Less than a week after she arrived in Winnipeg to film the USA Network movie Delicate Cutting, Rhea Perlman's work here is done -- almost.
The producers added a couple scenes to the TV movie, in which Perlman plays a psychiatrist. And for an actor, getting more lines is always a good thing. But the downside is, it may mean spending another day away from husband Danny DeVito and their kids, Lucy, 16, Gracie, 14 and Jake, 12.
"I'm leaving, hopefully, Friday -- I mean not hopefully to get out of here, but I was supposed to leave Friday and now maybe Saturday and I'm looking forward to the weekend at home," Perlman said yesterday after shooting at the Richardson Building.
"I miss everybody a lot, we're a really tight family. But I like travelling, you know, it's fun to see other places."
Perlman, who counts ex-Winnipegger Diane Simkin among her close friends since they met in New York years ago, says she'd heard a lot about the city and has spent time checking out Inuit art and watching ice skaters at The Forks.
Chances are a few people have been checking out Perlman as well. Her face is instantly familiar to millions after an 11-year run as tough-cookie barmaid Carla on Cheers. When people call her Carla in real life, she doesn't mind.
"I'm really happy that I was part of that show and that piece of TV history," she says. "Lots of times they think they just know me from school or some work or something; that happens a lot."
Since the NBC series ended in 1993, she has starred in the CBS series Pearl and several movies, including 1995's Canadian Bacon and 1996's Sunset Park, in which the five-foot-one Perlman played a basketball coach. DeVito produced the latter film, along with the kids' flick Matilda, in which the couple co-starred.
In Delicate Cutting, Perlman co-stars with Sean Young, who plays the mother of a 16-year-old girl who uses self-mutilation as a coping tool. Young posted a synopsis of the movie on her Web site (www.seanyoung.org) for those who want to know more about the condition, which affects two million Americans.
"I'd never really seen anything about that before and I started doing some research and it's really quite an interesting thing," Perlman says. "And a lot more people do it than you'd ever imagine."
Perlman says she has no immediate projects to tackle when she returns to L.A. Guest spots on fellow Cheers alumni Ted Danson's CBS sitcom Becker or Kelsey Grammer's NBC show Frasier are in the "maybe" file, since she's still close to her former co-stars, particularly Danson.
And another TV series would be nice, if the right one comes along.
"I'd love to do it because I really like that kind of job. I like the way series work, where you can evolve a part, and it changes and it goes this way and it goes that way, and you don't even know where it's going to go from one week to the next," she says.
"I like doing comedy, and it's a lot of fun to go home every day feeling good ... comedy usually makes you feel up and that kind of stuff. But I like drama, too, so we'll see."
Delicate Cutting wraps Feb. 15.
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