Jaime Pressly is in a panic.
The actress’ first ready-to-wear collection is set to debut in 30 minutes, but three models are missing, her own hair and makeup aren’t done, and her Maltipoo puppy is whimpering from all the chaos backstage at Smashbox Studios in Culver City, Calif.
Pressly, a veteran of B-movie fare such as “Torque,” “Cruel World,” “Not Another Teen Movie” and “Joe Dirt,” can be heard yelling for the models above the din in the cavernous tent.
Had this been the trailer for one of her movies, the next scene would likely feature either a deranged man with a knife, a bumbling goon or a white trash family, and inevitably, Pressly as the scantily clad eye candy–cheerleader, college girl or victim.
Yet this story unfolds as predictably: Models finally rush backstage for new makeup and hair, and Pressly, with a show-must-go-on determination, plops into a makeup chair.
“You know what? I enjoy it, and I have the most amazing team of girls,” she says.
Pressly says she’s very lucky. Yes, she always wanted to be an actress first, but she also wanted to be a designer. And now she gets to be a designing actress.
Oh, and after years toiling in unfulfilling roles that revealed only her body, the 28-year-old is now showing off her comic acting chops.
Pressly hopes her two latest roles–as fashion designer and the scheming ex-wife of the title character in NBC’s hit sitcom “My Name Is Earl”–will sustain her.
“I guess everything is timing,” Pressly says. “And now the timing is right.”
On the runways, she switched this year from lingerie lines to casual sportswear under the label J’aime by Jaime Pressly.
On “Earl,” her sassy, trashy Joy has won over critics and audiences. Pressly’s not a redneck, but she plays one pretty convincingly on TV.
The native of Kinston, N.C., brings a kind of Southern candor to her roles as fashion designer and trailer trashy actress. Her body-conscious sportswear might wear well on Pressly–or Joy, for that matter–whose body is toned to perfection by 11 years of gymnastics training and rigorous workouts.
In between working 12 hours a day, five days a week on “Earl,” Pressly refines her clothing ideas with Jenny Pyle and Jacqueline Dadon, her “collaborative designers.” Pressly says she doesn’t sketch very well, so others refine her ideas.
Pressly’s made her share of fashion first-timer’s mistakes just as she’s made poor choices in movies, but a girl’s gotta pay the mortgage.
Unlike Jennifer Lopez, Gwen Stefani and Beyonce, Pressly isn’t capitalizing on a well-burnished fashion image–or any image at all–to create her line. Still, that position leaves her with a credibility problem. She’s fielding criticism that she’s just the face and name for a collection, or that her fashion work is somehow a publicity stunt.
“I think it’s difficult transitioning to anything,” she says. “If you’re a musician who decides you want to act as well, people are going to have something to say.
“The truth is, back in the day, everybody had to be a triple threat. They had to sing, dance and act. All of sudden, they criticize people who do that now. I think if you can do all three, why wouldn’t you? It’s more entertaining. I’d rather do that than be somebody just standing there looking pretty.”
– – –
HER NAME IS JOY
Jaime Pressly thinks it’s about time people are noticing she can act.
“It’s really nice to get noticed for something besides my DNA,” Pressly told the New York Daily News. In NBC’s “My Name Is Earl,” she plays Earl’s conniving ex-wife, Joy, who is obsessed with the lottery winnings Earl won early in the season.
The actress says her take on the trashy loudmouth Joy comes from her own North Carolina upbringing.
“I’m definitely a redneck inside,” she told Scripps Howard News Service. “I like to rig things. I love beer.”
Some of Joy’s–no, Pressly’s–best moments this season:
– Joy finds an old video will Earl made when they were married in which he left everything to her, so she tries to kill him with a bow and arrow.
– Joy entered a mother-daughter beauty pageant with her dead mom’s remains, which actually were cigarette ashes.
– When she and Earl slept together before her wedding to Crab Man, she told Crab Man that Earl had slept with his mother. This episode repeats at 8:30 p.m. Tuesday.
– Joy tried to make money to spring Earl’s car from the pound by recycling a highway guardrail. She was trying to get the car so she could take the money Earl had left inside.
[ redeye ]
