Lifetime is betting it all on Joely Fisher in ‘Wild Card’
“Wild Card” has gotten wilder.
Joely Fisher, who plays private investigator Zoe Busiek on the Lifetime television series, says the network “wanted us to be more in peril; they wanted the stakes to be higher so the cases weren’t so namby-pamby.”
More danger is just one of several changes in the series’ second season, which starts tonight (cable channel 51 in Spokane, 30 in Coeur d’Alene).
It has a new time slot: Sundays at 10 p.m. And Busiek and crime-solving partner Dan Lennox (Chris Potter) have a new boss: M. Pearl McGuire (Loretta Devine), described by executive producer Doug Steinberg as a Lou Grant type “to act as a comic foil.”
But the show still plays up what has been referred to as its “Moonlighting” qualities – the banter and high jinks between Busiek and Lennox. And Busiek still has to juggle the demands of her work with being a mother to three children she inherited when her sister was killed.
“The whole idea is that the show should be delightful,” Steinberg says. Much of that quality stems from Fisher, whom he describes as “beautiful and normal at the same time … serious but funny.”
Living up to that billing, Fisher arrives for tea coming from Nana’s Garden, an L.A. business she owns with her mother, actress-singer Connie Stevens, and sister Tricia. It’s a play space for kids where their mothers can get lunch and a manicure.
The 36-year-old Fisher, who’s married and has a 3-year-old daughter, openly talks about her struggles as a show business child and her relationship with her father, singer Eddie Fisher, who was troubled by substance abuse and wasn’t around much for his kids.
But she also recalls a time when her father told her, ” ‘You are not just a singer, you are a zinger’ … That was a help, because that was what he had to give. So I took it and wrapped it up and kept it for myself.”
Asked if a career in show business was inevitable, she responds: “I would say so. I guess if you went to the deep psychology level, I was looking for love like anyone else and found it on a stage.”
According to family history, at about age 3, Joely vanished from backstage in a casino where Stevens was singing. Later she was discovered asleep in the strings section of the orchestra.
“I told my mother I had wanted ‘to hear the music from the inside,’ ” Fisher recalls. Soon she was performing with Stevens.
Fisher’s TV credits include playing Ellen DeGeneres‘ friend Paige on the sitcom “Ellen.” She also was the talking baby’s mom on the short-lived sitcom “Baby Bob.” Then came “Wild Card.”
Fisher relates to the qualities that make Busiek good at her job: “She’s intuitive, good at unearthing the truth, good at getting people to open up to her.”
She’s pleased to read messages from female fans identifying her as “more like me than other actresses,” referring to her more typical womanly shape – even though in real life, she’s skinnier than she appears on television.
Fisher would like to have time for an exercise routine, but says: “Now I have a toddler and a television show, and I wonder when that would be!”
The birthday bunch
Actor Ian Holm (“Chariots of Fire”) is 73. Country singer George Jones is 73. Actress Linda Gray is 64. Actor Joe Pantoliano is 53. Actor Peter Scolari is 50. Actress Rachel Ward is 47. Actor Darren E. Burrows (“Northern Exposure”) is 38. Singer Ben Folds is 38. Singer Liam Gallagher (Oasis) is 32. Actor Paul Walker (“The Fast and the Furious”) is 31. Actor Benjamin McKenzie (“The O.C.”) is 26. Singer Ruben Studdard is 26.