Four years ago, Marilyn Kentz and Caryl Kristensen were neighbors, living with their husbands and children in Petaluma, Calif.
One day Kentz, having turned 42, decided to take acting classes. “I think a lot of women, when they turn 40, think, `I should have been an actress,’ said Kentz, “but all I was thinking of was a little community theater.”
Kentz persuaded Kristensen to join her. They created their own comedy routine, took it on the road and later were signed up by NBC for “The Mommies” to play Caryl Kellogg and Marilyn Larson (the women keep their own first names in the program), friends and neighbors living with their husbands and children in a California suburb.
As the show, which debuted last September, continues its first television season, Kentz and Kristensen have taken their comedy tour on the road in “The Mommies Live: It’s All in the Delivery.” The 14-city tour began in March, will stop in the Chicago area Thursday at the Centre East for the Arts in Skokie and end in Seattle in June.
During a stop in New York, the two said they enjoyed being back on the road doing their live show. While on tour they have been able to spend a week on the road and a week at home with their families.
During an earlier interview on the set at Paramount Studios in Los Angeles in the fictional kitchen of one of the homes, Kristensen and Kentz were laughing and joking like the very good friends they are.
The pair constantly interrupted each other, finished each other’s sentences and referred to shared and often parallel domestic circumstances.
Their senses of humor are so similar that they keep triggering each other into laughter, and their excitement over their recent good fortune was plain to see.
“We were housewives without a life,” Kentz said, “so we’re just having a good time on this adventure.”
Their mutual habit of enjoying the ridiculous in their own lives and the circumstances in which they found themselves drew the two together.
“We moved into a brand new housing development, and we were all meeting each other for the first time,” Kentz said.
Kristensen continued: “I was doing flowers for weddings then in my garage. One day I was in there with a bunch of friends doing my rendition of Solid Gold dancing, humping a cupboard or something, and Marilyn came in.”
“And I thought, there’s a woman after my own heart,” Kentz said, picking up the conversation. “I thought Solid Gold dancing was so pitiful! What were those choreographers thinking? What were they saying to those women? More humping? Hump harder?”
After that, the two kept meeting during the social round of neighbors’ parties, exchanging glances of alternate horror and amusement at suburban cliches and gradually becoming friends.
“We lived across from each other in the cul-de-sac, we both had small children and we used to sit out in lawn chairs and rip on our neighbors and on suburbia in general,” Kristensen said.
“And now I live in Encino, in a cul-de-sac again,” Kristensen said. “You can have a lot of fun in suburbia if you put your mind to it,” she said, smiling, “There’s a lot of culture out there. A lot of sponging, a lot of faux-finishing.”
Kentz, now 46, and Kristensen, now 32, have been friends for seven years.
“I know things about her that her own husband doesn’t know,” Kentz said.
So how has their friendship weathered the changes from suburban housewives to network stars?
“We haven’t fought. We have had arguments,” Kristensen said. “We’ve been on the road for three years, after all, and we’ve had days when we’re both tired, both missing our families, both PMSing and we’re both mad at our agents. But the key is not to let it fester. We’re grown people, we’ve had therapy, we know how to deal with this.”
Soon after the first acting classes Kristensen encouraged Kentz to move on to standup comedy.
“We rented the Petaluma Women’s Club for $50 dollars and charged $10 admission.”
From the very beginning their material was drawn from their lives and the lives of other suburban women.
They became a word-of-mouth phenomenon, although as Kristensen said, “we marketed ourselves like mad,” and soon they had a national tour.
Their success culminated in an appearance at the International Just For Laughs Comedy Festival in Montreal last August, where they found the three major U.S. networks bidding for them. Signing with NBC meant the women and their families had to move to Los Angeles, and the changes have been dramatic.
They are most troubled by the effect the changes have had on their children. Kentz has two step-children, Richard, 21, and Pfilipa, 23; a son Aaron, 20, “who is living with his girlfriend in their old house, and probably doing something criminal,” she said, and Marcy, 8.
Kristensen has two sons, Bryce, 11, and Eric, 8. The two youngest, Eric and Marcy, were fine until school started last year, their mothers said.
Kentz said the loneliness hit them, and they missed “their friends and their old, comfortable school.”
“It’s the most pain I’ve ever felt for my child,” Kristensen said.
Despite some of the initial problems, the women are delighted that the dramatic changes in their lives have worked out well for their husbands. Kentz’s husband, Richard, was in management at Goodyear, and right now, Kentz said, “I have him on so many shelf-building projects, you wouldn’t believe!”
Kristensen’s husband, Lennie, was an engineer but hated his job, she said. He’s now carrying out his dream, buying a house, ripping it apart and rebuilding it.
The women exchange a glance and a shrug. “It’s a guy thing.”
“The tables are really turned,” Kristensen said. “They’re (Lennie and Richard) calling each other all the time now, scheduling the kids for swimming lessons and car-pooling. Lennie was so cute the other night. He came up to me and said, `Thank you,’ and I said, `For what?’ “
Kentz broke in in astonishment: “Richard did exactly the same thing just yesterday!”
“Lennie was so used to being the one who worked,” Kritensen said. “He worked the most hours, did the 9-to-5, all our married life. He’s earned this. He deserves it.”
Their show evolved, they said, “to show women that they’re not alone.
“When you’re involved with kids and husbands and all that stuff, it’s easy to feel isolated because you don’t have a lot of time to hang out with your friends. That’s why women develop really close friendships with other women and neighbors if they can. They need that support of someone else saying. `You’re OK, you’re not the only one living this.’ “
After taping 24 episodes of “The Mommies,” the biggest change they have noticed is the emphasis of the show. It’s now an ensemble cast instead of “a show about two bitchy women,” Kristensen said.
Certainly their humor shocks some. Kentz recalled inviting one of her new neighbors to see the premiere of “Mommies” at her house, “and I could see they were really shocked. Well, I guess Marcy won’t be playing with their kids any more. Still, life isn’t fun enough if you can’t shock somebody.”
They are frustrated that the network has toned down the content of their original shows.
“They’ve diluted us into just another sitcom,” Kentz said. “They just don’t get it!”
But both said they were new to the medium when they started and compromised a lot.
“We’re more in the loop now,” Kentz said. “We’d like greater control, and we’d like to work on other projects.”
Born in Santa Rosa, Calif., Kentz was the oldest of three children in a conservative household. At Santa Rosa Junior College she studied art, protested the Vietnam war and ran off to a commune with her first husband, a musician.
Kristensen graduated from California State University-Chico and formerly was an art director in an advertising agency. She was raised in Fullerton, Calif., the ninth of 11 children in an Irish Catholic family. Both say their mothers have been a huge support, although in a way that has proved a mixed blessing.
“My mother tapes anything and everything I’m on,” said Kentz, “and then she forces anyone she can to watch it.”
Kristensen and Kentz believe they have an almost limitless source of material simple by holding the mirror up to their own lives.
“We did the doilies and the crochet, stenciling and lots of trim,” Kristensen said. “We are white bread and the PTA, but you have to be very clear about `you’ the person and `you’ the product.
“Take the way we look. It’s not about Marilyn and me being heavy or not, it’s about us identifying with other women. We don’t hide our flaws, they make us more credible.”
“We don’t think everything about us is acceptable!” Kentz exclaimed. “I have totally grey hair. I have hair extensions. We’re all Baby Jane’s at heart.”
Kristensen added: “People are who they are. And who you are becomes more exaggerated when you’re given fame, power or alcohol.”
At this remark Kentz squealed with delight: “You’re so profound, I can’t bear it.”
The two maintain that their chemistry is just right for the show and each other.
“We’re either the big American dream or the big American joke, huh?” Kristensen said, laughing.
