Crisis Center starring Kellie Martin

[tmac81s]

Anyone remember this one hour drama....it aired for 6 episodes on NBC, airing in ER's usual time slot on Thursday nights. I watched every episode and thought it was good. Must not have been good in the ratings I guess, because it never aired again.

[catlover79]

I remember that show - I don't think I watched it because it was on Friday nights and I had youth group things going on at that time. I do remember Kellie Martin promoting the program on Jay Leno's Tonight Show. Apparently, it wasn't enough. Maybe if it had aired on a different night, it would've had a chance.

[70s show watcher]

i really enjoyed that show too bad it didnt last longer

[catlover79]

Here are some screen captures of Kellie on CC:

http://bds4me.netwiz.net/crisis/crisis.htm

[catlover79]

Here's an interview Kellie did when CC debuted:

http://bds4me.netwiz.net/crisis/nytimes.htm

The New York Times

More Happy Endings for a Young Veteran

by Kathryn Shattuck

Sunday March 9th, 1997


"Aren’t you that girl?" a young woman asked Kellie Martin as she sat in a Starbuck’s in Manhattan early one morning.

"Yes, that’s me," replied Ms. Martin, graciously, to the third such interruption during an interview.

"I loved that show," gushed the fan. "And you’re so small!"

"Thank you very much," replied Ms. Martin, still smiling.


"People like to tell me I look smaller in real life than on television," she confided later. "Less chubby."

On a break from Yale University, where she is a sophomore art history major, the actress, poring over a textbook while sipping coffee, is hardly chubby. Rather, at 21, Ms. Martin is sylphlike (slender, graceful), her bright blue eyes framed by naturally dark lashes and a veil of golden-brown hair. A lavender sweater is strategically unbuttoned to reveal tiny strands of amethysts and pearls at her neck, a slice of well-toned midriff below.

And yet.

"I never think of myself as beautiful," said Ms. Martin. "And I never get cast as a flirt or the girlfriend. I’m solid and determined. I always got by on my personality and energy."

Four years after the show ended, many people still fondly remember Ms. Martin as the earnest Becca Thacher on ABC’s Life Goes On. She was the teen-age daughter in a family coping with potential tragedies, including a son with Down’s Syndrome and, in the case of Ms. Martin’s character, an AIDS-afflicted boyfriend. Yet somehow everything kept turning out all right. The role earned Ms. Martin an Emmy nomination as best supporting actress.

Now, she is applying that same energy and determination to yet another indefatigable character: Kathy Goodman, a psychology student serving as an intern at a San Francisco clinic on NBC’s Crisis Center, on Fridays at 10 P.M.

"Kathy Goodman is a grown-up Becca, and Becca was similar to me," Ms. Martin said, noting that Thania St. John, the writer who coaxed her through Becca’s growing pains in Life Goes On, was also the writer and executive producer of Crisis Center. And although psychology is not one of her best subjects at Yale ("I hated it"), Ms. Martin said she felt a greater affinity for Kathy than any other role she has played. "We both give 150 percent and take ourselves seriously."

Just how seriously is evident in Ms. Martin’s approach to both acting and education. She took a semester off from Yale to complete shooting on Crisis Center and an NBC movie scheduled for this spring in which she plays a teen-ager with manic-depressive disorder whose mother commits her to a psychiatric institute.

The day after shooting the movie, Ms. Martin returned to dorm life in New Haven, where she juggles classes with photography studies and auditions. She had deferred her studies once before, when she starred as a Tennessee schoolteacher in the CBS series Christy.

But she takes the interruptions in stride: "I’m in school for the love of it. Show business is such a roller-coaster life, I’d just like to have my degree and a lot of options."

Ms. Martin has been acting since the age of 7, when her aunt, who worked as a nanny for Michael Landon, wangled her an audition. Ms. Martin is quick to point out that the public’s perception of child actors as lost souls isn’t always accurate.

"What people don’t remember are actors who have gone on to achieve, like Fred Savage, who goes to Stanford, and Sara Gilbert, who is also at Yale," she said, speaking of young actors from The Wonder Years and Roseanne. Ms. Martin’s boyfriend, Scott Weinger, also an actor, attends Harvard.

And though she began receiving her schooling on the set when she was 13, with one teacher tutoring her through high school, she managed to take her S.A.T.’s by the time she was 16. (During the test, a boy kept poking her to ask, "Aren’t you that girl?")

Did she miss out on a normal childhood?

"I never thought about it," she said, "I went to a prom and a homecoming. I felt like I got to do interesting things. I had friends."

Ms. Martin wears her labels like badges of honor. "I was in a darkroom at Yale recently, developing a picture I was really pleased with, and the person next to me sort of grumbled and said, ‘Are you always so damn happy?’

"And I know it sounds corny and probably won’t do anything to help my career, but, well, yes, I guess I am."