In producing a new TV series, sometimes things go wrong. With “Love Bites,” the NBC comedy that ends its run Thursday, just about everything did. And Becki Newton, the Guilford actress who starred in the comedy, first unveiled as the lynchpin to last year’s fall season on NBC – only to be delayed until after the end of the TV season in the doldrums of summer – emerged intact.Though it all seems now very long ago.
“We filmed the pilot a year and a half ago, and went through as series of setbacks and delays,” Newton, 33, says over the phone from Atlanta, where her husband Chris Diamantopoulos is playing Moe in the Farrelly Brothers new “Three Stooges” movie.
One of the stars, Jordana Spiro, had to go back to her old series, “My Boys.” The show runner, Cindy Chupack, quit for personal reasons. Once unveiled as the lynchpin to NBC’s fall season last year, it was bumped to midseason when Newton also became pregnant with her first child.
“These kinds of delays happen to a show. There’s not a show where these kinds of things don’t happen, when a show doesn’t go through a lot of changes,” Newton says. “But not often does it all happen to one show.”
Newton’s condition meant her character had to be entirely rewritten.
“Originally my character was going to be a virgin,” Newton says. “When I became pregnant, they wrote in that I was a surrogate mother for my sister. But I have to say when we got our heads together, it made the character so much more interesting,” she adds. “If the show had more time to explore the characters, how she related with her sister after the birth would have been the kind of relationship I don’t think has been on TV before.”
That won’t happen, since “Love Bites” was cancelled earlier this month.
“It was a short and sweet run, but one everyone who was involved with it would be very proud of,” Newton says. There won’t be a series finale tying up all the series threads on Thursday, Newton says. “This is what was great and complicated about the show. Every episode stood alone, and it was never meant to have an arc throughout show with a culmination.”
Being in an anthology show, with Greg Grunberg and Constance Zimmer the only recurring characters, she was surrounded by guest stars each week. Among them were Jeffrey Tambor, Sheryl Hines, Donald Faison, Christopher Gorham, Krista Allen, Jennifer Love Hewitt, Michelle Trachtenberg, Laura Prepon, Kurtwood Smith, Ken Jeong and Jaime King.
“It was unique every week,” Newton says. “I never worked with the same person twice. It was a huge difference from ‘Ugly Betty,’ where I worked with Michael Urie every day for four years. It was a great acting experience.”
And even if the show wasn’t a hit, it did connect with some viewers who enjoyed romantic comedy anthologies.
“What I have learned time and time again is that you can’t predict how a show will connect with people, and how a network will handle it. You just have to be proud of your work and whether two people see it or 200 people or 20 million people, if it connects with someone, with ‘Ugly Betty’ or different shows, it’s all you can do.”
Newton came to “Love Bites” immediately after her successful run as the brittle secretary Amanda Tanen on “Ugly Betty.” At the time, she says, “I was definitely looking for something very different than Amanda. Something very grounded and real – not that Amanda wasn’t real. But I was looking for something more relatable. I loved being able to play a character who was more similar to myself and in such a different style of writing. ‘Ugly Betty’ was very arch, and this was more grounded.” While waiting for “Love Bites” to air, Newton shot a pilot for CBS. “It was a multi-camera sitcom and I never did that,” she says. “What made it neat performing before a live audience. It was an incredible experience and I had such a great time doing it. “Homegrown” also starred Gerald McRaney. “I’m disappointed it didn’t get picked up,” she says, “But I discovered I loved that form of television.” Newton’s unsure of her next project, but she’s encouraged by what she’s seeing.
“I’m reading some really great scripts,” she says. “With the success of ‘Bridesmaids,’ and so many female comedies on TV, there is a lot of great material out there. With Tina Fey and Amy Poehler such great leading women, it’s the kind of thing you didn’t see five years ago. So I’m really hopeful.” In the meantime, she’s been enjoying spending time with her son and her husband on the set of slapstick “Stooges,” which wraps this week in Atlanta. “I go to the set every day,” she says. “He has bruises all over his body.”
She’s had time, too, to come back to Connecticut to visit family.
“I just spent 10 days at Evergreen Woods Retirement Community in Branford, where my 8 month old was the hit of the place,” she says. If the residents were also excited about a TV star in their midst, she says, “they didn’t say anything about it.”
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Jul 26, 2011
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