Jennie Garth's Funny Side
After all those years of riding the soap-opera roller coaster of heartache, anguish, and adolescent angst on "Beverly Hills 90210," it may come as a pleasant surprise to many TV viewers that the former Kelly Taylor can shake up some smiles with her previously unseen comic skills.
"I loved '90210.' I was such a loyal participant of that show," says Jennie Garth. "But just to get the opportunity to do comedy was a huge goal of mine. Because having been shot and raped and stalked and all the terrible things that happened to my character week after week, it was just refreshing to go and have fun and laugh at work."
"What I Like About You" pairs Garth with budding slapstick princess Amanda Bynes, who first gained acclaim and favorable comparisons to Lucille Ball as the young star of Nickelodeon's "All That" and "The Amanda Show."
The 16-year-old Bynes plays the rambunctious younger sibling to Garth's more strait-laced career-focused older sister. Through cockeyed sitcom circumstances, they wind up living together. And that sometimes strained family relationship is where the laughs are located.
Garth has even been blessed with the pratfall gene. She amusingly stumbles over living room furniture on the "What I Like About You" premiere.
"I'm clumsy by nature, so it just worked in my favor. Falling over things just comes naturally to me," she says. "I wasn't sure how the physical comedy was going to go for me. But I just had to go it...The flip over the couch, I didn't even get hurt."
Only one problem. Since filming the "What I Like About You" pilot episode last winter, 30-year-old Garth has become pregnant.
She and her husband, Peter Facinelli, who stars on Fox's new fall season action drama "Fastlane," are expecting their second daughter in December. Their first child, Luca Bella, is five.
But because Garth's character on "What I Like About You" is single and has no plans to be pregnant anytime soon, the show's producers are doing some creative filming and using stunt doubles for the more arduous moments of physical comedy.
"I just walk behind things. I carry a lot of stuff," says Garth of how the producers are obscuring her real-life expectant-mother physique. Not that Garth is unfamiliar with the drill. She was pregnant with Luca during the 1996-1997 season of "90210."
"Yeah, we did a lot of 'hiding of Bob,' as we called her at that time," quips Garth. "I remember the final episode that we did of that season, I was 6 months pregnant. They had me shopping at a huge, expensive mall. And I just carried bags in front of me the whole episode."
