ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Wednesday, March 26, 1997 TAG: 9703260006
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 2 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: JENNIFER BOWLES ASSOCIATED PRESS
It's midmorning and crew members mill about the cavernous sound stage, dressing sets and adjusting lights. Only two things could bring this activity to a halt: doughnuts and maybe an earthquake.
Enter MTV gal-pal Jenny McCarthy.
Make that three things.
Curvaceous, blue-eyed and blond, the one-time ``Singled Out'' co-host has just breezed in for another 13-hour day on her brand new gig - a sketch comedy series called ``The Jenny McCarthy Show.''
Workers stop in their tracks; McCarthy has that effect on people.
``How is my favorite wench today?'' she asks, hugging a production assistant.
Launched just a couple of weeks ago, McCarthy's new show - a sort of a ``Saturday Night Live'' meets ``Beavis and Butt-head'' - airs on the music network Wednesdays at 10:30 p.m.
``We knew that it was time for Jenny to take the next step,'' said Lisa Berger, MTV senior vice president. ``We really wanted to try characters and she wanted to expand on her physicality and her comedy and we felt that the format of the sketch comedy show was the best way to do that.''
This, after all, is the 24-year-old who endeared herself to frat boys everywhere by burping (and, ah, other bodily venting), smelling her armpits, picking her nose and contorting her face to extremes.
Then there's that great figure and come-hither demeanor.
She's the kind of girl you want to hate, but can't. Back in her dressing room, McCarthy exudes the charm of a best friend, someone you want to take shopping.
She talks about her new project, that Playboy thing she'd rather forget and her own best friend.
``I have a dog named Bubba, an English bulldog and he's really fat,'' she says in her typically animated voice. ``But he's my best friend in the whole world.''
The ensemble cast of her new show includes Michael Loprete, a dead ringer for ``SNL's'' Adam Sandler, as well as Jack Plotnick and two Canadians, Paul Greenberg and Lou Thornton (a woman).
``We still get to do a lot of the MTV humor that might not be so good for [the broadcast networks], but they're great on MTV,'' says McCarthy. ``Throwing up things, digestion things, you know.''
McCarthy - who credits her religious upbringing in Chicago for helping foster her brand of self-deprecating humor - counts among her idols Lucille Ball, Goldie Hawn and Shirley MacLaine.
``My humor comes from being in Catholic school all the time,'' she says. ``It came from having to be so quiet. But at home I was always the one to make my sisters and my parents giggle. I wasn't the normal kind of girl but the tomboy who always made fun of my faults, even when I was young.
``I could never call myself a comedienne, but I enjoy doing comedy and I'm having a ball doing it.''
Aside from this show, which has a 22-episode run, McCarthy is also on tap to do her own sitcom on NBC next fall. She got offered the deal after an appearance on ``Wings.''
``I left `Singled Out,' at the perfect time,'' McCarthy says. Her last appearance on the show was Feb. 10 when she passed the baton to new co-host Carmen Electra.
McCarthy was pretty much given free rein over the direction of her new show. First up, she hired Joel Gallen as executive producer.
``We just banged our heads together and figured out how we were going to do the show,'' she said.
``It's been kind of crazy though. Since the third week of January we've been shooting 13-hour days everyday with maybe a day off every nine days.''
McCarthy, who entered into America's consciousness as the 1994 Playboy Playmate of the Year, would rather that fact remain in the past.
She posed, she says, only to get out of debt from college and so she could haul her belongings cross country to Los Angeles.
``I don't want to be known anymore for that, and I think I've proven a little bit that I'm past it.''
Besides, she says, ``No one is asking Tom Hanks about `Bosom Buddies' anymore.''
LENGTH: Medium: 79 linesby CNB