A Slice of TV Life

BYLINE: Tim Feran, Dispatch TV-Radio Critic --
Soon after I lie down on Sela Ward's bed, the raven-haired actress looks me in the eyes. She is wearing pajamas. I already have discovered what her seat feels like.

Whoa there, libido grande!

Lest anyone get the wrong idea, I am merely visiting the set of Ward's series, Once and Again. After inspecting the interiors where Ward's character, Lily Manning, lives (the bedroom has a fireplace and the bathroom is bigger than my dining room) and sitting in Lily's office chair at the Internet firm PagesAlive.com (the seat is pretty comfy), I and three other critics are chatting with the Emmy and Golden Globe winner.

Ward is between takes while shooting an upcoming episode -- "Aaron's Getting Better," set to air March 7 -- and the circumstances mostly prove the old saying: The most exciting day of your life is your first day on a set. The dullest day of your life is your second day on a set.

All of us have been on the sets of television shows before and, as elsewhere, there is a lot of standing around, waiting. Once and Again is unusual, however, not the least because of its location.

Instead of a vast studio complex, the show is filmed in an office park in Culver City, Calif. A small sign, about the size of a front-lawn "For Sale" sign, has "O & A" and an arrow on it, pointing to what looks like a warehouse. The nondescript building is similar to thousands of others that spring up like wildflowers near outerbelts in suburban America.

In the episode being shot, Lily's brother comes to visit. He's a diagnosed schizophrenic, and his arrival has created some wrenching complications for Lily and her family. The scene the cast is taping involves a quiet, late-night discussion between Lily and her daughter, Grace (Julia Whelan).

Ward wears pajamas -- "Nick and Nora"-style flannel bottoms that have names of various Chinese foods written on them, and a maroon top. It's cold on the soundstage, so the actress wears boots while she's waiting and dons slippers after the director and director of photography have arranged the camera to their satisfaction.

In the scene, Ward's character is standing in the bathroom and looks in the mirror to find that her daughter has entered the room. In reality, the angle is all wrong and Ward can't possibly see Whelan, so someone off camera will cue the actress to turn around at the appropriate moment.

On camera, the room looks as solid as if the show were filmed inside a real home. In fact, each wall of the bathroom set is propped up and can be moved away to allow the crew to set up the camera.

The irony of this intimate scene between mother and daughter is that about two dozen people are standing just out of camera range, watching the duo's every move.

Take after take, Ward washes her hands in the sink. To accomplish this, a worker has to squat on the other side of the wall and operate a small pump tank so Ward has water. After numerous takes, the tank runs out of water. But the drain is connected to a white plastic pail, so the prop man simply pours the old water back in the pump tank.

The scene will take up a couple minutes of screen time, but director Jim Kramer and company take a half day to shoot it from various angles.

Shooting the same scene time after time proves to be a test of endurance. That Ward and Whelan can deliver their lines believably every time is a testament to their talent.

"It requires strange abilities to make a film actor," the episode's writer, Richard Kramer, tells us. "You have to have total discipline. These actors are so great. Sela finds 19 different ways to do it. It's a great privilege to have actors that good."

It helps that the roles are almost perfectly fitted to the stars.

"Truly, I've never had material so suited for me as an actress," Ward says. "The show is bringing out many, many facets of me as an actress. . . . It is so effortless, I feel like I'm flying."

Ward and Billy Campbell star in the series as Lily and Rick, 40-something divorced people who try to figure out how to balance their new love, parenthood and work.

Series co-creator Marshall Herskovitz says the direction in which he and partner Edward Zwick have taken Lily has a lot to do with Ward's capabilities.

"We have a relationship with the actors and a relationship with the characters," he says. "Those relationships interact with each other. Those relationships sometimes energize each other."

"I think we were surprised initially by Sela's comic ability," Zwick says. "It was like a gold mine. Likewise, Billy's emotional availability far exceeds our original intentions. We were utterly seduced by what Billy brings to the dance."

"The Lily you see is also Sela's connection to Billy as they work together," Herskovitz says.

Zwick smiles and adds, almost to himself, "Hell hath no fury like an actor underused."

In Herskovitz and Zwick's earlier series, thirtysomething, Patricia Wettig had little to do for a stretch of episodes, Zwick recalls, then adds with a laugh, "When it came time to give her character cancer, she was overjoyed."

Perhaps referring to common criticisms of thirtysomething, Zwick says that the dramatic ups and downs on Once and Again have purposely alternated between big complications -- the actions of Lily's brother, for instance -- and small but carefully observed moments of emotion such as the mother- daughter chat we're watching.

"If you make too much ado about little things, it comes across as whining," Zwick says. "If you have too much drama it becomes melodrama."__The Columbus Dispatch (February 5, 2001)