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Kimberly's Kingdom

By Janet Weeks
TV Guide February 26, 2000

When Rapunzel has a bad hair day, it's really bad. Kimberly Williams found that out making NBC's $50 million, 10-hour miniseries, The 10th Kingdom.

"One day I had on a 50-foot-long wig, and I had to spend the entire day in this thing and I couldn't move around a lot," Williams recalls. To make things worse, it was hot in London's historic Pinewood Studios, which has no air conditioning, and she was virtually trapped on a tiny, dusty set decorated to resemble the inside of a tree. When the cameras rolled, she was beaten by Rutger Hauer. For hours.

"He was throwing me against a wall and grabbing my clothing and pushing on my chest," says Williams. "I was being bullied, and I was hot, and it was just the worst day." Best day: battling a trio of evil trolls. "I've never had to do physical combat before," says Williams. "It made me feel powerful."

And different. The 10th Kingdom's scrappy Virginia is a departure for the 28-year-old actress, best known as Steve Martin's sweetly demure daughter in 1991's "Father of the Bride" and the 1995 sequel, "Father of the Bride Part II." By contrast, The 10th Kingdom is an action-fantasy hybrid that required Williams to frolic through the Alps with a wolf-man lover, come to grips with a deranged mom and slide through a rabbit hole while holding a dog (That was scary!). The 10th Kingdom was also labor intensive, shot over seven months in Europe. "A lot of actors were scared of this thing," says executive producer Robert Halmi Sr. "We actually had a difficult time casting this." Williams says the travel alone was well worth the time commitment. "Everywhere on location was great. Every location had some history or some beauty or both. I felt like a gypsy, getting to see the world."

And it's fair that she does, since the world has been seeing Williams since the mid '80s, when, as a teen, she appeared in a slew of commercials (Clearasil, Stri-Dex, Pizza Hut). The oldest daughter of Gurney, a freelance science and health writer, and Linda, a fund-raiser for Sarah Lawrence College in New York, Williams took to the limelight early on, often staging plays at home with her sister, Ashley; now 21 and also an actress, and brother, Jay, 25, a camera assistant. "I was putting on shows, directing, writing, starring and bossing around my younger brother and sister as long as I can remember," she says of her childhood in Mount Kisco, New York. "My poor parents' friends! Whenever they had people over, we had to put on a show."

At the start of ninth grade, Williams's parents moved to Rye, New York, where they lived near actress Anna Holbrook, who at the time was on Another World. Holbrook was struck by young Kimberly's beauty and asked her folks if she could take pictures of her. "So I did a makeup job on her, and her face jumped out," Holbrook recalls. "She was just stunning. And the pictures, to me, were the most beautiful things I had ever taken." Holbrook then plopped the photos down on the desk of a friend at the William Morris Agency. In no time, Williams landed a National Dairy Board commercial. Excited, she "bragged to everybody" about the gig. "I was in heaven." But her big debut wasn't to be. "When the commercial finally came out, I was cut out except [for] the bun on my head and my shoes. So I learned not to brag."

After graduating from Rye High School, Williams enrolled at Northwestern University in Evanstons, Illinois. While there, she landed "Father of the Bride," which she calls "a dream come true. I remember walking onto this dark soundstage and I couldn't see anything. And I heard Diane Keaton's voice and realized she was five feet away from me. Then I heard Steve Martin's voice. I remember thinking, 'If nothing else comes of this, at least I can say to my grandkids I met them.'" But other things did come, including the film's sequel, a series of Hallmark card commercials and a starring role on the short-lived ABC drama Relativity. "It was a little gem of a show," says Williams. "But we were thrown around from night to night and no one ever knew where to find us." She, however, found time for romance, and dated tennis great Pete Sampras for two years ("I don't want to talk about him anymore. It's old"). She is now dating an actor living in England ("You wouldn't know his name, so I'll just leave it") who worked on The 10th Kingdom crew. And although she longed to get home to Los Angeles while making The 10th Kingdom, she's now back in London for a production of David Mamet's play "Speed-the-Plow."

And with any luck, she'll go on happily ever after.

Kimberly Williams enjoys fantastic TV journey

Kimberly Williams always adored "The Wizard of Oz."

"I remember staying up late to watch it," Williams says excitedly. "Every year, I'd wait for it to come on. I wanted to be Dorothy."

Now the actress is getting her shot at the next-best thing. Chiefly known as the wide-eyed bride in the "Father of the Bride" movies and as the star of the acclaimed TV drama "Relativity," Williams heads the cast of "The 10th Kingdom," a wildly ambitious, 10-hour fantasy miniseries that NBC will debut on Sunday, with subsequent segments airing Monday, Wednesday, and March 5 and 6.

Williams plays a young woman named Virginia who, along with her father, Tony (John Larroquette), is whisked from modern-day New York City � aka the 10th Kingdom � into the fairy-tale realm of the other Nine Kingdoms.

Seeking a way home, Virginia and Tony meet up with strange and wondrous figures, including Snow White (Camryn Manheim), the evil Queen (Dianne Wiest) and her Huntsman (Rutger Hauer), the Troll King (Ed O'Neill) and Wolf (Scott Cohen), a half-man/half-wolf who falls for Virginia.

"I fell in love with the script as soon as I read it," Williams says by telephone from London, where she's starring in a West End production of David Mamet's "Speed-the-Plow." "I felt passionate enough about 'The 10th Kingdom' to put everything else on hold and come over to England to do it for seven months.

"It was such an escape for me, such a fantasyland and an adventure," she adds. "Virginia goes to amazing places, and I knew that in order to film amazing places we actually had to go to a few amazing places. And we did � we filmed at some of the most beautiful locations in Europe."

Williams and company shot outdoor sequences throughout England, Germany, Austria and France. The unit, under the direction of Herbert Wise and David Carson of "Star Trek: Generations" fame, also spent months making magic on sound stages at London's venerable Pinewood Studios.

"It felt, every day, like we were shooting a fantasy," Williams says. "I had to deal with a lot of special effects. My wig, which is a 50-foot wig, was a special effect. We were often talking to animals and creatures that didn't really talk back to us. We were in front of blue screens a lot, having to imagine something was there that really wasn't there.

"But that was all part of the fantasy of it. When you read a fairy tale, it's in your head. As an actor, creating them and imagining much of it was really like reading the 'Grimms' Fairy Tales.'"

Williams promises that "The 10th Kingdom" will follow in the Grimm tradition of conjuring up darkness and danger as much as it does escapades and whimsy.

"'The 10th Kingdom' appeals on different levels," the actress says. "It's entertaining and a light story on the one hand, but on the other hand it's got a deeper meaning sometimes, and there are scares.

"To me, it's an epic adventure of great, exciting proportions and, at the same time, there are several human elements to it," Williams says. "There's a very deep mother-daughter bond that develops later on, and throughout there's a father-daughter relationship and the love story between Virginia and Wolf.

"Those are very basic human relationships," she says. "Virginia is right in the middle of all of them, and I did some of the most emotional scenes I've ever had to do in my life."

And every day Williams felt a bit like a certain girl from Kansas.

"Virginia wants to get home," Williams says. "She has to battle evil. She's wearing blue.

"I felt very much like Dorothy."

'10th Kingdom' makes time for fantasy

LONDON -- On a sound stage west of London, John Larroquette is battling a troll.

Colleague Kimberly Williams, in the meantime, is battling the homesickness that comes from having spent six days a week for six months filming a 10-hour TV epic.

When it comes to TV, it's fair to say they don't make 'em like Hallmark Entertainment's ``The 10th Kingdom'' anymore.

``It's been a battle. Everyone's exhausted. I haven't been home,'' Williams moans cheerfully to a reporter, much as an island castaway might be pleased to encounter a stranger. The young American co-star of ``Father of the Bride'' and the current ``Simpatico'' has spent the shoot in Europe, where filming traveled from the Austrian Alps to eight sound stages and more than 150 sets at suburban London's Pinewood Studios.

Boasting two directors (David Carson and Herbert Wise) because of its size and costing $40 million, ``The 10th Kingdom'' starts Sunday at 9 p.m. EST on NBC. The remaining four two-hour segments will be aired Monday (Feb. 28), next Wednesday (March 1), and March 5 and 6.

Network TV hasn't seen anything on a comparable scale since ABC's ``War and Remembrance'' more than a decade ago. In 1978, NBC aired ``Centennial,'' which lasted a hefty 26 hours.

But it takes time to work through an elaborate scenario that casts Larroquette and Williams as ordinary father-and-daughter New Yorkers who are transported via a magical doorway to the Land of the Nine Kingdoms. Their odyssey brings them up against some familiar characters in unfamiliar guise -- Camryn Manheim's Snow White and Ann-Margret's Cinderella, among them.

In this alternative world, it seems, some beloved fairy tale characters haven't disappeared; they've merely grown older or gone underground, alongside a handsome prince-turned-dog (played by Daniel Lapaine) and a half-man half-wolf suitor of sorts (Scott Cohen) for Williams' waitress, Virginia.

Reminting herself, after a fashion, is two-time Oscar-winner Dianne Wiest. The usually benign actress here makes a rare foray into flat-out villainy as an evil queen.

``Someone said, `You'll have the courage to do what you need to do,''' recalls Williams of the relentless schedule, ``and it's true. I feel like Virginia in a lot of ways.''

``I have this big, like, Greek-tragedy kind of confrontation with my mom, trying to get her to see me and to mother me and to remember that she's my mom.''

Without revealing the ending, Williams says ``it's dark; it's dark.''

Much of the time, ``The 10th Kingdom'' aims to be fun and tongue-in-cheek, not least when Larroquette's Everyman-style janitor, Tony, ends up dueling Blabberwort, Blue Bell and Burly -- three alliteratively named trolls.

``We're three big idiots, basically -- dangerous idiots, but that's where the comedy comes from,'' says Jeremiah W. Birkett, the 35-year-old New Yorker cast as the prosthetically challenged Blue Bell.

Out of costume, Birkett is lithe and wiry and amiable. In full troll garb, he's trouble in bulked-up and toothsome form. ``I look a lot more formidable than I am,'' Birkett grins, then points to the set. ``You can't have a little lanky troll in there.''

For executive producer Robert Halmi Sr., troll size is the least of his concerns. Now 76, he is pondering a project that dwarfs even such past successes as ``Gulliver's Travels'' in 1996, which won an Emmy for ``The 10th Kingdom's'' English writer and co-producer, Simon Moore.

At four hours, that was a mere lark.

``There's a Hungarian proverb that says `the brave have all the luck,''' says the Hungarian-born Halmi. ``You don't just imitate other people. That's stupid.''

Moore simply sounds happy to be getting onto the screen something he first developed 11 years ago as a two-hour feature, and which has since mushroomed into a ``maxi-series.''

``There are not that many chances in life to do something of this length,'' says Moore, 42, of the project he says ``has the length and substance of a novel.''

``I wanted to write an adventure series where the two central characters were completely ill-equipped to have an adventure,'' says Moore. He was prompted by ``the image of people lost in a forest that I kept coming back to when I reread the fairy stories.''

Moore cites a German antecedent for his work, at least as far as length is concerned: the 1984 film ``Heimat,'' which ran nearly 16 hours in length.

Great Hair -
and She Can Act

Father of the Bride star Kimberly Williams has her own TV show, a big role in a Christmas movie - and the hottest haircut in Hollywood

"I'm totally flattered, but I think it's funny," says Williams with an isn't-that-ridiculous? grin. "I cut my long hair after Father of the Bride simply to reflect how I felt - more free and easy and low maintenance. Single - it's single hair. If anyone knew how little effort I put into it..."

An actress in TV commercials since age 13, Williams studied theater at Northwestern, even after being discovered in a nationwide search for Bride. When she shot Indian Summer during her next summer break, she got class credit for keeping an on-set journal. "It was cool - like therapy," she remembers.

Not that she had anything too shocking to untangle - except perhaps that she comes from an intact nuclear family (writer father, fund-raiser mother, younger brother and sister in the biz - he produces, she acts). She even has the requisite hunky boyfriend, a soccer player whose name she won't reveal. She does admit, though, that she offers him little competition.

"I played four years in high school and scored two goals," she says sheepishly. Well, you can't be good at everything.

Looking Good

"I Got It"

Kimberly Williams was given the proposal of her dreams---to star in the new movie "Father of the Bride"

"Shut up. No way!" That's what Kimberly Williams, twenty, said when her agent told her that she'd landed the role of Annie Banks in the major motion picture Father of the Bride, starring Steve Martin and Diane Keaton, due out this month. Says Kimberly, a native New Yorker, "My parents, brother, and sister were all jumping up and down and crying. But I couldn't believe I got the part. I was in shock."

Not that Kimberly is new to the business. "When I was little, I would put on shows for my dolls. Then in sixth grade I started auditioning for commercials and films," says the Northwestern University junior, who's enrolled in the theater program (alums include Warren Beatty and Charlton Heston). It's just that Kimberly tried out for the role on a whim. She says, "Last spring, a friend told me that there was this Steve Martin film about a father who struggles to let his little girl grow up. She thought I could be right for the part of the daughter--the bride." Kimberly's response: "Yeah, right."

But she went to the casting call anyway. And the audition went so well that Kimberly was flown out to Los Angeles for a screen test. "After they did my hair and makeup, I read for Steve Martin and Diane Keaton, my parents in the film. And all I could do was laugh," she says. "I was thinking, When are they going to realize that I'm not right for this part?" As if the thought ever crossed their minds . . .

The day after Kimberly received the big call in Chicago, she jetted back to Los Angeles to start the first of twelve weeks of filming. "The moment I got there, she says, "they handed me a pair of basketball shoes and a ball to prepare me for this big bonding scene I have with my father." And when Kimberly wasn't practicing free throws, she was at the movie's wedding rehearsal. "It was the perfect Hollywood wedding--probably the glitziest I'll ever have," she says, "But it was weird to have 250 people smiling at me as if they had known me forever."

Now Kimberly's back in Chicago at Northwestern. "It's important for me to get a degree. The acting business is really up and down, and I'm not sure that I want that for my life," she says, "I'm interested in journalism and I love to write . . . but there are auditons and scripts that I'm reading." Seems like Kimberly's honeymoon with Hollywood has just begun.