ONWARD AND UPWARD WITH THE ARTS THE SHOCK OF THE GOOD

Broadway’s sweetheart sneaks spirituality into a sitcom.

BY JOHN LAHR

n a late blustery January afternoon more innocent era of entertainment. She Olast year, with the wind whipping is Nellie Forbush in “South Pacific”— snow flurries into their bowed faces, a “as corny as Kansas in August” (though cluster of some thirty theatricals hur- she’s from Oklahoma) and as “bromidic ried into Sardi’s to witness the unveiling and bright as a moon-happy night.” But of the latest celebrity caricatures to be Rodgers and Hammerstein created that hung on the restaurant’s cluttered red character in 1949, when America still walls. Of all the totems of Broadway clung to the fantasy of its own purity. success—billing above the title, percent- Chenoweth has come of age in the era of age of the gross, dressing room on the the corporate musical, and her persona first floor—a place on the wall at Sardi’s has proved a problem. Though she has a is perhaps the most emotive and the two-and-a-half-octave range and can sing most symbolic, linking the initiate to a an E above high C—the vocal equivalent nearly century-long chain of great en- of a five-hundred-yard golf drive—she is tertainers and to the glorious annals of too outspoken for the likes of Disney’s show-biz joy. In recent years, owing to a fun machines. “If they want the plain steady decline in the number of quality vanilla ingénue, it ain’t me,” she says. At shows and sensational entertainers, Sardi’s the same time, she’s too wholesome for has taken to adding the faces of produc- the desiccated souls that Stephen Sond- ers to its tableau of prowess—a real blip heim’s boulevard nihilism has made the in the vital signs of Broadway talent. On musical vogue. Each of her major Broad- this occasion, however, the president of way shows has helped her career: she Sardi’s, Max Klimavicius, was passing a won a Theatre World Award in 1997 for Richard Baratz caricature into the hands her part in “Steel Pier,” although it was of a star, the then thirty-one-year-old drastically cut; she won a Tony in 1999 actress Kristin Chenoweth. for her performance as Sally Brown in The drawing captured the diminu- “You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown”— tive Chenoweth’s apple-pie exterior— a part written specifically to shoehorn the sweep of her shoulder-length blond her into an otherwise mediocre show; hair, her wide forehead, almond-shaped and later that year she got raves for her cerulean-blue eyes, high cheekbones, and starring role in “Epic Proportions,” a strong chin—but it showed little of her woefully amateur send-up of a Holly- high-voltage interior, the warmth of wood Biblical epic. But none of these which has won her a battalion of New roles managed to bring her effectively York theatregoing admirers. In an earlier from the periphery to the center of the time, when Broadway was a leader in story. In other words, Chenoweth on popular culture and not a follower, Chen- Broadway is a star with no place to glow. oweth’s singing voice, her high-pitched Chenoweth attended Broken Arrow speech (which sounds as if she had just High School, in a comfortable middle- inhaled helium), her comic timing, and class suburb of Tulsa.Her family’s house her aura of downright decency would had a wooden fence and a swimming have made her one of America’s sweet- pool, and she drove—badly—a yellow hearts. Instead, she’s a local thrill, un- Ford Mustang. In a section of her 1986 known to the hinterland. Chenoweth yearbook in which the class members calls herself a “throwback,” and, in a imagined their futures—perhaps a doc- sense, she’s right. She’s a God-fearing tor, perhaps a millionaire—Chenoweth Baptist whose buoyancy is underpinned is portrayed as “the famous singer she by the Bible’s good news. Both her opti- hopes to be.”“I always said, ‘I want to do mism and her talent are indicative of a Broadway,’”she says.“I didn’t even know

44 THE NEW YORKER, JUNE 4, 2001

TNY—06/04/01—PAGE 44 Kristin Chenoweth with John Markus, a writer who thinks he has created the perfect role for her. Photograph by Martin Schoeller.

what Broadway was, but I knew I’d be them I was there for fun. They said, captured it so perfectly—my personality! there.” After completing a master’s de- ‘Who’s your agent?’ I said, ‘My dad, Especially my hair”—a laugh bubbled gree in opera performance at Oklahoma I guess. I mean, I don’t have one.’” up—“and my roots!”But, as she held the City University in 1993, and earning the Chenoweth adds,“I decided to go for it. caricature up to her face like a mask and title of “most promising newcomer” at a The Academy of Vocal Arts really let me posed for the cameras, she couldn’t help Metropolitan Opera audition that same have it: ‘Don’t ever try to get back here thinking that, despite her Tony, she was year, Chenoweth won a scholarship to again. You’re making the biggest mis- being elevated to Broadway’s wall of continue her studies at the Academy of take of your life.’” fame without ever having had a hit show. Vocal Arts, in Philadelphia. On her way Five and a half years later, in a fitted there, she stopped in New York and de- brown pony-hair suit and a pale-blue eaning against the bar across the cided to audition for “Animal Crackers,” blouse showing plenty of décolletage, Lroom was John Markus, a goateed a Marx Brothers musical—“just to see Chenoweth scrutinized her likeness at forty-four-year-old TV writer, who was how I would do.”“I sang. I read a scene. Sardi’s, then beamed at Klimavicius and about two weeks away from complet- I learned a dance,” she says. “They said the zealous admirers around her. “It’s ing the pilot script for a sitcom starring

SABA they wanted to offer me the part. I told wonderful! Thank you,” she said. “You Chenoweth, and who was wondering, as

THE NEW YORKER, JUNE 4, 2001 45

TNY—06/04/01—PAGE 45—LIVE OPI ART—R 9981—140SC—CRITICAL CUT TO BE WATCHED THROUGHOUT ENTIRE PRESS RUN!!! he watched her bask in the affection of her, one that encompassed both her short. But he couldn’t come up with any- her fans, whether he was doing the right strong morals and her extravagant sense thing on the scale of his early success. thing. The news of Chenoweth’s defec- of humor—a role in which she could Having worked so hard to define the tion to the West Coast had already fil- travel. “I made you a Cadillac,” he an- comic identity of Bill Cosby, Markus tered out into the theatre world, and nounced when he handed her the first was now unable to define himself.“I had Broadway folk were eying Markus as if he draft of the script. no reference points for the day,” he says. were a carpetbagger and warning him to Markus had begun his career in com- “I was faced with me. I’m just not as “take care of our girl.” Markus knew the edy as a teen-ager, in the early seventies, much fun as a hit TV show.” He spent subtext of those warnings. He was about by sending jokes about life in a small five days a week in psychoanalysis— to drop Chenoweth into the middle of town in Ohio to the syndicated New what he calls “the sport of kings.” He the Hollywood sump, and his mood was York columnist Earl Wilson; at nine- took tutorials in the American novel. distinctly bittersweet: “I was taking her teen, he flew to New York and waited He studied guitar with the jazz master from the world that was celebrating her. eight hours for Bob Hope to walk Bucky Pizzarelli. He spent more time I was telling myself I’d be doing her some through a hotel lobby so that he could with his wife, the painter Ardith Truhan, good. She could come back after the se- hand him a few pages of his jokes— whom he’d married in 1997, after a ries to better parts and bigger audiences.” which Hope bought for five hundred sixteen-year courtship. He also began to That was the gamble—and it was a dollars. By the time he was thirty, buy property—using his “Cosby” pro- big one. Many current theatrical tal- Markus had worked himself up to the ceeds to acquire eight hundred and fifty ents—Nathan Lane and Faith Prince position of head writer on “The Cosby acres in upstate New York, a kingdom among them—have tried and failed to Show.” He wrote or co-wrote sixty- larger than Central Park, on which he make the transition from Broadway to seven of the show’s episodes, and by the built a computerized house where every- TV.Too often, the material had nothing time he left, six years later, his gift for thing from the window blinds to the to do with the actor. The majority of re- writing successful character comedy had mattresses is adjustable at the touch of cent successful sitcoms have been built earned him both a reputation as a wun- a button. Markus believes in property around the well-developed and easily derkind and a percentage of “The Cosby as an investment, and he has a knack identifiable personalities of standup co- Show”’s syndication. Markus then put for developing it. From his seat at the bar medians such as Roseanne, Tim Allen, in a season as a writer and consulting at Sardi’s, he watched Chenoweth with Ray Romano, and Jerry Seinfeld. But producer for “The Larry Sanders Show,” the eye of an architect who has just Markus was bullish about Chenoweth, and, with Al Franken, created and wrote discovered a magnificent new landscape and he believed he could provide her “Lateline,” a smart stab at media satire on which to build. with a role that would make sense for whose network life was blighted and wo years—almost to the day—be- Tfore the Sardi’s ceremony, Markus had been watching a videotape of per- formances by six actresses, in order to cast a pilot he’d written for NBC. Chenoweth was third on the tape, and he didn’t bother with the last three. “There was a conviction in her perfor- mance,” he told me. “That’s what it was—a sense of commitment and truth- fulness and this kind of powerful en- ergy.” He had her flown out to Burbank to test in front of the network execu- tives. In the end, Chenoweth lost the part but gained an ally.“We just clicked,” Markus says. In Chenoweth, Markus recognized something of his own upbringing. Both were part of that huge, undramatized demographic that TV executives refer to as “the fly-over people.”Markus’s par- ents were Holocaust survivors, who, in 1953, had settled in London, Ohio (cur- rent population 8,771). Markus remem- bers going into the local café—the State Restaurant—and walking right into the “Maybe the compassionate part will kick in during kitchen, where the management let him the second half of the Administration.” cook his own meals. “Everything was

TNY—06/04/01—PAGE 46—LIVE OPI—A6521—120 LS available—there was this great open- Christian faith and her talent. “This ness,” he told me. Chenoweth’s own is a character who, day by day, lives by openness, her lack of cynicism, and her the following rules: she will not lie, vulnerability tapped a deep reservoir of she will not cheat, she will not break nostalgia in him. In addition to an ob- the law, she believes that marriage is a session with junk food (Markus has a sacred vow, and she lives the way God life-size Bob’s Big Boy sculpture hid- asks her to live,” Markus explained. “In den in the woods of his estate) and a the obstacles to that goodness lies the weakness for certain low styles of popu- humor.” Markus envisioned the sitcom lar entertainment (Gogi Grant, the Let- as a radical departure from the cari- termen), Markus and Chenoweth share cature and sensationalism of the past a passion for flat landscapes “where few years of television—the jamboree you can see forever.” And Markus, who of dysfunction (“Malcolm in the Mid- felt “maybe I’d lost my own way,” was dle,”“The Simpsons”) and the Machi- moved by Chenoweth’s integrity and avellian manipulation of reality-based spiritual direction. Without knowing shows like “Survivor.” quite where it would lead him, he began Like most stars, Chenoweth has a to study her. canny sense of what she’s selling, and During the subsequent months, he she saw in Markus someone who both trailed Chenoweth to a Baptist church in understood her talent and could advance New York and to a Methodist church in her career. He himself was almost mes- Los Angeles. He visited her at home on sianic on the subject. “John just never the Upper West Side, and joined her for stopped,” the Paramount executive Dan her first spa experience, in a de-luxe Fauci says. “ ‘You gotta see Kristin. You Berkshire enclave. A man who always gotta see Kristin.’ And he was right.” knows where you can buy it for more, Markus sold Paramount on the idea, Markus found himself on excursions to and then NBC. The show was about Target, where Chenoweth likes to shop optimism, he told the NBC supremos. for clothes, ending each spree with a It was about innocence. It was about cherry slushie. He also attended her per- strength. Chenoweth, he explained, was formances and was at the first screening a person with whom other fly-over peo- of Disney’s “Annie,”in which she played ple would identify. They got the idea so the vamp Lily St. Regis. quickly that Markus stopped his pitch In 1999, Chenoweth suddenly began five minutes early,saying,“My work here getting calls from Hollywood executives. is done.” But it was only just beginning. She had a half-dozen interviews, and, NBC ordered thirteen shows—at a total solely on the basis of having seen her cost to the studio and the network of sing and win at the Tony Awards, several nearly fifteen million dollars—starring network and studio panjandrums offered an actress whom most of the executives, her a “holding deal”—a lucrative ar- and most of the nation, had never even rangement whereby the studio pays a seen perform. performer not to take other work while it Markus filled the first script with develops a show around her. At this incidents from Chenoweth’s life. (“It’s point, Markus told me, he suddenly re- eighty-seven per cent me,” she says.) alized that “for the rest of my career I Sometimes it’s a scene taken from her was probably never going to encounter a past, like the time she was unwittingly performer like this to write for, and, un- hired to deliver a malicious singing tele- less I came up with a vehicle to land her, gram—and performed “You’ve Lost I could eventually lose her.” That Lovin’ Feelin’”for a man who’d Until then, he had had “just a vague just had a vasectomy and who broke notion of the feel of a show” that would down and wept on hearing it. Some- feature “a good woman in a world that times it’s dialogue, like her comeback to was immoral.” Now he elaborated: in a married man who tried to kiss her: the show, as he imagined it, Chenoweth “There’s a wedding ring on your finger, would play an aspiring actress named Mister. Somewhere you have a wife Kristin, who is forced to take tempo- who’s counting on me not to kiss back.” rary work with a charming but preda- Markus recalls, “I was once sitting with tory real-estate mogul, and who must her in a situation where she had to tell a then struggle to remain true to both her white lie. She was on the phone. She

THE NEW YORKER, JUNE 4, 2001 47

TNY—06/04/01—PAGE 47 screwed up her courage and told the lie, but before she did it she crossed her fin- gers. ‘Why are you looking at me?’ she THINGS SHOULDN’T BE SO HARD asked when she hung up. I said, ‘I saw something I’m putting in the show.’” A life should leave in the dark deep tracks: almost erased. caught up with Markus and Chen- ruts where she Her things should Ioweth in April of last year, on a crys- went out and back keep her marks. talline Los Angeles afternoon, at their to get the mail The passage production office on the Paramount lot. or move the hose of a life should show; With the Venetian blinds partly closed around the yard; it should abrade. against the sun’s glare, they were readying where she used to And when life stops, the first script to “go to table” (a read- stand before the sink, a certain space through for the network).They made an a worn-out place; —however small— amusing study in contrasts. Issuing an beneath her hand, should be left scarred endless series of orders to his assistants the china knobs by the grand and next door, inspecting props for the set rubbed down to damaging parade. being built across the way, taking calls white pastilles; Things shouldn’t from agents and actors, Markus was the the switch she be so hard. commander-in-chief, in a khaki shirt, used to feel for shorts, and sandals. Chenoweth, in open- —Kay Ryan toed shoes and black pedal pushers, moved around the room like some playful promise of good times. She flopped onto Short Person”—an allusion to “Touched Santa! There’s Santa!’”(“To this day,if she a sofa and draped herself over the armrest by an Angel,” the hour-long sentimental sees a clown coming she’ll turn and walk to cue up a demo for the show’s theme spiritual drama to which Markus imag- away for fear he might give her a balloon,” song. Since the song,“Hold On,”was the ines his show will be an antidote. “I felt Junie Chenoweth says of her daughter.) work of Jeanine Tesori and Dick Scanlan, that the star of our show might find it a Onstage, the combination of small the erstwhile writers of the stage adapta- little difficult,week to week,”he said of this body and big personality only adds to tion of “Thoroughly Modern Millie” last title. “Just a hair,” the star responded. Chenoweth’s allure. But offstage, when (which Chenoweth had abandoned in she is patronized because of her size, a order to make the series), and since it henoweth is four feet eleven, and certain militancy shows through her was Chenoweth’s voice on the demo, C“the size thing,” as she calls it, is not geniality. During a recent Christmas- it seemed like a done deal—as, indeed, it always a joke for her. At her first anxious shopping expedition to H. Stern to buy proved to be.“Hold on / Hold on / Hold meeting with Paramount executives, she pearls for her mother, Chenoweth, whose on to who you are,” Chenoweth sang. was offered a seat on a large leather couch. head was barely higher than the display Another TV-comedy pro, Earl Pom- “Her feet didn’t touch the ground; she cases, found herself first being over- erantz, whom Markus had enlisted to kept sliding off and, trying to maintain looked, then treated rudely by a sales- help him punch up the script, wandered her poise, hoisting herself back up,” woman named Cynthia. Chenoweth re- in to listen. “I like the lyrics,” he said. Markus recalls. “You will see that exact calls, “I said, ‘You’re unhappy, aren’t you? “I like the idea of it. But I don’t know moment in the show.” Size has been a You’re an unhappy person because you’re if Jews will listen if they put that on.”“Do defining issue in Chenoweth’s life, and, to working at Stern’s. You know what I’m Jews have Nielsen boxes?”Markus asked. some extent, it accounts for the particular gonna do? I’m gonna pray for you right “I dunno,” Pomerantz said with a shrug. intensity of her talent. Her size cost her a now. I’m really gonna pray.’”Chenoweth The talk turned to the show’s title.“There’s career as a ballet dancer after fifteen years bowed her head. “Dear Lord, help Cyn- a hundred-dollar reward for whoever of training, and it got her pushed around thia,”she said.“She is so unhappy here at comes up with the right name,” Cheno- in the halls of Broken Arrow High School. Stern’s. And I mean it, because I am try- weth said. She was pushing for “The Real People seem to have an overwhelming ing, Lord, to have a patient heart with Deal.” Paramount had hired a company urge to lift Chenoweth up, and, through- her, and it is not working. She is so to suggest titles, and it had produced “The out her childhood, shopping malls during nasty.”Chenoweth could hear the women Perfect Pair,”“Heaven Sent,”and “Naughty holiday season were an emotional mine- around her laughing. She continued, and Nice,” among others. But the title field.“The Easter Bunny or Santa Claus— “God help me right now to be patient. I that most confounded Markus was one of those people—had a tendency to know, we all know, that I need help with “Cross to Bear.”“Why would you want yell at me, ‘Come over here, little girl!’” this situation. Amen.” to summon up the image of Jesus at his she says. “They’d follow me in the mall. Part of Chenoweth’s cheer springs lowest moment in selling your show?”he And I’m like,‘Go away.I’m sixteen.’”She from her ability to turn aggression back said. Then there were the joke titles that adds,“Now when I see them it brings back onto its perpetrator. Not long ago at an were constantly being submitted, like “No that horrible, horrifying time. And my audition, a Broadway star came up to her Sex and the City” and “Touched by a mom loved to tease me. She’d go,‘There’s and gushed about her performance in

48 THE NEW YORKER, JUNE 4, 2001

TNY—06/04/01—PAGE 48—#3 “Charlie Brown.” Afterward, while forehead wrinkles in concentration as she to address it. “She’s always saying, ‘Am I Chenoweth was in a stall in the ladies’ mimes writing on a notepad. “Fix cat,” that difficult? Am I asking too much?’” room, she overheard the star talking to she says. “Oops! I mean, fix cat problem. her friend Denny Downs told me.“She’s another woman.“I mean, she can sing— Whoa. Better add that last word! Like always dated someone who’s either Jew- I’ll give her that,” the star said. “But the difference between lightning and ish or in another denomination that’s funny? How hard is it to play a cartoon. I lightning bug!” Chenoweth puts a little clashed with her own.Those are the men don’t get all the hoopla!” Chenoweth re- down-home Oklahoma spin on the she’s drawn to. I think that puzzles her.” alized that they were talking about her.“I word “bug” that makes Markus light up. Markus believes that he has helped just sat in the stall and I was, like, God, All games are best when they are Chenoweth to take the same kinds of help me to handle this with class.”Chen- tense, and Markus has set up a shrewdly risks in life that she takes onstage. For his oweth walked out of the stall and up to comic battle of wills between the righ- part, he has been inspired by the depth of the sink. The actress’s face drained of teous Kristin and the sensationally pagan her beliefs. He finds that he’s more tol- color. Chenoweth washed her hands, and Tommy (“If you’re a woman and you’re erant than he used to be.“I don’t catego- as she left she turned back to the actress. breathing, you’re in Tommyworld”). rize people as zealots so easily,” he says. “I don’t get the hoopla, either,” she said. Markus’s innovation is not so much in the Sometimes he, like Tommy Ballantine, Chenoweth’s one “diva moment”— sitcom form as in its content. By making feels like a spiritual work-in-progress, a the only time she actually raised what Kristin the heroine of the show, he brings kind of “trifecta of sin”—to borrow a line people call her “Kewpie-doll voice”—is to center stage the kind of character—a from the show—and he often teases what got her to Paramount. At the 1999 moral, conservative person—who has tra- Chenoweth about her secret hope that Tony Awards, she was scheduled to sing ditionally been relegated to a stock sec- he’ll convert to Christianity one day. “I “My New Philosophy” dressed as Sally ondary role, such as the uptight neighbor. have a family that went through the Ho- Brown, right before the prize for which “I’m having the same feelings that I had on locaust,” Markus says. “It gives me a cer- she had been nominated would be an- ‘The Cosby Show,’”Markus says.“We’re tain, shall we say, skepticism about the nounced. She asked for a change in the taking a character American television existence of goodness, of God.” But, he schedule so that, if she won, she would viewers don’t normally see as accessible adds, “During the course of working have time to put on her regular clothes and turning her into an Everyperson.” with Kristin, I went from being an ag- before collecting the award. “I’d like the In the show, Markus dramatizes the nostic to being really open to her faith.” world to see me win as myself, not look- very contemporary struggle between self- Often, Markus will get her to talk about ing like a ten-year-old,” she told the ishness and selflessness, a struggle that is the Rapture. “I go, ‘Now, what’s gonna show’s producers. “They fought me and also, in a sense, personal to Chenoweth, happen when the Rapture comes?’ She fought me on it,”Chenoweth says.Then, who has difficulty finding a balance be- says,‘We’ll be sitting here, and then sud- two days before the awards, she was a tween the self-interest required to pro- denly I’ll be gone. All that will be left is guest on “The Rosie O’Donnell Show” mote her talent and the self-sacrifice that my jewelry.’ Then I say, ‘Kristin, let me and mentioned her distress to O’Don- relationships with others often demand. tell you something. If the time comes nell, who happened to be a former m.c. of In a telling scene that has since been cut when I’m sitting here, eating meat loaf the Tony Awards. “Rosie made the call,” from the pilot, Chenoweth is shown in a with you, and you disappear and all that’s Chenoweth says. On the night of the church, sitting in front of a black woman, left is your jewelry, I guarantee you that I Awards, five dressers were waiting for who soon draws her into conversation: will accept Jesus as my personal Savior.’” Chenoweth when she came offstage; “What’s your problem? You’re white.”“All they had just seconds to get her out of I’m asking is that God give me the chance o pass the desultory hours of one her costume and into her gown. A zipper to show off the talents he gave me,” Tlate afternoon, while Markus sifted got stuck, and the dressers literally had Kristin explains. The woman says, “Hey, through scripts Chenoweth turned her to rip the costume off her. Nonethe- I’m prayin’ for a kidney.”“Oh,” Kristin focus to two albums that she planned to less, nine million viewers saw a focussed, says,casting her eyes heavenward.“Do hers record for Sony Classical, which had adult-looking Chenoweth stride from first.” Last year, Chenoweth broke off a signed her up after she sang in the the wings to receive her award. three-year engagement, and she admits Encores! production of “On a Clear Day that she’s “never really been good at pick- You Can See Forever.” On the first s they tweak scenes for the pilot, ing men.” She prays over the problem; album, “Let Yourself Go,” Chenoweth

AMarkus and Chenoweth sometimes she has also ventured into psychotherapy was going to sing mostly standards from

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THE NEW YORKER, JUNE 4, 2001 49

TNY—06/04/01—PAGE 49—LIVE SPOT—10423—PLS INSPECT AND REPORT ON QUALITY!!!—#2 moment here.” With head bowed, she said a prayer of thanks for getting to work with Tenney and Markus. When she’d finished, Markus turned to her. “Could you ask God to open the gate?” he said. Over the next few weeks, Markus called me occasionally with progress re- ports.The first episodes of the show had tested in the “good”to “very good”range. “But what I’ve learned is that testing re- wards the familiar,”Markus said.“ ‘Sein- feld’ did not test well. ‘All in the Family’ did not test well. ‘Mary Tyler Moore’ did not test well.” Still, the tests showed that the viewers united in their enthusi- asm only at the moment, five minutes into the show, when Kristin showed up for work at Tommy’s office. Accordingly, Markus restructured and reshot the open- “What did I tell you about destroying Mommy’s inner balance?” ing. The network had announced that the show would première in September, •• and as it got tighter and better Markus’s obsession with it grew. Late one night, he called me from the editing room. stranger to this kind of professional extended family, and, according to Junie He sounded exhausted. He went into a blind spot, and she tells a story about the Chenoweth, adults were always cajoling monologue about the industrial designer interview portion of a Miss Oklahoma Kristin to “sing for us, or dance for us.” Raymond Loewy. Loewy, it seems, had beauty pageant she once entered. After She was always “a different person when been hired to design a car that would rein- being briefed about current events and the audience responded to her.” Cheno- vigorate sales of the Studebaker. “He politics, she nervously took a seat in front weth’s older brother Mark, who is an en- brought a group of men to his compound of her interrogator. The question she gineer in Colorado, adds, “It was easy and denied them women,” Markus said. was asked was “What do you think of for her to be the center of attention any- “Women. Phones. Alcohol. Contact with ‘60 Minutes’ as a TV show?”“Well, where. She made it a point to make other the outside world. All their energy was you know, I think sixty minutes is long people know that she recognized them.” sublimated into this new car and giving it enough,” she said. “That’s a reasonable some kind of excitement that they weren’t amount of time.” She paused. “That’s espite Chenoweth’s love of atten- being allowed to have in life.” He added, not what you wanted to know, is it?” Dtion, she was somewhat taken aback “They created a classic.” As we picked through the CDs look- to discover, a few days before shooting ing for “Right as the Rain,” by Harold the pilot in late April of last year, that n May 15th, Markus, Chenoweth, Arlen and E. Y. Harburg, Chenoweth the show was officially to be known as Oand Tenney rolled up to Lincoln came upon Karen Carpenter’s record- “Kristin.” Markus says, “She turned to Center, where a banner across the front ings. “One of my favorite singers,” she me, pointed to her shoulders, and said, of the Metropolitan Opera announced said.“There’s some deep pain in her voice ‘Why don’t you just put fifteen million “NBC Primetime 2000/200l.”The net- that you can hear in everything she does. dollars right up here?’”Finding an actor work was preparing for its seasonal rat- To me, it ’s more than just good tech- with the right combination of charm and ings war, and the “Kristin” team mem- nique.The one thing I don’t want to do is chutzpah to play opposite Chenoweth bers were part of its shock troops—there sing a song because it’s pretty.I want it to was a difficult task, and the long, frustrat- to participate in a promotional extrava- tell a story. I want people to be trans- ing search had finally come to an end in ganza for three thousand pumped-up formed by the song.” Like all genuine the last week of March, when Markus advertisers and reporters. But they were stage stars, Chenoweth has an uncanny chose Jon Tenney, a TV regular with a feeling a little as if they had just pulled connection to the audience. “Kristin can Broadway pedigree in light comedy K.P. A week earlier, the show’s début take the pulse of an audience in the way (“Biloxi Blues,”“Brighton Beach Mem- had been bumped from the fall lineup. that Judy Garland could,” the director oirs”). On the day the network accepted Chenoweth was upset, but as they Michael Mayer told me. Chenoweth first Tenney,he, Chenoweth, Markus, and the milled among the other talent for the recognized this chemistry at the age of casting director were driving off the NBC new season—Michael Richards, David twelve: “I can remember singing for ten lot when Markus found himself at the Alan Grier, Martin Sheen, Allison Jan- thousand Baptists at a convention and wrong exit gate.The barrier arm wouldn’t ney, Oliver Platt—the reason became thinking, I have these people; they’re go up. As they sat momentarily stymied, clear.“They can’t put us into that pack,” with me.” The Chenoweths have a large Chenoweth said, “I’d really like to take a Markus said. “We have people who re-

50 THE NEW YORKER, JUNE 4, 2001

TNY—06/04/01—PAGE 50—LIVE OPI ART #A6571—133 LS. ally aren’t known at all to television view- ultimately signed on in second position ers. It would be a higher risk to do that.” (which meant that she could take the When Chenoweth and Tenney were part only if her own show failed) for a summoned for the show’s grand finale— supporting role in “Seven Roses,” an- “The Parade of Stars”—Markus stayed other Paramount-developed sitcom, star- behind, watching his stars on the moni- ring Brenda Blethyn. Although Chen- tor as they trooped out, as far from cen- oweth takes credit for lighting a fire ter stage as they could be while still being under NBC—“All I know is that soon part of the parade, waving and applaud- after I got the part we got an air date,”she ing the audience, which applauded them, says—she didn’t do herself or “Kristin” too. When Chenoweth reëmerged from any favors on the publicity front. The her walk-on, a journalist approached her press misinterpreted her signing with and asked how it felt to have her show “Seven Roses” (the filming of which cut from the fall schedule. “You know, has now been postponed owing to cast- I’ve always had really good luck sneaking ing problems) as a sign of defection; to in the back door,” she said. them, she was abandoning the good ship But NBC’s door proved hard to pry “Kristin” before it had even left port. open. In December, the president of the “When a show is on the shelf, delays fos- network’s entertainment division, Garth ter rumors,” Markus says. “Why is it not Ancier, gave Markus a première date of on? Is it not good? Does the new presi- March 12, 2001. Soon afterward, Ancier dent not like it?” The delay tested not was deposed, the première date disap- only the show but also the Markus- peared with him, and “Kristin” found Chenoweth friendship—and the notion itself in programming purdah. Last Jan- of goodness that “Kristin” was designed uary, Markus, Chenoweth, and the cre- to showcase. For a time, the two didn’t ative team presented some episodes of speak. While Chenoweth claims to love the show at the biannual Television Crit- TV, and “the challenge of a new script ics Association Press Tour, in Pasadena. every week,” in the same breath she ad- “We did great, especially when I had mits to having second thoughts: “I do Kristin sing ‘I’m Only Four Eleven, but miss the theatre a lot. I miss the people, I I’m Going to Heaven, and That Makes miss the flat-out thrill of being onstage. Me Feel Ten Feet Tall,’”Markus says. I’m very conflicted inside.” “But what we didn’t have for the critics Now that “Kristin”’s air date has been was an air date.” The networks are cur- confirmed, most of those conflicts have rently under pressure to air their own been resolved, and Markus and Cheno- product, and NBC is no exception. The weth have rekindled the friendship and entertainment division’s new president, lightheartedness that I witnessed last Jeff Zucker, chose to try out three NBC- October when their show was well into owned sitcoms (“Three Sisters,”“The production and its star had been en- Fighting Fitzgeralds,” and “The Weber sconced in a personalized pink-and-pine Show”) before giving the nod to the dressing room. By then, Markus had Paramount-owned “Kristin,” which will found nine writers, five of them women, première on Tuesday, June 5th, at 8:30 who were working on enough plot lines P.M. between reruns of “Frasier.” The to put Kristin’s goodness and Tommy’s placement “is a way to protect an unusual sexual prowess to the test for a season show that may need nurturing, and ours or so. Best of all, Chenoweth was feel- does,”Markus explains, citing “Seinfeld” ing funny. “She had some shimmer- and “Northern Exposure” as successful ing moments,”Markus told me.“Some- past examples of this summer strategy. body came over to me the other day and In the long, tense, and enervating whispered, ‘Just like Lucy.’”Markus waiting period before NBC announced chuckled to himself at the memory of the show’s start date, Markus went back the scene; in it, a bitchy Latina real- to his country estate; he tapped maple estate agent called Santa (played by Ana trees for syrup, busied himself with a Ortiz), who works and sometimes sleeps screenplay, and worked the telephones with Tommy,arranges for Kristin “to get trying to chivy the network. Chenoweth a massage with a happy ending.”“No grew petulant; in order to get the net- nudity, but she had to fake an orgasm,” work’s attention and prove that she was a Markus said. “She gave it to us four desirable property, she auditioned and different ways.” ♦

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