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USA TODAY ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
BALTIMORE -
Just one of the guys. Melissa Leo insists upon it. So do her bosses on NBC's gritty oughta-be-a-hit Homicide: Life on the Street.
Executive producer Tom Fontana had to quell network qualms over having just one woman character, Leo's decidedly unglam Kay Howard, in his nine-member ensemble. "And for them, to have a woman like Kay Howard made no sense," Fontana says. He quotes: " `You should be having Jaclyn Smith. If we had Jaclyn, we'd be doing a 40 share.' I happen to think women can watch Kay Howard and say they've never seen a woman like her on TV." Co-star Richard Belzer says, "I buy her as a woman, and as a character. Not as an exaggeration of anything." Leo has a word for it: "Authenticity. If that's what they wanted, that's why they hired me to do it. That's the way that I hope that I work."
It hasn't always paid off, as in her experience as the Pony Express housemother on 'The Young Riders' first season. "They - the producers, whoever - would come up to me and say, `Let your hairdown. Do something clothing-wise.' I wore my hair in a bun and worea corset. Things appropriate to the character they had written for me to begin with." When the second season began filming, she wasn't asked back. Leo had to call her manager to find that out. Finally, when she saw a new woman serving dinner "to my boys, it was too much. I told my manager to call the sons of bitches up and tell him why they fired me. Word came back: I wasn't sexy enough. Sexy was the last thing she should have been."
Sex is also not pre-eminent on Kay's mind, being such a scrappy, soulful professional. "She is totally not self-involved," Leo says proudly. "That, I think, is something I brought in tone to the role." She confronted the producers early on to let them know: "If you guys have problems with how I'm doing this, if you want me in more makeup, I want to know about it. And Tom (Fontana) said to me, `I don't get involved in hair and makeup.' And he doesn't." Still, alarm bells went off when she heard about tonight's episode, in which she goes on a date. "I didn't want to do that. I never wanted to single Kay out as the woman on the show, the one who has the romance. And Tom totally feels the same way." Turns out the episode is a rumination on all of the detectives' personal and romantic lives, not just hers.
Almost alone among the cast, she doesn't dwell on the absurdly short four-episode order for the second season, ending tonight. Few during production expressed hope of returning again; ratings have declined since the season premiere with Robin Williams. "I never pay attention to any of that. Ever. If I was here worrying about meeting everyone's expectations and being on for 10 years, it wouldn't be the same thing. And it wouldn't be suited for me."
She's aware, though, of how special Homicide
is. "As much as we always say `You don't do that' in TV, I think people
are ready for something else. And until you give it to them, how are you
ever gonna know? To me, (caution) is not what acting is
about, especially TV acting. "This is how I support me and my son.
It's totally a fluke for me to do so much TV. And because it is what it
is, I can take
enormous risks."
Copyright 1994, USA TODAY, a division of Gannett Co., Inc. Matt Roush, Leo's arresting authenticity // Realism, not sex, is `Homicide' star's calling card., USA TODAY, 01-27-1994, pp 03.