[IMG:L]Joy Turner, the acid-tongued, teased-haired trailer park baby momma and foil to her ex-husband’s quest to do good deeds on My Name is Earl, has a taste for low-rent living and enough experience with karmic payback that she might enjoy watching another gleefully trashy TV show, Dog the Bounty Hunter. But as this season threatened to see Joy get her long-overdue comeuppance while on trial for her third strike offense, her desperate escape to Mexico puts Duane “Dog” Chapman on her trail.
“He was really, really cool,” said Jaime Pressly. “I like that show. I couldn’t be more interested in that show. He and his wife and his son, his brother and the whole thing, they were all there. The whole team from the show was there. Yeah, the whole posse showed up and it was really great actually.”
Mrs. Dog (aka Beth Smith) actually got into a mild row with the actress. “When I first walked up to meet him, they introduced me or whatever and I said ‘hi’ and his wife goes, ‘Keep your hands off my man.’ And I went, ‘Don’t worry, honey, I’m pregnant.’ I mean, I was fully pregnant. I was like eight months pregnant. It was really obvious. But she thought because Joy is always pregnant that I had a pregnant suit on. And obviously, I didn’t have my ring on because I’m playing Joy. She went, ‘Oh, you’re really pregnant?’ And I said, ‘Yeah, you don’t have anything to worry about.’ And I’m thinking to myself, ‘You don’t have anything to worry about anyway but if it makes you feel better, I’m pregnant.’ And she started laughing, she goes, ‘Oh, I’m so sorry’ and then we became like best buds. And I’m getting all the scoop on the Anna Nicole stuff behind the scenes. They were really great, super down to earth and I really enjoyed hanging out with them.”
Season two of Earl has also written Pressly‘s real life pregnancy into the story. Joy is a surrogate mother to her former rival. “It was difficult, especially in the first trimester because I hadn’t told anybody yet. Normally, when a woman gets pregnant, she waits until she’s three months pregnant and passes that hump. At about two to two and a half months pregnant, I finally broke down and told everybody. I couldn’t remember my lines. I had pregnant brain like you wouldn’t believe. And, I was falling asleep standing up and I was irritable as all hell. It was nice to finally let everybody know, ‘Yes, I’m pregnant.’ It was like a sigh of relief for me.”
[IMG:R]It turned out that many crew members were also with child, and creator Greg Garcia was happy to adjust the plot of the show for his star. “Originally, he wasn’t going to, but he came up with such a brilliant idea that it would have been stupid not to use the pregnancy after knowing what he came up with. It was great. The second trimester was bliss, as it is for most pregnant women. It was totally fine. I thoroughly enjoyed going to work, and had no problem. And then, the third trimester came and it was like, ‘Oh, my God, is this show going to end?’ But, I’m so lucky to work with such an amazing group of people that were so supportive. Even though it’s mostly men, I happen to work with really great men, who were all extremely thoughtful in the whole process and looked after me very well. I definitely had a great group of people to work with and was blessed, in that sense.”
With her real life due date approaching, Pressly has a sense of humor about baby prep. “[I’m] hiking mountains, having sex and eating spicy food,” she joked. “When you’re an Oompah Loompah, it’s all difficult. I’m like way over-organized, so now it’s like waiting for paint to dry. I’m just sitting here waiting. I’m not doing anything now because I’m over organized but the baby’s room is done, we’ve got the nanny and everybody from the grandmothers to the nanny to the dad and I have car seats and strollers. Everything is completely set up, the hospital, there’s nothing else I could possibly do to get ready for this child.”
Keeping pace with a single-camera TV schedule with a new baby could prove challenging, but Pressly thinks she can tough it out easily enough. “As far as next season is concerned, I’m not the first woman to have a child and work, so I’m sure I’ll get through it and manage, just as all the other women in this world do. And, I’m blessed because I’ll have help. An actor, when they say, ‘Action’ they act. When they say, ‘Cut,” you cut. And I’m going to have help. I’ll have a nanny with me on set, at all times, so that my child is fully taken care of. It’s a very kid-friendly set.”
Before My Name is Earl, Pressly was semi-known for playing similarly trashy, slutty, vulgar characters. She even spoofed her own ouvre in Not Another Teen Movie. With the subtle range offered by Earl‘s storylines, Pressly has finally won over the critics, but credits her entire filmography with getting her there.
“A lot of people said that I was pigeonholed and I only played the same character over and over again, but the truth is every character I played, each was very different from the next. While they might have had southern dialects, they were different southern dialects. Once I got My Name is Earl a couple years ago, I immediately thought to myself, ‘Those were all homework. It was all work that was leading up to this one role.’ It definitely helped get me ready for it.”
Joy may lie, cheat and steal, but Pressly thinks she has a heart of gold, even if she can’t articulate her good intentions as well as Earl. “I think every character on our show has a heart of gold under there somewhere which is what makes the show so great. That’s basically why we’ve had our viewers get emotionally invested in each character on the show is because at the end of the day, no matter how many faults a character has or how politically incorrect the show might be, by the end of the show, just like Earl, we right our wrongs and learn from our mistakes. So I definitely think that Joy has a heart of gold under there somewhere. Like I said, every other character does too which again allows our viewers to get emotionally invested.”
Pressly seems particularly fond of Randy, the character of Earl’s dim-witted brother played by Ethan Suplee. “The charm of Randy though is that he is like a little kid. He’s into everything. You have to watch him or he’ll set something on fire in the background. He’s like a little kid. You really have to keep your eye on him at all times because, if you don’t, he’s mischievous and he’s going to get into things in the background that are actually very funny to the viewer.”
With season two wrapped, the actors have already worked on the DVD box set before taking off for the summer. “We did, towards the end of our season, the last couple of weeks of filming in February and March, we did some of the stuff for the DVD, behind the scenes as well. I enjoy doing it. You think it’s a necessary evil and then you get to see the DVDs and you go, ‘Wow, that was actually great. I’m glad we did that.’ For this to be our second time doing it, it came as second nature. It wasn’t a necessary evil, it was just necessary.”
With so much fan support and a grateful cast and crew, the DVD is just another way to show appreciation. “I felt when I watched the first season of our DVDs and the behind the scenes and stuff, there was just as much heart in that and hearing everybody individually and great stories that came from all the actors as well as the directors and producers, that I thoroughly enjoyed it. One of the best things about the DVD is that you get all that extra behind the scenes stuff. I definitely think it’s necessary.”
The entire cast and crew shares Pressly‘s view, according to her. With a hit Thursday night comedy, everyone has reason to love life. “We’re all extremely happy with our jobs, but so is our creator, Greg Garcia. He’s living the life right now because he gets to write whatever he wants. Because everything that he writes is brilliant, along with the team of writers that we have, he is getting to fulfill his fantasies as well and write in these people that he’s always wanted to work with and use storylines that were his favorite growing up. So, it’s a blessing for everybody. Everybody feels very lucky.”
The supersize My Name is Earl finale airs on May 10 on NBC.
