Life's a smooth ride for 'Carpooler' Jerry O'Connell

[Brian Damage]

LOS ANGELES — Jerry O'Connell has a nickname on the set of his ABC sitcom, Carpoolers.
"It's the big joke on my set. Everyone on Carpoolers refers to me as 'Stamos,' " says the actor, 33, who first connected with audiences as a child in 1986's Stand By Me.

"Stamos," of course, is a devilish nod to John Stamos, the ex-husband of O'Connell's wife, Rebecca Romijn.

The ribbing is all in fun.

"I think it's pretty funny, too," says Romijn, who plays the transgender character Alexis Meade on ABC's Ugly Betty. "And you know who's going to think it's the funniest out of everyone? Stamos. That's right up his alley."

But Romijn prefers her own nicknames for her husband, none of which she intends to share, explaining, "Jerry would never live it down if I made those public."

The entire cast of Carpoolers and many from Ugly Betty were in attendance on July 14 when O'Connell wed Romijn in their backyard, alongside the vineyard he planted for her in 2006. After weathering a bad frost last winter, their vines are now bearing little grapes he describes as "the size of raisins. I'm not strange (to the point) where I go down and talk to my grapes, but I do feel a bond with them."

That sense of humor is one reason Carpoolers creator Bruce McCulloch cast the New York University grad in the role after the two became friends. "He's kind and sweet and just a little bit dirty, so I thought that he would be perfect to play Laird, the lothario dentist," says McCulloch.

"A Divorce to Remember" is the title of tonight's Carpoolers (8:30 ET/PT), which guest stars Romijn as Joannifer, the boozy ex-wife of O'Connell's Laird.

"Joannifer is basically a floozy, and Rebecca can pull off playing a floozy," O'Connell says over lunch. "She has a lot of hair and is very buxom. But I know she makes a conscious effort to not be that girl. So for her to play this crazy maniac ex-wife was a lot of fun."

"I never play the boring pretty girl," clarifies Romijn, calling from home. But the former model, who turns 35 today, acknowledges that, "behind closed doors, I've been practicing aspects of this character for years."

Despite their guest appearances on each other's shows (he appeared on Betty last season as a jerk who hit on Romijn's Alexis in a bar), the two have mostly steered clear of working together, and their reps declined a joint interview.

"I think we get a little concerned about that Gigli factor — it's scary," he says, referring to the film Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez made when they were a couple. "You don't want to worry about hitting people over the head with it. But we have so much fun together."

She adds: "We decided if we're going to work together, we don't want to be love interests, per se," she adds.

But there is another project they are working on that 100% requires them to be love interests — becoming parents. (They joke that Romijn's character's past as a man will make it challenging to write her pregnancy into Betty's plot.)

The couple recently went out to dinner with Betty producer Marco Pennette and explored their options about a future pregnancy.

"It could be a hysterical pregnancy," Romijn theorizes. "There are people who want to be pregnant so badly that they put on weight in that area. Or maybe Alexis could put on a tremendous amount of weight, and I'd wear a fat suit around the pregnancy."

But first things first.

"We're definitely working at it," O'Connell says. "It's never as easy as everybody thinks. It just isn't. When you're married to Rebecca, you should try to have as many children as possible," he adds. "And I want to do that before she figures out that she could do a lot better than me."

"That's a very sweet and strange thing to say," she says. "Jerry is an amazing guy."

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