Julia Louis-Dreyfus Has a New Attitude

Get. Out! Seinfeld's Elaine is moving into CBS' cushy Monday-night sitcom neighborhood. In The New Adventures of Old Christine (premiering tonight at 9:30 pm/ET), Julia Louis-Dreyfus plays Christine Campbell, a health-club owner juggling single motherhood, an ex-husband (In Good Company's Clark Gregg) who's now dating a younger gal also named Christine (hence our title), and, of course, her own middling love life. Here's what the Emmy winner had to tell TV Guide about her new prime-time gig.

TV Guide: In its ads for The New Adventures of Old Christine, CBS is touting the show as a comedy about "the new American mom." How would you describe it?
Julia Louis-Dreyfus: It's a realistic take on being a single working mother, trying to do right by your kid. That's a massive task, and I have nothing but admiration for single moms who undertake the parenting thing on their own. It's hard enough doing it with two people. On this show, it's not just about the haggard single mother but also the haggard single father. Both of them take their son's well-being very seriously.

TV Guide: Your character has to cope with the uptight, overly involved moms at her son's swanky private school. Could you relate?
Louis-Dreyfus: I run into those kind of parents everywhere. Maybe I am one. But all of a sudden, parenting is a verb and parenting is a career. Which unleashes a kind of ferocity that is definitely ripe comedically.

TV Guide: On Seinfeld you were the only woman in the cast, and on Christine you live with your son (Trevor Gagnon) and brother (Fantastic Four's Hamish Linklater). What's it like to then go home to your own house full of boys?
Louis-Dreyfus: Sometimes that is kind of tiring. There is a lot of testosterone. My days are spent going to ball games now, although I do have a niece, so I can at least have someone to talk laces and bows with.

TV Guide: Did you ever consider returning to TV in a drama instead of a comedy?
Louis-Dreyfus: I thought about that, but a one-hour single-camera drama is not what I want to do right now. The hours are very demanding and the truth is, I really like to make people laugh. That would be a tough monkey to get off my back. So it's an advantage but a disadvantage. People laugh even when I don't mean to make people laugh.

TV Guide: Is that why you are jumping back into the sitcom world again? Did you miss having punch lines and an audience?
Louis-Dreyfus: Actually, after Seinfeld I was desperate for a break and wanted to be at home all day long. As my kids got older, though, I got the itch to work again. Not to get away from them, but because they're in school and all of that.

TV Guide: Are you still in touch with your former Seinfeld mates?
Louis-Dreyfus: We do see each other every once in a while, especially since we've been promoting the Seinfeld DVDs. My path crosses with Jason [Alexander]'s a lot, and with [series cocreator] Larry [David]'s. We always reminisce.

For much more from Julia Louis-Dreyfus  including the truth about Christine's real-life inspiration, a tease of the Adventures to come and her take on "the Seinfeld curse"  pick up the new TV Guide.