Posted on 09/02/2003 11:10:37 AM PDT by Pikamax
New 'Whoopi' Takes on Race, Terror and Bush Tue September 2, 2003 08:18 AM ET
By Steve Gorman LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - In her new NBC sitcom, Whoopi Goldberg smokes like a chimney and pokes fun at terror alerts, how President Bush mispronounces "nuclear" (NUKE-lee-er) and at black people acting white, not to mention white people acting black.
So far, NBC hasn't blinked. In fact, says the Oscar-winning actress, executives at the General Electric Co.-owned network think she could even be "a little riskier."
"They're fearless about what it is we're trying to do. We haven't heard from anyone saying, 'No you can't do this," she said.
That also goes for some of the more unsavory aspects of the character she plays on "Whoopi" -- Mavis Raye, a tart-tongued, menopausal former singer turned hotelier in New York City who smokes and drinks on the job.
The series pilot opens with a cigarette joke. A hotel guest admonishes Goldberg that "second-hand smoke kills," to which she retorts, "So do I, baby, walk on!"
Goldberg's on-screen puffing already has drawn the ire of anti-tobacco activists. But she is unrepentant about her character's nicotine habit, an extension a real-life vice.
"I think people are smart enough to be able to say to their kids, 'Now you see this is not the greatest behavior Whoopi could be having right now,"' she told Reuters in an interview.
"This is a show about real people. And real people do have these flaws. Is (Mavis) going to have them forever? Maybe not, but she's damn well going to start out with them. ... I mean, she's not shooting dope. She's not killing anybody."
RETURNING TO PRIME TIME
"Whoopi," which debuts on Sept. 9, marks Goldberg's first stab at her own prime-time series since the short-lived 1990 CBS sitcom "Bagdad Cafe," in which she played the proprietor of a diner-motel in the California desert. She also was a regular for five years on "Star Trek: The Next Generation."
An Oscar winner for her turn as a spiritual medium in the 1990 film "Ghost," Goldberg, 47, said her return to the small screen comes at an ideal time.
"I'm a little bit older now, and I like the idea of being in a steady gig," she said. "There's not a lot of offers coming my way, either. You get into that awkward stage of late 40s, and things slow down."
Cigarettes notwithstanding, her new show draws much of its humor from subjects that may strike some viewers as just this side of taboo for prime-time network TV.
The comedy features an interracial couple consisting of Mavis' buttoned-down, decidedly un-hip brother, Courtney (Wren Brown) and his white girlfriend, Rita (Elizabeth Regen), who dresses and acts "like a sister."
"She's introduced me to rap, hip-hop and just a whole world I've never known," Courtney exclaims on the series pilot, to which Mavis dead-pans: "So, she's teaching you to be black."
Goldberg says the Rita character merely reflects one of many cultural mixes that have grown so common in society.
"Lots of parents in the suburbs are raising black children and don't know it," she said.
PERSIAN FLAVOR
The show also co-stars British-born Iranian comic Omid Djalili as Goldberg's sidekick Nasim, a hotel handyman from Iran who immediately takes offense whenever anyone mistakes him for an Arab.
Nasim: "I'm not Arab. I'm Persian! It's so obvious. You can't tell the difference?"
Mavis: "Hell, no, I can't tell the difference. You people all look alike to me."
Later, Mavis confides to Nasim that "your people do scare me .... I mean I see three of four of you guys on an airplane, and I'm off." Nasim replies he feels "exactly the same way about the Portuguese."
Goldberg says such exchanges, aside from hopefully winning laughs, are intended to deconstruct some of the fears that pervade post-9/11 America.
"Omid's character is a guy who has his own fears about being here and about what's going on," she said. "Everybody has their finger pointing, and that's really what we wanted to say, that we've all got fears of something."
Indeed, in episode two, it is Nasim's paranoia about an unattended briefcase in the hotel lobby during an "orange alert" that leads police to blow it up. The briefcase turns out to have been a present from Rita to Courtney.
But Goldberg insists she's not making light of terror alerts. "These are the things that are happening in our lives," she said. "It's part of the world that I live in. It's the world that I can comment on."
As for making fun of Bush at a time when other performers' criticism of the president has caused their patriotism to be called into question, Goldberg is likewise unapologetic.
"We're all patriots. We all want the world to be a better place," she said. "I don't have any problems with it and will continue to have as much fun with our president as every comic has since comedy began."
The History (Hitler)Channel; the Discovery Channel; SciFi; A&E; gotta love the DYI channel
And, oh yeah, the Sopranos - all the repeats, too.
My favorite type of television is the educational and/or edu-tainment type shows such as most Travel Channel, Discovery, and Speed TV. I like the extreme sports stuff too, I wish it existed when I was younger. I've given up on Bravo because of their homosexual agenda and even though I've enjoyed some of the comedy on 'Will and Grace' I won't watch it for the same reason.
The Big Media crap that's out there now, well they can stick it.
'Rap is crap, I want my MTV back.'
Here's THE "joke." People have NOT been laughing with Whoopee; They've been laughing at her.
The way I see it, her cigarette-butt ugly looks have been her only asset because she's neither ever been funny or witty.
And I don't seem to recall that many people complained when Jimmah Cahter, the NUKE-yoo-ler engineer or whatever he was, pronounced it that way.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.