Thanks to Chris Silk for letting us know about this wire story that just showed up!<\/p>\n
DOUBTFUL AT FIRST, HEIGL NOW A BELIEVER IN ‘ROSWELL’<\/strong><\/p>\n
By JOHN LEVESQUE
\nc.2000 Seattle Post-Intelligencer<\/p>\nA few years ago, Katherine Heigl couldn’t have cared less about the
\nfate of a struggling television show on a small network.<\/p>\n“I was a real TV snob,” the 21-year-old actress confessed during a
\nrecent stop in Seattle to promote a new line of Levi’s products. With a
\nblossoming feature-film career built on a modeling foundation that began
\nwhen she was 9, Heigl watched TV but paid little attention to its potential
\nfor enhancing her career.<\/p>\nThen she was persuaded to read the pilot script for “Roswell,” a
\nwell-crafted sci-fi love story based on the “Roswell High” series of books
\nby Melinda Metz, about teenage aliens trying to survive in a hostile
\nenvironment – Earth.<\/p>\n“I read it hesitantly,” Heigl recalled.<\/p>\n
But the prospect of a steady income and regular weekly exposure is
\nappealing to most young actors, and Heigl gradually warmed to the idea of
\nplaying Isabel Evans, one of three orphaned survivors of a UFO crash in
\nRoswell, N.M.<\/p>\nBy the time Heigl (pronounced HIGH-gul) had been put through TV’s
\n“torturous” audition process, first in front of producers, then in front of
\nnetwork executives, she was so invested in the project that her snobbery had
\nmelted under a tide of intense proprietorship.<\/p>\n“At that point,” she said, “I really wanted it.”<\/p>\n
And now, after shooting 22 episodes of a series with a cult
\nfollowing for which “enthusiastic” is a wholly inadequate descriptive, she
\nreally doesn’t want to lose “it.”<\/p>\nThe riveting season finale of “Roswell” airs Monday night, but the
\nfate of the series won’t be officially known until Tuesday, when The WB
\nunveils its fall-2000 lineup in front of the New York advertising community.<\/p>\nRecent signs are pointing toward renewal, thanks to improved ratings
\nafter the show moved from Wednesdays to Mondays last month. In the Wednesday
\nslot, it was pitted against UPN’s “Star Trek: Voyager,” a well-established
\nscience fiction drama. On Mondays, “Roswell” is the only sci-fi show on the
\nmainstream dial, a distinct alternative to the silliness of “Ally McBeal”
\nand “Everybody Loves Raymond.”<\/p>\nStill, location filming and special effects make “Roswell” an
\nexpensive series, so if a cost-benefit analysis is factored into marginal
\nratings, non-renewal is certainly a defensible option.<\/p>\nDefensible, maybe, but not wise. Probably the best argument for
\nrenewal is the show’s rabidly devoted fan base. If the network chooses to
\ncancel, it can expect a backlash the likes of which it probably hasn’t seen
\nin its brief existence. Fans have created dozens of Web shrines (the
\nslickest and most authoritative: crashdown.com), and a hard-core group
\ncalling itself AlienBlast raised enough money to advertise its concerns in
\nVariety. The most visible “statement,” though, was a “Roswell Is HOT!”
\nletter campaign that directed thousands of bottles of Tabasco sauce to The
\nWB’s corporate offices in Burbank. (Tabasco sauce is a favorite condiment of
\nthe “Roswell” aliens.)<\/p>\nThe WB then mailed some of the bottles to TV critics, but enthusiasm
\nfrom the publicity side doesn’t necessarily mean the programming side is of
\nthe same mind.<\/p>\nHeigl, who grew up in New Canaan, Conn., a tony suburb of New York,
\nthinks The WB would be foolish to pull the plug on “Roswell,” and not just
\nbecause she’d be out of a job.<\/p>\n“They need that audience,” she said of the show’s relatively strong
\nshowing among 18- to 34-year-olds. “That’s the demographic they’re lacking.”<\/p>\nIndustry-savvy talk comes naturally to Heigl, who has grown up in
\nfront of cameras and now lives outside Los Angeles with her manager\/mom,
\nNancy. From 1992 through 1998, the 5-foot-9 Heigl, who has always looked
\nolder than her age, made at least one film a year, including 1994’s “My
\nFather, the Hero” with Gerard Depardieu. Though few people are likely to be
\nwowed by some of her other films – “Bride of Chucky,” “Under Siege 2,” “Bug
\nBuster” – Heigl considers it all a learning experience.<\/p>\nThe past year on “Roswell” she describes as “stressful but
\nsatisfying” – the stress coming from 12- and 14-hour work days, the
\nchallenges of working with a different director every week, and trying to
\nfit into an ensemble cast. The satisfaction, she said, comes from seeing all
\nthe characters evolve under the guidance of creator Jason Katims (“My
\nSo-Called Life,” “Relativity”) and executive producer Thania St. John and,
\nironically, from working with all those different directors.<\/p>\nA particular favorite is Jonathan Frakes, another executive
\nproducer. Frakes, a veteran of “Star Trek: The Next Generation,” directed
\nthree episodes this season. Heigl calls him “funny, exuberant, a great
\nactor’s director.”<\/p>\nHeigl, who signed a seven-year contract, can’t imagine the show
\nrunning that long. But “another year or two,” she said, is definitely
\nwarranted.<\/p>\n“I’m really impressed and proud of what it’s become,” she said. “I
\nthought it would be boring. It’s been anything but.” <\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Thanks to Chris Silk for letting us know about this wire story that just showed up! DOUBTFUL AT FIRST, HEIGL<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"colormag_page_container_layout":"default_layout","colormag_page_sidebar_layout":"default_layout","footnotes":""},"categories":[2379,3],"tags":[6],"coauthors":[2266],"class_list":["post-564","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-katherine-heigl","category-leading","tag-katherine-heigl"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/crashdown.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/564","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/crashdown.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/crashdown.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crashdown.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crashdown.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=564"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/crashdown.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/564\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":28109,"href":"https:\/\/crashdown.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/564\/revisions\/28109"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/crashdown.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=564"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crashdown.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=564"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crashdown.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=564"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crashdown.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=564"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}