dad spoke to Rene, he came to my dressing room and he said, 'That guy.' I said, 'Oh, Dad, I don't know ... ' And a couple months later it was 'that guy.'"
COMEDY HITS FROM DOWN UNDER
If you're craving some end-of-summer yucks, you need not travel any farther than Australia and your own TV. Acorn TV is streaming all four seasons of the hit comedy from Down Under "Rake." It's the outrageous tale of a lawyer (they call them barristers) whose singular daring in the courtroom is only exceeded by his relentlessly chaotic lifestyle outside. The show stars Richard Roxburgh as the self-destructive Cleaver Greene who reluctantly consorts with bookies, thugs, prostitutes and � worst of all � crooked politicians. Written by Peter Duncan and Andrew Knight, "Rake" is the wittiest, most intelligent and iconoclastic show on TV, and not one for the kiddies. The first three seasons are available on DVD, with the fourth due in November.
NEW 'STAR TREK' STREAMS ON SUNDAY
Fanatic fans of "Star Trek" are blissful to know that Sunday CBS' new version, "Star Trek: Discovery," hits primetime as well as its subscription streaming service CBS All Access. After premiere night, all episodes will be available On Demand and on CBS All Access. The streaming service will run you $5.99 for the commercial infested version and $9.99 commercial free.
Jason Isaacs, one of the stars of the new series, says he's been preparing all his life to play the role of Capt. Gabriel Lorca. "I come from a family of boys, and we used to fight or still do fight all the time. And in England, when I was 8, there were only three channels, I think, and the thing we fought most about was which channel we were going to watch at night. And there was never an argument when 'Star Trek' was on. The whole family crammed onto the couch watching 'Star Trek.'
"I don't know that I thought about being an actor, but the notion that I would get to stand one day and say, 'Energize,' and point phasers and run in exactly the same way they did 50 years ago _ run to the left run and run to the right _ because there's no CG way to look like you are being hit by a torpedo, other than an embarrassing way. It's unimaginable that we are doing it, and that we get paid for messing around like children in the backyard."
COMIC CAST AS MID-LIFER
Bobby Moynihan, who spent nine seasons on "Saturday Night Live," is starring on CBS' new sitcom "Me, Myself, and I," which premieres on Monday. The show is about a man at three different stages of his life, at 14, at 40, and at 60. Moynihan plays the 40-year-old. He says he's known he was funny ever since he was a little kid. "I was a lifeguard at a pool for many, many years, and I had gone to that pool club my entire life. And a lot of older people who knew me as a kid said that they all called me 'Watch Me' because I would just go, 'Watch me,' and do something weird and jump in the pool. So that still follows me around."
