ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Thursday, February 27, 1997 TAG: 9702270005
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
COLUMN: BETH MACY
SOURCE: BETH MACY
Tai Collins says she feels a little like Madeleine Albright.
Albright, the new secretary of state, gets perturbed when the news media ask her: Has she had a facelift? Does she color her hair?
Collins - who has managed to reinvent herself from Playboy sex kitten and Chuck Robb masseuse to Hollywood screenwriter - gets perturbed when reporters ask her: Have you had plastic surgery? Do you dye your hair blond?
More on those breaking-news questions later.
The latest headline on Roanoke's version of Madonna is this: After making national news about her alleged affair with Sen. Robb, after posing for Playboy, after leaving Virginia to attend screenwriting classes at UCLA, Tai Collins is still hitting the ``Entertainment Tonight'' airwaves - only no one mentions Chuck Robb.
Collins, 34, has become a regular writer for the television show ``Baywatch.'' She's written a children's environmental special for ABC. And she says Victor and Grais Productions, the same outfit that made "Poltergeist," has paid her to write the script for a feature film, which Tai describes as a cross between ``First Wives Club'' and ``The Big Chill.''
So what if the movie involves scantily clad, flawlessly figured grown women frolicking on Miami Beach? (Tai envisions Elle Macpherson in the lead role.)
So what if ``Baywatch'' is the '90s version of ``Beach Blanket Bingo''? (Hipper music, tighter pecs.)
During a telephone interview from her condo in Pacific Palisades, Tai describes what it's like to be taken seriously for once.
She helped launched a foundation called Camp Baywatch, which has sponsored South Central L.A.'s first Little League in 30 years. Truth and fiction will meet this Sunday, with the airing of Tai's latest ``Baywatch'' script, called ``Life Guardian.''
The plot: Poor urban kids go to the beach for the first time and almost drown. Lifeguard Caroline rescues them. A gang figures into the plot, as does an angel. ``Camp Baywatch'' is launched to encourage and empower the youths to stay off the streets.
Peter Hoffman, assistant producer of the show, says the episode is more substantive and heavier on character development than the typical "Baywatch."
He calls Tai's writing career a "real success story. She's definitely on her way up."
Asked if it helped that Tai specializes in the kind of glamour that makes "Baywatch" tick, Hoffman said, "Beauty can only take you so far. Maybe it gets you in the door. But once you're in, you've got to really prove you can write."
Tai says this episode, which took her a week to write, "is the closest to my heart of any that I've written.'' This will be the sixth ``Baywatch'' episode she has penned.
As for her newfound social consciousness, she insists it isn't so new at all, citing previous work as an after-school tutor, missionary and homeless-shelter volunteer.
She doesn't think it's odd that a show sometimes called ``Babe-watch'' tackles such hard-hitting issues as gang violence. ``It's a show that happens to be set at the beach,'' she says. ``It gets that [bimbo] rap because of the girls' bodies more than what they're wearing.
``And most of them don't have everything real anyway,'' she adds with a chuckle. ``Everybody doesn't look like that.''
Well, Tai does.
And speaking of which: Yes, Tai recently had surgery - nothing serious.
And no, she volunteers, it wasn't elective.
Tai also volunteers that she recently cut all her hair off and dyed it really dark, ``like half-an-inch, Halle Berry kind of short. It's ashy brown, my natural color again.''
The new look might help disguise her the next time she visits her family in Roanoke, she hopes, where she's usually swarmed by autograph-seekers and gawkers. ``It got so my mom and I would go out to dinner, and I couldn't eat. So finally we just started staying home.''
Unlike in Roanoke, Tai is no big deal in the celebrity-rich city of beautiful people. The Robb scandal ``gave me a taste of not wanting to be famous as far as acting. I like going to the grocery store and not wearing make-up.''
If Californians do recognize her, she adds, it's usually from her Playboy centerfold, not through her connection to the Virginia senator.
While Tai insists she's not out to prove anything to the folks back home, she does keep taped to her a computer a quote by George Washington Goethals, who directed the building of the Panama Canal:
``Many back home predicted he would not complete the impossible task.
``Aren't you going to answer your critics [he was asked]?''
```In time,' Goethals replied. `With the canal!'''
``That quote hit me because he didn't feel he had to defend himself. It's like, in time, everyone will know. ... And me, by telling stories that make a difference, people are going to see who I really am.''
Tai's right, of course. Only time will tell if Roanoke will ever view her as more than a massage therapist.
But no one can fault the former Patrick Henry High School cheerleader (class of '80) for not making the most of her talents.
For added inspiration, Tai also keeps this Winston Churchill quote taped to her computer:
``Never give up, never give up. Never never give up.''
LENGTH: Medium: 100 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: Diana Ippolito. ``Life Guardian,'' an episode ofby CNB``Baywatch'' written by Roanoke native Tai Collins (above), will air
Sunday at 11 a.m. on Fox-Channel 21/27.