Love Among the Lawsuits: Alicia's New Series

Alicia Silverstone, the star of NBC's comedy-drama "Miss Match" is in Los Angeles talking to reporters via a cellphone with poor reception. She's also driving, and eating a soy ice cream bar.

All of that might be written off as obnoxious behavior if Silverstone, forever immortalized in the hit 1995 movie "Clueless," wasn't so delightful.

She chats about the show's creator Darren Star, the mastermind behind HBO's "Sex and the City": "You can tell he has a very great sensitivity to women and really likes to tell stories about them." She raves about NBC Entertainment President Jeff Zucker: "He's such a nice man. He makes everything so pleasant."

Even the crew wins her unsolicited praise: "The prop girls on the show just make me so happy every day."

Trust me, she's not being ditsy. Silverstone seems to be genuine and effortlessly charming about everything, including her "Miss Match" role of Kate Fox, a divorce attorney who happens to be a matchmaker.

"Kate got interested in law because she was interested in people and relationships and making things right," Silverstone said. "Those are the same things that occur in trying to help people get together. She's really interested in people being happy."

Television is, of course, a fresh venture for the 26-year-old actress. "I was very lucky. Darren flew to New York and asked me to do it," she said. "I hemmed and hawed a little bit because it was a new idea for me."

She faced the same indecisiveness before she accepted the role of Elaine in the Broadway version of "The Graduate" last year.

"I took a month to decide to do `The Graduate.' It was funny because I'd always dreamed about being on Broadway," she said. That opportunity taught her to ask the following question when deciding on acting opportunities: "Pretend it wasn't offered to you, would you want the job?"

After working primarily in film, Silverstone has had to adjust to television's brisk shooting schedule. "A few days out of every episode, I'm just so tired, I want to cry.

"In film, you have so much more time, and now I will appreciate it so much more when I go back. You get to spend more time with each scene. Especially after doing Broadway, where I worked on the same material for nine months straight . . . Now I'm working on the new material every second. The second it comes in, it's gone. It's a flash."

Silverstone, a macrobiotic vegan, is philosophical about the show's chances of success. "Whatever happens will be right," she said. "If it doesn't do well, I'll get a lot more sleep and get to hang out with my dogs and not feel like a horrible mother every time I leave. And maybe grow some more vegetables in my garden. And if it does really well, hopefully that will mean I'm having a wonderful time working on great scripts with great actors.

"I feel like I'm playing soccer or something on a team. We're shooting for gold as far as the writing goes. Every episode is like you went to see a great romantic comedy that you would pay $8 at a movie theater to see. That's my goal."