Charles Perez and sister Michele Dabney-Perez used to run around their Pompano Beach, Fla., neighborhood filming kids and neighbors for mock documentaries and movies.
“We probably drove them absolutely crazy,” Michele says now. Her brother adds that “we’ve always been connected that way.”
The pair are now connected on the same set of “American Journal,” the syndicated news magazine show entering its fifth season and seen weekdays in Chicago at 12:35 a.m. on WLS-Ch. 7.
Michele and Charles started anchoring the show earlier this month, in what has been trumpeted as the first brother-and-sisteranchor team on a news program.
But they’re not a brother-sister team “in the Donny and Marie (Osmond) sort of way,” Charles stresses. “We don’t plan on singing. And you don’t want us to.”
The two never performed as a singing duo, but they did have their movie camera. And as kids interviewing people in their neighborhood, they both “had an inclination toward communications,” says Michele, who at 33 is a year younger than her brother (“he always tries to lie,” claiming that she is older, Michele laughs).
Each took a different path in television, Michele working as a news reporter for stations in El Paso, Miami and New York, and Charles as a talk show producer for Montel Williams, Jane Pratt and Leeza Gibbons, before going on to host his own syndicated talk show, which he jokes “finished its run” (read: canceled) a few years ago.
It was on “The Charles Perez Show” that the two worked before the camera together for the first time, when Michele appeared as a correspondent/co-host. “Those went really well,” Charles says. Well enough to inspire the Perez siblings to make a demo tape of themselves hosting a show. They didn’t pursue it seriously then, partly because “the talk show genre at the time (between a year and a half and two years ago) was not very popular,” Michele says.
Meantime, Michele left New York’s WNBC, where she was a Los Angeles-based correspondent, last September to join “American Journal.” When show anchor Nancy Glass opted out, producers asked Michele if she wanted the job.
At the same time, producers were thinking of bringing in her brother as a reporter, and hit upon the idea of teaming the two. Michele went right to the pair’s demo videotape and history was made.
“It was kind of a little dream come true,” Michele says.
In sharing hosting duties on “American Journal,” each of the Perezes brings something different to the anchor desk. She’s a little bit Diane Sawyer, he’s a little bit Phil Donahue.
“Michele is a truth-seeker. That comes out of her journalistic history,” says Charles.
According to Michele, “Charlie will throw out his feelings about (a) story.” That’s something Michele won’t do, Charles says. He jokes there’s a part of him that “wants to pick up the mike and walk around the set,” but “that would probably drive my sister crazy.”
Both remember an early rehearsal as they geared up to host “American Journal.” At the end of one mock report Charles asked Michele how she felt about the piece’s content.
“She just glared at me,” Charles laughs. Michele says the question caught her off guard, but she managed to regain her composure and continued with some generic comment. She says the two had a little chat about the incident afterwards.
That sibling give-and-take is what will set them apart, Charles says. “That’s what we do. And sometimes she kicks me under the anchor desk. I’ll wear shin guards.”
– Where’s the remote: Tuesday at 7 p.m., WGN-Ch. 9 reruns the two-hour premiere of “NightMan,” a tired syndicated superhero series with overly buffed, overly wooden Matt McColm as a saxophone player who can sense evil thoughts in others but still needs to fight crime in a supersuit–complete with anti-gravity belt, a “stealth cape” (which makes the wearer invisible) and a mask designed to allow his long hair to flow in the breeze.
– ABC is giving viewers double doses of “Home Improvement” on Tuesdays, with a repeat at 7 p.m. and a fresh episode at 8 p.m. (on WLS-Ch. 7), because the new comedy “Over the Top” ran into some creative snafus. Starring Tim Curry and Annie Potts as an overwrought actor and his ex-wife, it may debut Oct. 21.
– The careers of pro football stars Troy Aikman, John Elway, Brett Favre and Marcus Allen, along with New York Jets receiver Wayne Chrebet, are examined, thanks in part to home footage belonging to family and friends, in “Before They Were Pros,” a new TNT 90-minute special produced with NFL Films that airs Tuesday at 7 p.m.
