Out of Character

Chicago Tribune

August 7, 1996

Don't expect abrasive Dr. Kerry Weaver on ER to mellow any time soon, warns Laura Innes, who becomes a full-time cast member this season after making waves last season as the disabled chief resident. "Many people say my character is such a bitch, but I'd never call her that," Innes says in her surprisingly girlish voice. "She always makes the compassionate choice when it comes to the patients. I'd call her direct, focused, a perfectionist. Such directness is applauded in men and criticized in women. Women are encouraged to get what they want around the corner instead of straight ahead. I'm sure we'll see other sides of her character as the series progresses, but my mother said if they make her too warm and fuzzy it would be boring."

Innes tries to avoid boring. On "Wings," she had a recurring role as Thomas Haden Church's ex-wife, whom she describes as "a sweet and slutty extrovert from the Midwest." She co-starred in a memorable episode of "My So-Called Life" as the "outrageous and trampy woman who got drunk when the parents went to a bed-and-breakfast for the weekend."

Innes, who grew up in Birmingham, Mich., is a much quieter and less colorful character in real life. When she steps on the interviewer's foot by accident, she apologizes profusely. Instead of talking about wild parties, she refers often to her 6-year-old son Cal and her husband, actor David Brisbin (Nickelodeon's "Hey Dude"). "I rarely feel I'm playing myself," she says, settling back on a flowered sofa in a Pasadena hotel lounge. "If I'm auditioning to play a caring mom, I should be able to get the part because that's what I am. But I go into the audition, and part of me is not excited. There are no creative juices flowing."

Innes enjoys being paid to surprise audiences. "Women's roles in TV are often victims or wives or mothers with sick children," she complains. "Kerry isn't vulnerable in any kind of obvious way. I always saw her as someone who stripped things away. She never worries about what others think about her because she's entirely involved in what she's doing. She's very unsentimental. "But I was shocked that people had such a strong aversion to her. I had no idea they felt so strongly. When I first started, people would come up to me and say, 'Oh, you're so nice in person.'"

They were also surprised that Innes doesn't need a crutch to get around. "When I first started, I was asked what's wrong with her," Innes recalls, "and I said, `It's something to do with her leg.' The truth is, we know exactly what it is. There was a lot of preparation for me to figure out her range of motion. Originally the producers didn't want to make a big deal out of it. There's a nice tension there, but you don't want to be too silly about it. I'm hoping the explanation comes in a simple way. Maybe a child will ask me. On ER, the issue of where do we leave the crutch comes up a lot. Do we want the sound of it falling? There was an episode where I had to leave the scene quickly to rush this guy to the ER, and we wound up hanging the crutch on the IV. Initially we were nervous about it, but now we're having fun with it."

The same is true of Innes' leap into the spotlight. "I never in a million years thought I'd be a star," she says. "It's not who I am. I'm pretty practical. So it's a little weird now when I go out and people watch me do what I normally do."

That could be taking a friend's daughter to her swimming lesson--one activity she plans for the next day. "We're part of a co-op of families who are actors and writers, and we all have kids," Innes says. "Today my husband is working and I'm here, so a friend is picking up my son from school."

But once ER resumes production, Innes may be too overworked for this cooperative life. "The word is that some love interest for Kerry is in the works," she says, not offering any clues. "The writers are very smart about not deciding something until they have to-- although that makes for craziness."

Theatrically trained with a degree from Northwestern University, Innes insists she is ready for whatever the writers throw her way. "I'm the youngest of six," she says. "When I was 5, my older sisters used to watch 1950s 'white-trash' movies like 'Baby Doll.' They wrote this white-trash monologue and taught it to me."

In a Southern accent, Innes launches into a two-minute speech that begins, "'I took you out of the gutter. . . .' This would be the party entertainment. I remember doing this speech for my brother's fiance's brother at a picnic to meet the other family. That's probably when I first got the idea to be an actress."

When she was 16, Innes went to a summer theatrical program at Northwestern and realized she could hold her own against the competition. After college she worked in Chicago theater but eventually moved to New York with David Mamet's play "Edmund." She and her husband relocated to Los Angeles in 1991.

Nowhere in her biography does it mention any medical training, although one sister is a pharmacological technician. "A lot of Kerry's medical jargon I learn phonetically," she says. "Once I had to say 'meningeoantiencephelopia.' I imagined a man putting on Mennen aftershave, getting in a little car, sneezing and eloping." Dr. Weaver must have a sense of humor somewhere.