Debra Messing and Joe Mantegna star in 'Starter Wife', premiering Thursday night at 9 on USA Network. The term 'starter wife' is offensive enough to make it sound like a little kit to grow a spouse. Like a starter house that needs work, or a starter hobby kit with the bare essentials, this has the ugly ring of planned obsolescence.
Yet it is quite real. The Starter Wife, USA Network's miniseries launching May 31 and continuing Thursdays until June 28, is based on Gigi Levangie Grazer'sbest-seller.
On a whim and because he's having an affair with a pop tart (in the book, it's Britney Spears), Hollywood studio chief Kenny (Peter Jacobson, As Good as It Gets) dumps Molly (Debra Messing, Will & Grace) via cellphone.
Forced to fend for herself, Molly comes into her own. She had written a children's book years ago, but during her marriage, she worked at being a Hollywood wife. Now she must find her way in the wake of divorce.
Kenny is such a cliched pig, he's fun to hate. We first glimpse him on the treadmill while he watches TV on several screens. He calls Molly, sleeping in another part of the house, to tell her a dog relieved itself on their property. She calls the housekeeper to clean up.
Molly makes the calls that keep their complicated and superficial life running. That's what these women do; they manage their lives. They hire the nannies to tend to their children and the maids to clean their homes. As the women keep themselves starved and toned, waxed and dyed, the men make scads of money that maintain oversized mansions, SUVs and egos.
This is a world in which children's birthday parties are catered (though the women do not eat), and circus clowns perform. Molly and Kenny have a five-year-old daughter, Jaden, but she isn't much of an issue, as the sitter watches her.
High-profile actress
"Approaching this, I thought, 'How am I going to key into this woman'? " Messing says. "And the first thing I started with was sort of the parallel between being a starter wife and being a high-profile actress. The expectations, there are rules: That your hair be shiny and your eyebrows be arched and clean and that your nails be manicured, and if you show up at an event and you are not groomed, it is a sign of disrespect. It is considered part of your job to do that.
"And that covers the weight image and the yoga and what the actresses in that community do in order to try to be able to get in. And it is all about fitting in and who is going to be invited to the party, so to speak."
There's a wonderful scene early on where Molly steps on the scale, sees a number most women haven't glimpsed since high school and says, "I wonder how much an appendix weighs."
Fans of the book will notice changes. The most basic is that the heroine of the book is named Gracie, but since Messing is famous for playing another Grace, the character needed a new name. Another is that Sam, the homeless guy with whom Molly falls in love, is old enough to have gray streaking his hair and a real past. In the movie, Sam - played by 35-year-old Stephen Moyer ('Quills') - is younger and looks terrific in swim trunks.
Molly, convinced she would never date again, winds up interested in two men, Sam and Lou (Joe Mantegna), who is Kenny's boss. Lou is a rarity; he's a studio boss who is humane.
Sticking point
Messing and director Jon Avnet (Fried Green Tomatoes) allude to a major change in the ending. The first four of the six hours available for review hew close to the book's plot.
The only other sticking point is that a face cream company sponsors the miniseries, and it is worked into the movie. Certainly, Molly would apply under-eye cream, but this stinks of obvious product placement.
"I have never shot a commercial in my life. I tried to do it tastefully and with a wink," Avnet says.
The miniseries, however, remains sheer fun as great actors take digs at a world they know well.
Messing infuses her character with the disbelief, vulnerability and finally gumption that a woman left after 10 years of marriage would feel. And it's critical that women beyond Los Angeles' gated communities relate to these characters, or this becomes too insular.
Judy Davis, who plays Molly's friend, the caustic, sharp and alcoholic Joan, says, "There are a lot of Joans around."
Joan, like Molly, once had a career; she was a lawyer. "She seemed to me a woman who had opted out a bit, married a wealthy older man, not really part of the Hollywood scene, certainly not part of the legal scene any more," Davis says from her home in Australia. "Joan, her journey in the story, her realisation that she does have something to offer and she has to stay in there and participate in a responsible way, I guess is her line."
When Davis wasn't shooting, she was able to hop a 45-minute flight home, as this filmed in Australia, to Mantegna's delight.
"I'll say it was fun," he says. "It was on the gold coast of Australia during their summer. It was one of those times you look around and go, 'It's good to be the king.' In this profession, I have been very blessed in that it has taken me and my family all over the world."
Mantegna and Avnet each mention they are married 31 years and are on their starter wives, quickly adding that these are their finisher wives as well.
Despite the series' chick-lit, chick-flick look, Mantegna says, "I think it can attract men. It's like one of those guilty kind of pleasures. In the past I have read Jackie Collins books or Sidney Sheldon books, like in the summer when you go to the beach and say, 'What can I read that will not tax my mind that much?' It's a nice, pretty world, and the people are pretty and happy. It's a guilty summer pleasure. The men are very well represented."
Avnet hopes people are "ridiculously entertained" by the movie, acknowledging, "It is, by nature, fluffy material. It makes fun of a lot of things - mostly my world. I want them to see an identifiable woman and how she starts over and regroups and makes bad choices and makes good choices, and does it in a way that is incredibly identifiable and very, very satisfying."
