The Clearasil set aren't the only ones enjoying the guilty pleasures of teen buddy movies. Actor Kal Penn of Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle fame will appear in Six Feet Under's final season, beginning in June. He'll play one of Claire's latest squeezes in multiple episodes. How'd he score this plum gig?
Turns out, SFU creator Alan Ball loved his goofy stoner flick, which costarred Off Centre's John Cho. "You really are offering me something on Six Feet based on the character of Kumar?" Penn asked in disbelief when Ball called. The honcho's reply? Yup.
So far Penn (who's no relation to Sean) hasn't seen any scripts yet, so he doesn't even know his character's name or what his story line with Claire (Lauren Ambrose) will be like. "Because he comes in later in the season, I think they're still in the process of figuring all the stuff out," Penn shrugs. "I'm dying to find out more about what
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Actor Kal Penn will play Claire Fisher's latest BF in the final season of Six Feet Under. How'd he score that plum part? Turns out, SFU creator Alan Ball is a big fan of Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle (out this week on DVD). Here, the up-and-comer joins TV Guide Online to dish the goofy buddy movie that's been getting him noticed.
TV Guide Online: Gotta ask. Any relation to Sean Penn?
Kal Penn: No. I get that a lot. Sometimes I say yes!
TVGO: You use a stage name, right?
Penn: My real name is Kalpen Modi. I took my first name, split it and added an "n." I'm East Indian, born in New Jersey. I actually went to high school in Freehold, New Jersey, where Harold and Kumar make a stop-off in the movie. Casting directors kept telling me to shorten my name, so I did it — as a joke — and my auditions went up. It's a little bit disturbing and a little bit funny. Do they think Kal Penn is just easier
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Veteran actress Joanna Cassidy joined TV's pantheon of monster mothers when she was cast as Six Feet Under's Margaret Chenowith. Employed, ironically enough, as a psychotherapist, Mags raised the sex-addicted Brenda (Rachel Griffiths) and her highly unstable brother, Billy (Jeremy Sisto). Nice work, Mommy! On tomorrow's Enterprise (8 pm/ET on UPN), Cassidy exercises her maternal instinct on a new victim: Jolene Blalock's Vulcan vixen, T'Pol. She plays T'Les, who urges T'Pol to dump her crewmate/boyfriend Trip for an arranged marriage. Uh-oh....
TV Guide Online: It takes a hottie to play the moms of Griffiths and Blalock. Apple doesn't fall far from the tree, right?Joanna Cassidy: [Laughs] From a babe to a babe, right? If I do say so myself!
TVGO: Brenda's mom is hot on SFU. She's crazy inside...Cassidy: ...but outside, she's picture-perfect. Oh, she has to look great no matter what. She'll look
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Two weeks ago, HBO's Six Feet Under aired its darkest, most disturbing episode ever. Gay mortician David (Michael C. Hall) picked up a hitchhiker from hell, who started out flirtatious, then turned ferocious, beating and torturing him. (The whole thing played like a bad student film, but we needn't digress...) What made the show subject David to such abuse?
"It was kind of a form of gay-bashing," Mathew St. Patrick, who plays David's boyfriend, Keith, tells TV Guide Online. "The guy turned out not to be gay. He was just a psycho. Those things do happen."
Still, the whole improbable scenario seemed to come out of nowhere. St. Patrick rationalizes SFU's wacky twists thusly: "I may not have happened to get hit in the head with a golf ball and die, but it happens. People do fall out of windows, get electrocuted in the tub or fall into blender machines at work. Or like the girls' night out we had, when they stuck their heads out of the top o
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After the cancellation of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Michelle Trachtenberg thought she was done with the small screen. Hoped she was, even. "I'm definitely happy not to be in TV anymore," the ambitious Eurotrip starlet admits to TV Guide Online. Yet when she was invited to parody pop's tarts on Six Feet Under, she eagerly resurrected her tube career. Who can blame 'er? "Celeste is a combination of all the rumors you've ever heard about Britney, Christina and J. Lo all rolled into one," she says of the vixen she debuted in last weekend's episode. "She's just a bitchy little diva!"
Although Trachtenberg's four-episode guest gig has just begun (and continues this Sunday at 9 pm/ET on HBO), she's already back at work on her next feature, Ice Princess, in which she plays a bookworm with secret aspirations to be the next Nancy Kerrigan. "[My character] uses physics to teach people in her community how to skat
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After the cancellation of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Michelle Trachtenberg thought she was done with the small screen. Hoped she was, even. "I'm definitely happy not to be in TV anymore," the ambitious Eurotrip starlet admits to TV Guide Online. Yet when she was invited to parody pop's tarts on Six Feet Under, she eagerly resurrected her tube career. Who can blame 'er? "Celeste is a combination of all the rumors you've ever heard about Britney, Christina and J. Lo all rolled into one," she says of the vixen she debuted in last weekend's episode. "She's just a bitchy little diva!"
Although Trachtenberg's four-episode guest gig has just begun (and continues this Sunday at 9 pm/ET on HBO), she's already back at work on her next feature, Ice Princess, in which she plays a bookworm with secret aspirations to be the next Nancy Kerrigan. "[My character] uses physics to teach people in her community how to skat
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Don't look for Six Feet Under to kill the competition when nominations for the 56th annual Prime-time Emmys are announced in July. The HBO drama, which led last year's Emmy derby with 16 nods, kicks off its fourth season in June — which is outside the Academy's eligibility period for 2004 honors. HBO's been in this situation before: Emmy also declared The Sopranos ineligible when its fourth season was delayed until Sept. 2002.
While waiting two years for another Emmy fix may seem like a fate worse than death, SFU creator Alan Ball doesn't see it that way. "I don't really think about those things that much," he says. "I'm very fortunate in that the show has been so honored, so it becomes less important. It's always nice [to be recognized], but it's not the point... it's not the reason. [Besides], we'll be eligible next year."
In the meantime, Ball is hard at work on the show's new season. Although tight-lipped about specifics, he d
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