By ROBERT ABELE
Posted: 12:00 am
October 5, 2008
"Saturday Night Live" alumnus Molly Shannon will try anything for a laugh, especially if it involves different hair.
When she was conceiving the look of Kath, the peppy, fortysomething divorcee she plays on NBC's new sitcom "Kath & Kim," Shannon took the costume designer's casual query, "Oh dear, do you think you should wear a wig?," very seriously.
"I was like 'Oh yeah.' I've always thought in my head, I can never have my own hair," says Shannon, who now has her shoulder-length black locks flattened with wax to fit under Kath's short, perky blonde flip-do. "But when I'm a character, it's very freeing. You can just let go."
Shannon, 43, loosely bases her character on a put-together lady with a home-based company whom Shannon interviewed with to be a fragrance model in her struggling years. "She wore a white pantsuit, had French nails, and you could see that she took her business very seriously. Like 'I've paid for my house, and I'm a strong, independent businesswoman!' So I wear a fake French manicure, and something about it makes me feel really feminine," she says.
As Kath, Shannon wears '80s spandex aerobics wear-you crack up just looking at her-but the girlish attire gives her confidence. Kath's plans to restart her life with her unabashedly amorous boyfriend Phil (John Michael Higgins) are delayed by her perpetually petulant, narcissistic adult daughter Kim (Selma Blair). She rashly moves back home after a dust-up with her husband and quickly draws Kath into old patterns of mother-child dysfunction. When they're not bickering, they rave about each other's shoewear or dish over the latest celebrity gossip.
"They love Us magazine and Star and Jen Aniston and Lisa Rinna, and they try to copy those hip Hollywood hairstyles, but it's still Orange County classy, if you know what I mean," says Shannon. "It's too many chunky highlights, or a little too frosted, you know? Not quite New York or LA."
The show itself is an American remake of a hugely popular Australian sitcom of the same name. Shannon, whose last weekly series role was on the short-lived Mike White-created comedy "Cracking Up," says the biggest challenge in taking on Kath was living up to the original.
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