Moonlighting Star Recalls "Pressure"

Best known as Moonlighting's rhyming receptionist, Agnes DiPesto, whom she played from 1985 to 1989, Allyce Beasley recently taped commentary for the just-released DVDs of the detective show's first two seasons. Must have been a fun chance for the cast to reunite and reminisce, right? Wrong.

"Bruce [Willis], Cybill [Shepherd] and I all did it, but on different days," Beasley admits. "I haven't seen Cybill since the show ended. I bumped into Bruce at a store one Christmas."

So what's she's been up to since Moonlighting? After a series of TV guest spots and small film roles, the 50-year-old breast cancer survivor carved out a successful voice-over career (Lloyd in Space, Playhouse Disney).

"I was a single mom when Moonlighting wrapped, and I wanted to be the one to raise my son," she says. "Doing voice-overs was a good choice for that."

Beasley's dream is to play a prostitute on HBO's hit Western, Deadwood, which sees more than its share of loose women. (Her two best friends are on the show.) "I haven't worked on another series as a regular since Moonlighting," she says. "I'd like to. Moonlighting was very difficult. I would love to be on a show that is happy."

During the making of the ABC series, Beasley was closer to Shepherd than to Willis. "It was because of the circumstances," she says. "From Day 1, Bruce was already on a track to do movies, to get on with his career. He wasn't that available. He was very, very busy. But he's also a guy's guy, in a good sense; his friends adore him. But Cybill and I had a lot more in common. She was more available as a friend.

"In all fairness, there was a lot of pressure on Cybill and Bruce," Beasley adds. "[Our writers] were notorious for not getting [us] our scripts ahead of time. We'd be filming the first part of a scene and not have the pages about where the scene was going! That's an awful lot of pressure, especially on the two stars who are in almost every frame of the show."

Speaking of which, Ms. Shepherd — one of the reputed sources of setside "difficulties" — uses the DVD release as her opportunity to set the record straight here.