Post by CC Fan on Jan 7, 2004 11:27:58 GMT -5
An article taken from www.zap2it.com
LOS ANGELES (Zap2it.com) - If you work on a new television series, winning a People's Choice Award means a whole lot.
"Cold Case" (CBS), "Hope & Faith" (ABC), "The O.C." (Fox) and "Whoopi" (NBC) are among the freshman shows that get their first shots at honors when CBS airs the 30th Annual People's Choice Awards on Sunday, Jan. 11.
Charlie Sheen and Jon Cryer -- whose CBS sitcom "Two and a Half Men" is in the running for favorite new comedy series -- serve as hosts. The event takes place at the Pasadena Civic Auditorium in California, and reveals the Gallup public-opinion poll winners in movies, music and television.
Other nominees run the gamut from Kelsey Grammer ("Frasier") and Jennifer Aniston ("Friends") as favorite TV performers to Mel Gibson and Halle Berry as moviegoers' top choices. Faith Hill and Tim McGraw are among the contenders in the music categories, while the options for favorite all-time entertainer are Bill Cosby, Clint Eastwood and Tom Hanks.
An episode of "Cold Case," starring Kathryn Morris as Lilly Rush, a Philadelphia police detective who investigates long-unsolved crimes, will lead into the People's Choice Awards telecast. The makers of the drama, which is the top-rated Sunday entertainment series and the season's top-rated new drama, appreciate their nomination for favorite new dramatic series.
"It was wonderful to hear," Morris says. Now a TV star after making movies such as "A.I.: Artificial Intelligence," "Minority Report," the current "Paycheck" and the upcoming "Mindhunters," she notes, "We're barely on the air, so it's really nice. That was my first reaction to the nomination. 'Gee, we're just getting started.' We seem to have collected some loyal fans, and I'm hearing there are some people who never miss the show. That's very encouraging."
The CBS schedule boasts other hit crime series also executive produced by feature-film icon Jerry Bruckheimer, including the two "CSI" shows and "Without a Trace." But Morris believes the scripts make the difference for "Cold Case." The actress senses that "viewers have become as emotionally invested in these cases as Lilly has. Every week when she opens up a case, you know it's going to be wrapped up, one way or another."
Nostalgia factors into "Cold Case," since the flashback sequences -- re-creating the time and place of the crime being probed -- transport the audience to an earlier era. Morris reflects, "If I go into the makeup trailer and meet an actress who's playing a murder victim from 1939, it's always interesting to me. I'll shake her hand and say, 'Wow, there's a lot of fuss being made over you!' Sometimes I don't meet that person, even over the course of a seven- or eight-day shoot, so it's always nice when I get to."
Bridging the past and present in "Cold Case" largely falls to series creator and executive producer Meredith Stiehm, who previously worked on shows ranging from "Beverly Hills, 90210" and "Northern Exposure" to "NYPD Blue" and "ER." Maintaining she is "really thrilled" with the People's Choice nod, Stiehm adds, "It's a nice validation, but I think a lot of credit is due the Bruckheimer reputation. I was lucky to have that to go along with the project, since that company has such a good track record."
Still, Stiehm says she's pleased viewers have embraced the "Cold Case" concept she devised. "There's no science to figuring out what people are going to like, so I just go with my taste and what excites me. I spent four years at 'NYPD Blue,' and I really loved writing about detectives and crime, but I felt there was a missed opportunity with that show's female detectives. We delved into the lives of a lot of the male characters, but I thought we could have done more with the women, and that became the seed of 'Cold Case.' The cop show is a tried-and-true genre, but I began thinking about how I could do it a little differently."
"Cold Case" primarily is filmed in southern California, but the cast and crew work hard to inject the feel of Philadelphia. "It's very important that we include the city as another character in the show, because it really is one," Morris reasons. "I don't think the people there really cared when we were there the first time (before the show went on the air), so I wonder what will happen when we go back. We'll see what they suggest."
While she'll do more filming in Philadelphia, Morris feels she's existed in a vacuum since "Cold Case" premiered. She sees the People's Choice Award nomination as a big indicator of how the show is faring. "I've been part of this isolated crew," she muses, "just going to and coming home from work. I haven't been out that much socially, so the People's Choice nomination made me think, 'Oh, so somebody has heard about what we're doing.' When I went Christmas shopping, several people came up to me and had very extensive conversations with me about the show."
Clearly, Morris hasn't been checking the ratings for "Cold Case," and she says that's by design. "I try not to think about that too much. If I get too wrapped up in that, the show won't have the same purity to it ... not for me, at least."
LOS ANGELES (Zap2it.com) - If you work on a new television series, winning a People's Choice Award means a whole lot.
"Cold Case" (CBS), "Hope & Faith" (ABC), "The O.C." (Fox) and "Whoopi" (NBC) are among the freshman shows that get their first shots at honors when CBS airs the 30th Annual People's Choice Awards on Sunday, Jan. 11.
Charlie Sheen and Jon Cryer -- whose CBS sitcom "Two and a Half Men" is in the running for favorite new comedy series -- serve as hosts. The event takes place at the Pasadena Civic Auditorium in California, and reveals the Gallup public-opinion poll winners in movies, music and television.
Other nominees run the gamut from Kelsey Grammer ("Frasier") and Jennifer Aniston ("Friends") as favorite TV performers to Mel Gibson and Halle Berry as moviegoers' top choices. Faith Hill and Tim McGraw are among the contenders in the music categories, while the options for favorite all-time entertainer are Bill Cosby, Clint Eastwood and Tom Hanks.
An episode of "Cold Case," starring Kathryn Morris as Lilly Rush, a Philadelphia police detective who investigates long-unsolved crimes, will lead into the People's Choice Awards telecast. The makers of the drama, which is the top-rated Sunday entertainment series and the season's top-rated new drama, appreciate their nomination for favorite new dramatic series.
"It was wonderful to hear," Morris says. Now a TV star after making movies such as "A.I.: Artificial Intelligence," "Minority Report," the current "Paycheck" and the upcoming "Mindhunters," she notes, "We're barely on the air, so it's really nice. That was my first reaction to the nomination. 'Gee, we're just getting started.' We seem to have collected some loyal fans, and I'm hearing there are some people who never miss the show. That's very encouraging."
The CBS schedule boasts other hit crime series also executive produced by feature-film icon Jerry Bruckheimer, including the two "CSI" shows and "Without a Trace." But Morris believes the scripts make the difference for "Cold Case." The actress senses that "viewers have become as emotionally invested in these cases as Lilly has. Every week when she opens up a case, you know it's going to be wrapped up, one way or another."
Nostalgia factors into "Cold Case," since the flashback sequences -- re-creating the time and place of the crime being probed -- transport the audience to an earlier era. Morris reflects, "If I go into the makeup trailer and meet an actress who's playing a murder victim from 1939, it's always interesting to me. I'll shake her hand and say, 'Wow, there's a lot of fuss being made over you!' Sometimes I don't meet that person, even over the course of a seven- or eight-day shoot, so it's always nice when I get to."
Bridging the past and present in "Cold Case" largely falls to series creator and executive producer Meredith Stiehm, who previously worked on shows ranging from "Beverly Hills, 90210" and "Northern Exposure" to "NYPD Blue" and "ER." Maintaining she is "really thrilled" with the People's Choice nod, Stiehm adds, "It's a nice validation, but I think a lot of credit is due the Bruckheimer reputation. I was lucky to have that to go along with the project, since that company has such a good track record."
Still, Stiehm says she's pleased viewers have embraced the "Cold Case" concept she devised. "There's no science to figuring out what people are going to like, so I just go with my taste and what excites me. I spent four years at 'NYPD Blue,' and I really loved writing about detectives and crime, but I felt there was a missed opportunity with that show's female detectives. We delved into the lives of a lot of the male characters, but I thought we could have done more with the women, and that became the seed of 'Cold Case.' The cop show is a tried-and-true genre, but I began thinking about how I could do it a little differently."
"Cold Case" primarily is filmed in southern California, but the cast and crew work hard to inject the feel of Philadelphia. "It's very important that we include the city as another character in the show, because it really is one," Morris reasons. "I don't think the people there really cared when we were there the first time (before the show went on the air), so I wonder what will happen when we go back. We'll see what they suggest."
While she'll do more filming in Philadelphia, Morris feels she's existed in a vacuum since "Cold Case" premiered. She sees the People's Choice Award nomination as a big indicator of how the show is faring. "I've been part of this isolated crew," she muses, "just going to and coming home from work. I haven't been out that much socially, so the People's Choice nomination made me think, 'Oh, so somebody has heard about what we're doing.' When I went Christmas shopping, several people came up to me and had very extensive conversations with me about the show."
Clearly, Morris hasn't been checking the ratings for "Cold Case," and she says that's by design. "I try not to think about that too much. If I get too wrapped up in that, the show won't have the same purity to it ... not for me, at least."
