PASADENA, Calif. _ While Jenna Elfman has performed with some of the best actors in the business, her new ABC sitcom marks a first for her. Her costar is invisible.
For five years Elfman starred with Thomas Gibson in the hit, "Dharma & Greg," and she went on to appear in "Growing Up Fisher" with J.K. Simmons, "1600 Penn," with Josh Gad, and "Damages" with Glenn Close.
But when "Imaginary Mary" arrives on March 29, Elfman will be emoting with thin air.
She plays a gung-ho career woman who falls for a guy with three children. When she finds herself coping with an instant family, she needs all the help she can get. That aid arrives in the form of her childhood imaginary friend, Mary.
While Mary is voiced by former "Saturday Night Live" star Rachel Dratch and appears to the audience as a round-faced cherub, she's really invisible to Elfman when they're filming.
Dratch is cutting the voice-over in New York and Elfman is emoting in L.A. Though Elfman has costarred with unseen characters before when she was upstaged by Daffy Duck and Bugs Bunny in "Looney Tunes: Back in Action," this presents a whole new challenge, she says.
"When we were filming 'Looney Tunes,' we had men in green suits, green screens, green little balls on sticks. There was not a lot of green-screen elements when we were filming this, because it's CGI," she says.
"This is a whole different sort of approach to animation. We had rehearsal with a stuffed, life-size puppet, and we had an amazing puppeteer, so we would rehearse with her. And we had a comedic actress on set to do all the lines. So I felt like I had a comedic partner, because Rachel is in New York," she explains.
"And then we would film one take with the puppet, so that the animators had a reference for her in that live space. And then they would take her away, and there would be nothing. So I didn't even have a green ball. I had nothing. It was like nothing, an independent chair. And then she'd be walking across the room, and she'd hop up on the furniture, and then she'd come near me. So oftentimes I'd have several different eye-lines in the set with different dimension focal points," she says.
Executing a scene with costar Stephen Schneider and the kids who, of course, don't perceive Mary, could be tricky. "So it was actually a really great challenge comedically to maintain the scene with her, and the believability, the focal points, while doing the scene with him and the kids," says Elfman.
"But that's how it was different. I literally had no reference except during rehearsal."
Dratch's job was a little easier, she says. "I would record seeing the scenes already shot. I would see the puppet thing, and so I didn't have to match it exactly, but I felt like I was acting with Jenna, because I had the advantage of seeing her on the screen right there. So they'd play her line right before I said mine, so I felt like I had this sort of fake give-and-take with the actors that were already up there. And just like in any voice-over, you try different ways. You find, 'Oh, this needs to be more of a serious moment,' or, 'You can really go wild here.' So I had that luxury that you might not have if you're just on set and you have to get things done. So I have the freedom to go crazy."
The whole idea for the series came from animator Patrick Osborne whose animated short, "Feast," earned an Academy Award. "My little brother had an imaginary friend named Red Light-Green Light," recalls Osborne. "I never really asked him what he looked like. I think there's something kind of nice about abstracting a child's version of a hodgepodge of elements from a kid's drawing and pulling that into real life. So when we set it there in the world of CGI, it feels believable. And it sort of feels like it's actually there. And you can jump on board with the person communicating with this abstract kind of children's creation."
As for Elfman, who's been married for 26 years to Bodhi Elfman, playing a single career woman is not a big stretch. "I don't really care if some things are like me or not like me, because you always have to find _ even if you're playing something extremely far from you _ you're finding a piece of that within you, I think. It's a form of expression. I just want great writing and great costars, and to have fun, and make people at the end of the day _ they come home, people are struggling through life, they turn on their form of entertainment that they choose and, at the end of the day, I just want to bring some succor to people and make them laugh. Keep it simple, you know."
SARANDON CAST AS MOVIE CHIEF
Fresh from her role as the resolute Bette Davis in "Feud: Bette and Joan," Susan Sarandon has cinched a year-long arc with Showtime. She'll play a tough studio chief in its crime drama, "Ray Donovan," which returns for a new season this summer ... It's hard to imagine that ancient Rome suffered any moral restrictions, but it did. And to escape those constraints, the elite of Rome headed to Baiae, sort of the Las Vegas of the toga set. PBS' "Secrets of the Dead" will visit Baiae on the show dubbed "Nero's Sunken City" when it airs on March 29. The site is being explored by archaeologists in wet suits since the town is now underwater.
SWEEPTAKES WILL WHISK WINNER TO ENGLAND
Television anglophiles have until March 31 to vie for a chance to visit many of the bucolic places that are featured in the British TV imports like "Downton Abbey," "Doc Martin," "Midsomer Murders" and even Agatha Christie's estate. The sweepstakes, "The Best of Acorn TV: Seven Day Tour of England," will treat some lucky winner and a guest to an awe-inspiring tour, hotel accommodations and some special surprises. Airfare is NOT included. To enter just skip on down to http://www2.acorn.tv/tourofengland.
'DANCING WITH THE STARS' BACK WITH A RECORD
Mr. T will be pitying the fool, Charo will cuchi-cuchi her way through the waltz and baseballer David Ross hopes to throw a curve ball as ABC's "Dancing with the Stars" returns this week with a whole new cast and the record 400th episode. Along with Mr. T and Charo, will be skater Nancy Kerrigan, comedian Chris Kattan from "Saturday Night Live," bull-rider Bonner Bolton, Olympic gymnast Simone Biles, and other so-called "stars." While the judges, Len Goodman, Julianne Hough, Carrie Ann Inaba, and Bruno Tonioli, will be pontificating on the execution, it's the voting audience who chooses the winners.
