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Niecy Nash: Making Her Own Breaks, in Triplicate
By EDWARD
WYATT
LOS ANGELES
It took a while after meeting Niecy Nash for Abraham Higginbotham
to decide he wanted to create a television series around her. Roughly 30 seconds.
"She walked in the door, and
I said, 'I want to write for you,' " Mr. Higginbotham recalled recently during a break in the taping of an episode of "Do
Not Disturb," the new Fox comedy starring Ms. Nash as the human resources manager of a boutique New York hotel.
Though he had seen her work on "Reno 911!," the fake reality-cops series on Comedy
Central, Mr. Higginbotham, who is executive producer and creator of "Do Not Disturb," said he had not been prepared for Ms.
Nash's infectiously cheerful attitude, seasoned with a stiff shot of eyelash-batting humor.
"Her voice is not
on television right now," he said. "Niecy is a street chick. I wanted to show that ghetto-fabulous Mary Poppins character
in a world of privilege and elitism and spoiled 20-somethings."
Little about Ms. Nash, 38, speaks of privilege
and elitism. Growing up in Los Angeles in the economically distressed South Central and Compton neighborhoods, she was 15
when she saw her mother shot by an ex-boyfriend. Her mother survived, but when Ms. Nash was 22, her younger brother was fatally
shot at his high school.
His death left her mother so depressed that she was reluctant to leave her bed. So
Ms. Nash began performing stand-up comedy for her, in her bedroom. Soon her mother was inviting neighbors over to see the
performances.
Ms. Nash graduated from California State University at Dominguez Hills as a theater major, but
parts did not come easily until she cold-called a casting director and landed a role in the 1995 film "Boys on the Side."
Now Ms. Nash has three shows on the air: "Do Not Disturb," which is seen Wednesday nights at 9:30 p.m.; "Reno 911!," which
is now in reruns on Comedy Central and in syndication; and "Clean House," a home-makeover series she hosts, which is the top-rated
show on the Style cable channel.
Ms. Nash said the difficulties she faced had strengthened her. "I live by three
words: no matter what," she said in an interview in the makeup room on the set of "Do Not Disturb" on the Fox studio lot here.
"No matter if I was the only one who had to show up to audition with three kids in tow. I did it."
At her audition
for "Reno 911!," a largely improvised show, Ms. Nash found herself impatient that the executives were dragging their feet
about bringing actors in to interview.
"I opened the door and said: 'Are we going to get on with this? Because
I have to have my kid at Chuck E. Cheese by 7,' " she recalled. "A lot of breaks have been extended to me because I'm comfortable
in my skin."
That skin, of course, is a different color from that of most lead actors on prime-time television.
"Do Not Disturb" is one of the few new network shows this season with an African-American actor in a lead role, and it is
one of a handful of such shows on network television at all.
"I have no idea why that is," Ms. Nash said. "I
would like to think that television would be representative of the world we live in."
Mr. Higginbotham, who gained
acclaim as a writer on "Arrested Development" before taking on producing roles on "Will & Grace" and "Back to You," is
less circumspect. "The television business is racist," he said. "It's homophobic, and it's sexist. Let's not pretend it's
not. Even in this town I hear it all the time, from people who never in a million years would think they are that way. And
that's why Niecy Nash hasn't had a network television show."
On the evening the first episode of "Do Not Disturb"
was broadcast, Ms. Nash and the rest of the cast were on Stage 21, shooting the fourth episode. She had been working since
4 a.m., when she began giving interviews to East Coast affiliates of the Fox network. At 10 p.m., with one scene still to
shoot, she spent a break in the filming dancing with Mr. Higginbotham to Wild Cherry's "Play That Funky Music."
"When
this is over, I get to leave here and go home and be a real mom," she said during another break, referring to her three children,
who are now 16, 13 and 8, from a recently ended marriage. "I have to check in on my babies. Ask them, 'What did you do in
P.E.?' Somebody glued a piece of macaroni to cardboard - got to look at that. One of them just called me and asked if she
could have a sleepover."
That mothering role is also the one that she fills in "Do Not Disturb," which features
Jerry O'Connell as the lothario hotel manager, Molly Stanton as a front-desk clerk and would-be model and Jesse Tyler Ferguson
as the fragile supervisor of housekeeping.
In the "Upstairs, Downstairs" world of the hotel, Mr. O'Connell's
character, Neal, is the public face of the institution. But Ms. Nash's Rhonda really runs the show.
"She has
a big personality, which I think does well on television," Mr. O'Connell said. "But she has also worked hard, and she's definitely
due. She's what I call a modern-day triple threat: she can do improv, a sitcom and reality television. And when people see
her they stop and listen."
The series is likely to face some challenges. Critics generally hated the first episode,
and it is likely to require a fair amount of patience on Fox's part for viewership to grow significantly from the estimated
4.9 million who saw the premiere. In an environment dominated by reality shows, science fiction dramas and police procedurals,
the traditional situation comedy - filmed with multiple cameras in front of a studio audience - has fallen out of favor. Fox's
last foray into the genre, "Back to You," starring the well-known actors Kelsey Grammer and Patricia Heaton, lasted just one
season.
"I think it's
just like the bell-bottom; it will come back," Ms. Nash said of the traditional sitcom. "If it doesn't, I just have to know
that every day is a gift. And I try to pay it forward, by being of service, by being generous."
And, on the
nights of taping, by sometimes climbing up into the bleachers in the studio and dancing with members of the audience.
"I have been getting a little emotional, at feeling that this is my destiny being fulfilled," she said. "To have my son
text me and tell me, 'I saw your billboard,' it's surreal sometimes. That's a lot for this little black girl from Compton.
And it's worth a few tears."
Click
here to view the online version of Niecy's feature in the Sunday New York Times.
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