[IMG:L]WKRP in Cincinnati delivered one of TV’s first full-fledged smart blondes in the form of its curvy, clever receptionist Jennifer Marlowe, and her real-life alter ego, actress Loni Anderson throws Hollywood.com some additional curves as she tells all about the cult favorite sitcom’s long-awaited DVD debut.
Hollywood.com: Just so you know, we’re doing this interview under my ‘WKRP’ cast photo framed over my desk.
Loni Anderson: Oh, wonderful – and we’re all babies!
HW: Have you had a chance to look at some of the episodes now with a little distance?
LA: You know what, I’m such a fan of the show. I have to say that I laugh out loud and I just love watching everybody. When Frank Bonner and Hugh Wilson and I were doing commentary on the pilot episode and the “Turkeys Away” episode that we got too caught up in the episode that we forgot to speak. So we had to go back and look at it again and remember that we were doing the commentary on it. So, yeah, we’re fans. And of course when I saw Gordon Jump in the turkeys episode. I was just overwhelmed with emotion and didn’t expect to be as overwhelmed as I was.
HW: At this point, looking back at it did anything new strike you about the show or did you discover anything there that you hadn’t realized while you were doing the show?
LA: I think that I was re-struck with the fact that Gordon Jump could do nine takes and keep the audience laughing and keep it going take after take. He just had that look. He doesn’t even have to speak and everyone is hysterical. And then the other thing I was struck by was Gary Sandy who, you know, was the regular guy. He was the glue person and the rest of us were just a little left of center, and so we always got the dazzling jokes and the dazzling comedy which comes out of being a little whacko. He was just the good guy, and I thought about how hard that was and how underrated I think that he was.
HW: How quickly did you guys come together as a family, as an ensemble because you do seem to be all as different as your characters, but then you gelled on the show?
LA: I know, but almost immediately. By the time that we went on for the pilot, before we stepped out in front of the audience. Tim Reid said, “Let’s all hold hands and remember this moment, because it’s never going to be the same again.” Like your first kiss, it really is just a moment to remember. So I really remember that moment, but we were so crazy with each other that we could hardly leave after we’d finish rehearsing. We would go out to dinner. We’d try and stay together as long as possible and so that happened right away.
HW: The show was so special in that moment and there really wasn’t a whole lot like it on the air. Can you talk about what it was like to have a show this great and to feel so strongly about it and also have it kind of messed around with by the network and their scheduling of it?
LA: I know. I used to say that people would love us if they could find us, because we changed time slots, I don’t know, 21 times in those four years or something ridiculous like that. But we didn’t have a star and up until that time shows were really all centered around a star person, and even if you had an ensemble cast you had a starring role in there, but we were all unknowns. So it was a show about eight people and it stayed a show about eight people, and Hugh Wilson who created it said that he wanted it to always be a show about eight people. So that was really different for the time. I think that there have been a lot of ensemble shows since then that have gone with the same idea. I mean, no one on Friends was the star. Everyone was the star. I think that’s what was so different about our show at the time.
HW: You didn’t really steal the show as your character, but your career really caught fire.
LA: It did, it did. Lucky me, because I had no idea. Celebrity was something that no one had ever sent me to class for, and all those acting classes I ever took there was never a celebrity class.
HW: Can you talk about how weird it is to all of a sudden be plucked from working actress and thrown into that whole life?
LA: It was amazingly weird because I was a brunette, a serious actress. I was a divorced mom and then I became this blonde, and then overnight seemed to be catapulted into this celebrity status. And I have to say that it was very disturbing to my family and to my daughter especially because this is a business, like politics – I can’t think of many other businesses like this – in which you not only become a celebrity, but everyone around you becomes celebrity too, just by a connection to you. And they might not want to be, and it’s difficult and no one can prepare a family for that.
HW: Jennifer was a very different character for that time. She was very smart, very on the ball.
LA: Right. I was really the first of my kind, being a glamorous and smartest-person-in-the-room person. That was not done so much in comedy for women at the time. You were pretty and nice, but you weren’t “wowie.”
HW: Can you talk about discovering that character as you started the show and what she became for you?
LA: Oh, gosh. You and I discovered her together. In the pilot she is completely different. I call Mr. Carlson a jerk, which Jennifer would never say about him. He was my baby and I protected him from then on and so I had changed already from the second show. She just became more and more fleshed out with each episode because we found out more about her. Then Hugh would come in with something wonderful every week. He would say, “This is in your background. Put that in your head just to use and know that it’s there.” I spoke seven languages. I was always sitting at my desk reading about the wealthiest men in the world. There were unexplained things that we never discussed like Jennifer’s unexplained wealth, her beautiful apartment, all those old men that I dated, we never saw them. Pat O’Brien was the only date that we ever saw of mine and that’s because he was instrumental in my moving to Los Angeles. I had done a play with him in Minnesota and he said, “I think that you need to move to L.A.” I said, “No. Too many pretty ladies to compete with.” He said, “But not so many pretty funny ladies.” So he’s the one that convinced me to come to L.A. and then when I did the show and that part came up I said, “There is only one person who can play the role, and that’s Pat O’Brien.”
HW: How did you interpret Jennifer’s relationship with the older guys?
LA: I just thought that she enjoyed their company and what they had to offer in their years of experience, and I think that she was egotistical enough to think that she was making their last years wonderful.
HW: You had such sex appeal in the public eye, but the show never really exploited that. There was one episode that kind of focused on it, where Jennifer was secretly photographed while changing, and took it very seriously. Was there ever pressure from the network to do more exploitive things?
LA: Hugh Wilson did get pressure from the network and he never brought it to me. We have since talked about the fact that they would’ve liked to have exploited that about me a little bit more, but he refused – and thank goodness he did.
HW: Did you have a favorite moment from that whole experience that you will always carry with you, no matter how long it goes?
LA: Gosh, I have so many of those. I really loved working later on in the seasons when Mama Carlson, when we went to her house, and Ian Wolfe was her butler. He had been in every old movie that I ever loved, including a Sherlock Holmes movie. He never looked any older, I thought. He looked just as old in our show as he had like 30, 40, 50 years ago. So, with that, I will never forget that we got to work with him. And then also Carol Bruce who was a big Broadway star and had been in movies played Mama Carlson. So it was more the people and the experiences that we got out of that I remember.
HW: Was there a Mama Carlson at the network that was responsible for you guys being put into a new time slot every other week?
LA: I don’t know who that was and why we got moved around so much. We never did find out. That’s something that I think we all need to ask Hugh Wilson.
HW: Some fans are concerned that some of the original music from the first broadcast weren’t able to get licensing. Do you think that hurts the show at all on DVD at all?
LA: Well, I think that it’s a shame because of course there are some musical moments that we remember that were so specific to the scene, but the comedy is still there and from what I hear they’re fighting to make all the subsequent seasons more full of the original music that we all remember and not have those licensing issues. So some of it is there and some of it is not, but I think that they did a really good job with the music.
HW: Your career stayed on top over the years and I loved you on Tori Spelling‘s show So NoTORIous.
LA: Oh, thank you very much. That was another one that was very special. Every once in a while you get a special one like that in between, where everything is good, but not great like that.
HW: How did you come up with that interpretation of that character?
LA: She kind of grew too because of course with Candy, we couldn’t do a real take off on Candy Spelling who is Tori‘s real mom. So, Kiki became a character all unto herself. I got to just run with it. I got to be the most self-centered and I got to say all of the things that I think every once in a while you would love to say but you wouldn’t, and that character said them with no regard to anyone’s feelings.
HW: No awkward moments at cocktail parties afterwards running into Candy Spelling or anything?
LA: No, no and we’ve known each other for years. We’ve socialized. I did a fabulous movie for Aaron called Sizzle in the early ’80s and Tori came to the set. She was so cute in her little limo and her mink coat [Laughs].
