Wendie Malick
Welcome to Random Roles, wherein we talk to actors about the characters who defined their careers. The catch: They don't know beforehand what roles we'll ask them to talk about.
The actor: Wendie Malick, who left a modeling career in the mid-’70s to become an actress, appearing mostly in small roles on television and in movies before she landed a big part in the HBO series Dream On in 1990. Since then, Malick has worked steadily, mostly on television and mostly in sitcoms: Just Shoot Me, Frasier, and TV Land’s original series Hot In Cleveland, in which she plays a vain, aging actress trying to restart her life in the Midwest alongside a couple of her Hollywood friends. Malick can also be seen in the comedy What Happens Next (now available on DVD and from various VOD services), playing the sister of a billionaire who discovers late in life that he’s gay.
Dream On (1990-96)—“Judith Tupper Stone”
Wendie Malick: At that time most people caught HBO when they were staying in a hotel. Very few people had it as part of their cable; it was kind of a luxury. We were the first successful comedy on HBO, particularly after they paired us up with The Larry Sanders Show. It was pretty outrageous what we could get away with, but it was really smart, funny writing, even though it was a little gaudy and bordered on raunchy. So many amazing shows came out of that writing pool, probably the greatest of which was Friends. But yeah, we were kind of pioneering a whole new territory, and that was also a huge break for me, because I started out as a straight-woman for Brian Benben, and once they found out I was funny, they made me progressively more and more loony. That was kind of the first time people realized I was a comedienne.
The A.V. Club: That’s strange, given that you had connections with the original Saturday Night Live.
WM: Yeah, I was really good friends with Al Franken and Tom Davis, and Michael O’Donoghue was a dear friend. My ex-husband Mitch Glazer worked on that show, and he and Michael were partners; they wrote Scrooged and a couple other movies together, and I did a few of their little spoof commercials. That was a pretty happy, fabulous time, with Danny Aykroyd and John Belushi and Laraine Newman, who’s still a friend. Such groundbreaking television in those days. We just couldn’t believe that we could get that stuff on television. That was back in the days when literally everybody stopped whatever they were doing at 11:30 on Saturday night to watch what was going to happen next.
AVC: Yet even with those associations, people didn’t think of you as a comedienne?
WM: People who knew me did, but I was probably somewhat typecast because I was tall and slim and brunette. I was never much of an ingénue, but often played the heavy, or a doctor or a lawyer or a murderess. I killed like, three husbands one season on various shows. [Laughs.] Which was fun! And now I play a lot of outrageous women who are slightly bitchy and narcissistic. Then I find that when I meet people in real life they think I’m so incredibly nice and balanced. [Laughs.] Just by contrast, I guess.
Just Shoot Me (1997-2003)—“Nina Van Horn”
AVC: You mentioned the “type” you play, which you really became identified with on Just Shoot Me, right around the same time that Christine Baranski was doing something similar on Cybill.
WM: You know what’s really weird? Maybe it’s the water. She grew up 10 minutes away from me. We’re both from the suburbs of Buffalo and we’re the same age. I’d never met her when we were younger. We’ve laughed about that. We’re both Buffalo gals who have very sarcastic senses of humor. [Laughs.] I think it’s something about living there. Maybe how dark it is. Something to do with the weather.