It’s early in August, and Jean Louisa Kelly is off with her husband of 12 years on the annual family trip back East to visit various parents and siblings and nieces and nephews. It’s a hectic couple of weeks in the best of times. Which this isn’t. This one has a high-pressure agenda hanging over it, one that can divide spouses and make for anxious, unpredictable days whose complexion can change without warning. Potty training.
The mere words can throw terror into the hearts of even the most responsible and patient caregiver.
“My daughter is a challenge right now,” Kelly laments of her youngest child, three-year-old Josey.
“I’m cool with not forcing the issue. My husband isn’t. But we decided to put it off until our vacation. And she just isn’t into it. And I’m like, no way are we ruining this trip to deal with it. But my husband is like, ‘You are totally going back on your promise!’” Ah, the joys of parenthood. It was never like this on
“Yes, Dear,” the TV comedy series on which Kelly starred for six steady hit seasons (2000-2006). But no one needs to tell her that life is no sitcom – at least, not anymore. And you can’t really much blame Kelly if she has just the slightest bit of yearning for the good old days when she didn’t have to think about diaper duty.
This may not be the most effective transition into a discussion of the 37-year-old Kelly’s latest work, co-starring in a new Hallmark Channel Original Movie, the holiday-themed “The Three Gifts,” which premieres Saturday, December 19 (8p.m. ET/PT, 7C). But actually, in another way, it’s altogether fitting, given how work has suddenly taken on the complexion of a vacation by comparison. At least, most of the time, anyway.
“The second week on the set, I have a message on my cell phone from my daughter’s school,” Kelly recalls.
“It’s the head of the place telling me she needs me to call her back immediately. No hint of what it is, right? It turns out Josey fell and needed stitches. Between takes, there I am having to call my husband and the pediatrician. I couldn’t leave. I’m in Simi Valley on a film shoot. So my husband has to bolt from his work in the middle of a meeting. He has to take her to the plastic surgeon because she fell off the pirate ship at school and smacked her face on a railroad tie. That wasn’t such a good day.” The next day, Kelly notes, her daughter and mother accompanied her to the Hallmark Channel movie shoot.
“Then my mom got sick!” she relates with horror.
“It was like, ‘Oh my God! When is this going to end?’” That was fortunately pretty much it for the familial drama.
But there were a few other anxious moments during the shoot for
“The Three Gifts” Kelly remembers.
“We’re shooting in this big sky country location with horses and covered wagons,” she says,
“and it got kind of treacherous. You’re riding to the filming spot on really bumpy roads in these vans without guardrails. If you lose your balance, you’re on the ground.” Given all of these variables, it’s perhaps somewhat miraculous that Kelly emerged without any permanent scars, physical or psychological. But it isn’t as if the actress is some fragile flower. She’s a professionally trained singer and dancer who can hoof and belt out a tune with exceptional gusto.
In fact, Kelly fans will recall that her big break came playing the muse to the title character in the 1995 theatrical hit
“Mr. Holland’s Opus,” which found the actress turning in an impressive rendition of
“Someone to Watch Over Me.” That same year, she proved a song-and-dance dynamo in the musical feature
“The Fantasticks” (which wasn’t released until 2000).
Before attending Columbia College and receiving a BA in English, Kelly was playing on Broadway in the original cast of Stephen Sondheim’s
Into the Woods and, at 17, she worked with John Candy in the film comedy
“Uncle Buck.” In the 1990s, Kelly was cast in several made-for-TV movies, including the acclaimed Hallmark Hall of Fame entries
“Breathing Lessons” and
“Harvest of Fire.” More recently have come episodic drama guest stints in shows including
“Grey’s Anatomy,” “Ghost Whisperer” and
“Eli Stone.” But as much as she loves comedy and drama, it’s pretty clear what Kelly’s true passion is - and the kind of work she’d do if she had her druthers.
“I’d really love to do another musical,” says the Massachusetts-born Kelly.
“I’ve also been working on my own album for six years, where I sing some covers, some standards and three original songs. One of my short-term goals is to finally get the thing done and released.”Kelly’s singing also extends to crooning at benefit events such as one for the charity Project Angel Food. But her chief and only hobby these days, she insists, is raising Josey and six-year-old son Sean (who is, thankfully, long since potty trained). If the musical thing doesn’t happen, Kelly wouldn’t mind hooking into another sitcom regular situation.
“It’s such a manageable way to work as an actress,” she believes.
“It would be terrific to get a chance to do another one. “But I’m afraid I’m totally spoiled. You don’t get too many opportunities in your acting life to be on a long-running series. The older I get, the more I realize how hard it is to get on something that sticks. We had a lot of laughs together on ‘Yes, Dear,’ it was a blast, yet the truth is none of us had any idea it was going to become such a hit. I hope I’m not overly greedy expecting that it might happen again. Just one more time.” “The Three Gifts” premieres Saturday, December 19 (8p.m. ET/PT, 7C)
Printer-friendly version