“Monkey, monkey, rat, rat… no, you’re kind of monkey-rat.”

This was the quote of the day, and possibly the quote of the tour, courtesy of “Kath & Kim” star Selma Blair. Part of me almost doesn’t want to explain it, because the magic of “no, you’re kind of monkey-rat” is almost greater when it’s context-independent. But after the jump, I’ll give it a shot…

Blair seemed in a particularly snarky mood today. There are lots of dumb questions that get asked in TCA sessions — “Your sons, are they both boys?” was a classic — but usually the panelists have been coached not to show their displeasure with them. (Jonny Lee Miller was exceedingly polite when somebody asked him if he could get Angelina Jolie to guest star on “Eli Stone” last week.) Selma either didn’t get the memo or didn’t care, and our world is the funnier for it.

First, somebody noted that she and Molly Shannon, who plays her mom on the show, aren’t that far apart in age (IMDb has Shannon only 8 years older than Blair), and asked how hard it was for one of them to play the other’s parent or child.

“Actresses play different people all the time,” Blaire replied. “It’s weird. It’s this thing called acting, and so you just, like, play different characters that aren’t your
age or anything. I mean, I think. I don’t know.”

(more…)

Kath and Kim

NBC’s newest comedy, centers on a fun-loving mom (Molly Shannon) with a newfound love life and her spoiled, Britney Spears-esque daughter (Selma Blair) who moves back in with her mom after the failure of her six-week-long marriage. The TCA panel for Kath and Kim had plenty of laughs and succeeded on one important front: proving Selma Blair is actually funny.

The actress best known for her lesbian kiss in Cruel Intentions answered a question about whether she’ll be wearing a wig for the series with a long-winded and hilarious monologue about the finer points of wig vs. extensions. She continued on a tangent about what types of wigs she would wear because she has a monkey face, explaining that all people are either monkey-faced or rat-faced.

However, the panel also dismissed a rather legitimate question about the age difference between the two leads. Despite playing mother and daughter, Shannon and Blair are only separated in age by 7 years. At first Blair laughed it off as acting, joking that Dakota Fanning was the producers’ first choice, adding “If you squint really hard and put Vaseline on your eyeballs when you watch, I look really young.” The cast went on to explain that the relationship is more akin to best friends than mother/daughter, so the age gap isn’t such a big deal.

From Buddy TV

While Universal Studios was battling its own inferno, at Paramount those smokin’ sirens from surburbia, Kath & Kim, settled in for the first read-through of the US version of their hit show.
Executive producers and stars Jane Turner and Gina Riley were to take their US alter egos Molly Shannon and Selma Blair through the world of Fountain Lakes.

TV giant NBC is backing the show, slating it to take on the second half-hour of Grey’s Anatomy, CSI and Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares.

Stiff competition, guys.