Sunday November 1, 2009
Playing dress-up
By EVELYN TEO
SHE may play an ice queen in Private Practice, but in real life, KaDee Strickland is personable and kind of shy. The only thing the American star and her on-screen character, Dr Charlotte King, really share is their Southern accent – she’s from the state of Georgia while Charlotte hails from neighbouring Alabama.
Her accent was retained because show creator/executive producer Shonda Rhimes felt it accurately represented the fact that “Los Angeles (where the show is located) is filled with transplants”.
But keeping the accent was not what surprised Strickland once she took on the role of chief of staff at St Ambrose Hospital in Santa Monica, California. “When I signed on to a show that I’d never seen a script to, I never knew I’d be role-playing,” the 31-year-old actress recalls with a light drawl during an interview with a group of international journalists on the set of Private Practice earlier this year. “I never knew I’d be wearing costumes. Some of the stuff they give you – latex – you get lubed in and you have three people putting you in it.”
“It’s absurd but you understand two things about yourself through that: 1) you can laugh at yourself; 2) there are people in this world that do that by themselves and get turned on by it,” she says to the roar of laughter from the roomful of pressmen.
KaDee Strickland is not averse to laughing at herself. – Photo courtesy of ABC Television Network She is obviously referring to her character’s unconventional relationship with paediatrician Dr Cooper Freedman (played by Paul Adelstein). The two meet online through an adult website and find that they have more in common behind closed doors than they would care to admit.
Katherine Dee Strickland certainly never would have imagined herself squeezing into those eye-popping outfits when she was bitten by the acting bug in high school and went on to pursue the profession seriously in Philadelphia and New York City. Her break came in the form of director M. Night Shyamalan who discovered her at a restaurant and gave her a speaking role in The Sixth Sense, the psychological thriller that became a massive hit.
As Charlotte, Strickland has had to play dress-up in a number of episodes. In Season Two, she has been a naughty schoolgirl, a dominatrix, and a sexy bride, to name a few. How does she avoid any unfortunate wardrobe malfunctions?
“Honey, I’ll give you a little secret about me. If you see me in a bed scene, chances are I’m wearing at least two pairs of undergarments,” Strickland, who is married to actor Jason Behr, reveals candidly. “I will not, with a crew I could potentially be in front of for six years of my life, risk anything falling out. I would absolutely die. I’m quite shy about that stuff, in all truth and honesty.”
In one episode, Strickland was asked to have cake frosting placed strategically on her body and although she was apprehensive at first, she took on the challenge.
“When I got to the set, we had literally only painted the front of me because I thought that all I had to do was walk in and show it to him (Cooper) and that was it. By the way, you get one shot at that because if it starts falling off, it is hours in the makeup chair,” she describes, almost blushing at the recollection.
“I didn’t know that they were going to ask me to drop the coat,” she cries. “So I had five minutes to get my butt painted. They were like, ‘No one’s going to see it.’ ... So then I had cake butt (laughs). It was funny but once I got that out of the way, I felt very liberated as a human being. The truth is Charlotte wouldn’t keep her coat on so neither could I.”
What a trouper!
‘Private Practice’ Season Two airs Saturdays at 10pm on Ntv7.
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