Daniel Franco
As Heidi Klum says on Project Runway, "Either you're in or you're out." But in the case of Daniel Franco, it's not that simple. The aspiring fashion designer with the Flock of Seagulls haircut was the first contestant kicked off the Bravo reality show last year. But when the Emmy-nominated sleeper returns for a second season on Dec. 7, Franco will be back in style, competing again for the chance to create his own clothing line.
"The judges had no idea I was going to be there," Franco says of his second audition. "I walked in the room like everybody else. I came in with my shades and my samples and stood in line."
After Project Runway guru Tim Gunn invited Franco back on the show, "it felt like a bit of a redemption,"
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Six Feet Under
Six Feet Under fans were stunned when the show's main character, funeral director Nate Fisher (Peter Krause), suddenly succumbed to a brain disease at the end of the July 31 episode. But Krause wasn’t surprised to get killed off. "I kinda knew it was coming," he says. "It'd always been something [creator] Alan Ball thought about, even from the first season. Initially, Alan wanted to do it in the very final episode. And I was glad that he [decided] to do it earlier, even though it was a strange shift to go from playing a living person to then playing whatever it is when you've passed on on Six Feet Under."
Indeed, no one on HBO's surreal drama ever really dies, so Krause will rematerialize as an apparition in the series' final three episodes. Like his character, Krause's spirit isn't comple
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The words "Rescue Me" would have had an entirely different meaning for Diane Farr if she'd auditioned for Desperate Housewives. "I told my agent, 'No, I'd really be terrified to be with that many actresses at once,'" Farr says. "Boys are so much easier."
Denis Leary and his fellow firemen may dominate FX's dramedy, but their female costars rival the ladies of Wisteria Lane for sheer fierceness. In addition to Farr, who plays Laura, the fire crew's sole distaff member, three other actresses have major roles this season: Callie Thorne as 9/11 widow Sheila, who's expecting a baby with Leary's Tommy Gavin, her late husband's cousin; Andrea Roth as Tommy's ex-wife Janet, who's run off with their children; and Ashlie Atkinson as Theresa, a self-confident, sexy, plus-size woman carrying on a torrid affair with FDNY hottie Mike, aka "the Probie" (Michael Lombardi). "These women have depth," says Thorne, a veteran of Homicide: Life
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Viewers aren't the only ones shocked by Six Feet Under's plot twists. Sometimes the actors are, too.
Take James Cromwell, who's not crazy about George's recent descent into madness. "They didn't tell me what was going to happen to this guy — all of a sudden, he started to fall to pieces, and I had no idea," gripes Cromwell, whose character undergoes electroshock therapy this season. "I'm not used to working this way. I like to know when I'm being led somewhere."
Cromwell thinks he's earned the right to be warned of such a sudden switcheroo. "S---, I've been doing this for 40 years," he says. "I'm not a goof. I understand if you've got a 19-year-old kid who doesn't know his ass from a hole in the ground, but people spend their lives doing this. It doesn't add any more life to keep actors out of the loop.
"I have quibbles with writers running shows," Cromwell adds, pointedly referring to SFU creator Alan Ball. "Writers are belitt
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Ed Harris doesn't like the M-word.
"Someone called it a miniseries, and I wanted to throw up," says the star of HBO's Empire Falls. "It's not a miniseries — it's a damn movie!"
If so, we hope Harris doesn't see the cable network's promos, which bill the star-jammed adaptation of Richard Russo's Pulitzer-winning novel as a "miniseries event." In any event, HBO will split the three-hour-plus small-town drama over the evenings of May 28 and 29 — all the better to qualify for a best miniseries Emmy.
You can't blame Harris for his unfamiliarity with TV terminology: He hasn't appeared on the small screen in nearly 10 years, since his 1996 TNT Western Riders of the Purple Sage. "I've been asked to do a bunch of TV stuff, and I came close a couple times," Harris explains. "But nothing quite grabbed me as much as I needed to be grabbed."
Then came Empire Falls' Miles Roby. When Harris first read the novel, he
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Vincent D'Onofrio is beat. Getting into makeup on the Manhattan set of Law & Order: Criminal Intent, he doesn't just have bags under his eyes — he's got a full set of luggage. "You can never get enough sleep," the 45-year-old actor says of his brutal shooting schedule. "You wake up, you look like me. It takes about three hours to start getting your face back."
The demands of playing polarizingly bizarro NYPD detective Robert Goren for the past four seasons finally caught up with D'Onofrio late last year; he collapsed on the set twice and had to be hospitalized for exhaustion.
Help is on the way. Next season, Chris Noth will reprise his L&O role as Det. Mike Logan in half of Criminal Intent's 22 episodes, relieving both D'Onofrio and equally weary costar Kathryn Erbe, who admits, "This is the season we cried uncle." (As reported in yesterday's Entertainment News, A
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Ray Liotta's real-time tour de force as a dying alcoholic defibrillated ER's ailing ratings in November. So it's no shock that the NBC medical drama has lined up more big-name guest stars for February sweeps.
First up, on Feb. 10 is Sissy Spacek, who'll play the long-lost birth mother of Dr. Kerry Weaver (Laura Innes). How did ER land the Oscar-winning actress? "I'm a huge fan of [executive producer] John Wells," Spacek says. "We worked together on [the 2004 indie film] A Home at the End of the World, and since then, he's been sending me ER scripts. This one just spoke to me."
"The show has a pretty solid reputation for actors and if it didn't have that, we would've never had a snowball's chance in hell of getting her," executive producer Dee Johnson says frankly. "As far as I know, [Spacek appears in only] one episode, but it's not like she drives off a cliff at the end, so nothing's impossible."
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She may have been snubbed by the Golden Globes, but Eva Longoria ain't complaining these days. Her insta-breakout role as suburban adulteress Gabrielle Solis on Desperate Housewives has made this 29-year-old Young & the Restless alumna one of TV's hottest (in every sense of the word) young actresses. Here, Longoria dishes with TV Guide Online about her show's best-comedy Globe, her desire to defeat CSI and her 90210 memories.
TV Guide Online: Why are people so fascinated by Gabrielle's affair with John (Jesse Metcalfe)?
Eva Longoria: It's the journey to find love and happiness, and no matter what route that takes you, audiences like that. It's very entertaining. I do a lot of awful things to get there, but in the end, it's still a pure hope of getting love, so that's what the audience is attracted to. People appreciate it and think it's funny — I don't think there's going to be a lot of 40-year-old women running off
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If you missed CSI: Miami's tidal-wave episode in November, you won't catch it again soon.
In the aftermath of the real-life tragedy in Southeast Asia, the network has no plans to rerun the 90-minute "Crime Wave," in which Horatio Caine (David Caruso) and Co. investigate two murders as a tsunami engulfs the city's beaches. "We would never be so insensitive," says a network source. CSI: Miami's makers agree: "If it would remind one person of all the lives that were lost, it's not worth it," a show insider says. "Our job is to entertain, and when it intersects with tragedy, it's just terrible. We certainly don't aim for that."
CBS wasn't the only network to respond to the disaster with caution. Disney Channel pulled four shows off its schedule, including episodes of Even Stevens and The Proud Family that featured scenes of tidal waves, an earthquake-themed installment of Lilo & Stitch: The Series and the unfortunately
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As the truth sinks in, we have to accept that, yes, our favorite TV family really is calling it quits. But not just yet. The Barones have come back for 16 more episodes of CBS's smash hitcom, Everybody Loves Raymond, which ends its run in May. Here, Ray Romano ponders his farewell season — and life after Raymond.
TV Guide Online: Why did you decide to come back for one final season?
Ray Romano: It was the stories. The whole thing wasn't the money, as much as it is [$1.8 million an episode] — and I apologize for that to everybody out there. It was all about, "Are we running it into the ground?" We just didn't want to compromise the quality of it.
TVGO: What's up for Raymond this year?
Romano: I [co-wrote] one of the first three [episodes]. The ones I write usually involve sex, so it's a lack-of-sex themed show. I believe I'll get lucky one evening, then the wife ends up having a big fight with the mother, which I
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