Doris Roberts Stars in TV Drama

[Janice]

http://apnews.excite.com/article/200...D7UUH9000.html


Doris Roberts Stars in TV Drama

NEW YORK (AP) - Doris Roberts is so good on "Everybody Loves Raymond," and the sitcom is so good at mining laughs from the quarrelsome Barones (whose queen bee, of course, is played by Roberts) that viewers might forget she can play anyone else.

"A Time To Remember" is a vivid reminder.

Airing 8 p.m. EST Sunday on the Hallmark Channel, this dramatic film finds Roberts as a different kind of matriarch from comic meddler Marie Barone. Here, playing Maggie Calhoun, she is cool and imperious - and at an early stage of Alzheimer's.

However frightening for Maggie, as well as for her daughter Valetta (Megan Gallagher) and her longtime caretaker (Louis Fletcher), the onset of this disease is just their latest family problem to avoid dealing with.

Then Britt (Dana Delany), the headstrong daughter who had moved far away, makes a reluctant return home for Thanksgiving and discovers the truth. There's no avoiding their problems anymore.

"This not a disease-of-the-week film," Roberts says. "It's all about family, and how we hold onto silly and stupid resentments and anger and all that nonsense."

Especially Maggie.

"She's not necessarily a very nice woman," says Roberts. "She's very uptight, very WASPy, and I played it that way. People won't necessarily like my character, but I think they'll be moved by her."

To prepare for this role, Roberts says she studied up on the disease. And she allows that, despite her being vigorous and razor-sharp at 73, it's a threat she doesn't take lightly.

"I have a friend whose husband is in the late stages now, but early on, I remember sitting with him at dinner and he'd have this troubled stare and he'd say, 'I'm not here.' It would break your heart."

The role gives Roberts some stirring moments, such as a scene when Maggie, in her bathroom, is struck clueless: She doesn't know what her toothpaste and toothbrush are for.

"No one thinks I can do dramatic work anymore," says Roberts with a rueful chuckle. "I did 20 years on Broadway before I ever went out to California! I won an Emmy for playing a bag lady on 'St. Elsewhere'! But once you get into a comedy bag, they pigeonhole you. So when this kind of opportunity comes along, I grab it."

Not that Roberts - with a half-century's worth of credits in theater, films and television (including her four-season run on "Remington Steele") - draws much of a distinction between going for laughs and going for tears.

"You don't use different muscles playing comedy and playing drama," she explains. "You just make different choices.

"When I play Marie, I don't use this voice," she says, displaying her naturally deep timbre. Instead, she endows Marie with a hopped-up, nasally lilt: "I say things like, 'Ah yuh hungry, dee-uh?' I talk way up hee-uh. Because if I used my own voice for Marie, you wouldn't laugh at her. You'd find her quite unpleasant."

Thanks to Roberts' choices, Marie Barone isn't unpleasant. Just impossible. And, like "Raymond" (airing Mondays at 9 p.m. on CBS), still hugely popular with viewers in this, Season 8.

"I pride myself that the choices that I make for Marie are really based on love," says Roberts, who has scored a pair of Emmys in the role. "It comes out differently, but that's what it's based on."

As Marie, she adheres to another guiding principle: Parents are never satisfied. At least, not by approval-seeking offspring.

"I don't think my mother ever wore anything I ever bought for her," Roberts recalls. "She'd just put it in the drawer with the tissue paper it came wrapped in."

On the other hand, this mother can't say enough about her son, Michael Cannata, a former TV producer who has been her manager for three years.

"You never know how smart your kids are!" Roberts beams. "I took care of him for so many years, and now he takes care of me. And he's tough. He is TOUGH!"

Like mother, like son.

"There's nothing about me that feels old, acts old, thinks old - I've fought them all," crows Roberts, who has plenty to say against ageism (and said it last year, testifying before the Senate Special Committee on Aging).

"I have the same passion for my work today that I did when I was 18 years old," she declares, adding that she's sure not ready to see "Raymond" fold its tent.

"Ray and Phil say, 'No, this is our last year,'" she reports, speaking of the show's star, Ray Romano, and executive producer Philip Rosenthal. "But I can't imagine that CBS can allow this to be the last year."

Coming from Roberts, that isn't a prediction, it's a word to the wise: Keep "Raymond" going. After all, Mother knows best.