![]() ![]() Instead, at the suggestion of her hairstylist, Walter dyed her hair red. “There were absolutely times where I was on Zillow looking up houses in Stone Mountain, Georgia, and thinking, ‘Oh, I can move there and I can still work occasionally,’” she says. And when it became harder to make ends meet with guest roles, she co-created a reality format, “Dance Your Ass Off.” Walter landed memorable roles in the films “The Parent Trap” and “Shall We Dance,” along with a steady gig of TV guest slots. The formula is hard, after all: “The right project, the right writer, if the people in charge at the studios listen to you - which in those days, it turns out they did not often listen to women,” she says. And then… the show only lasted a season.īut Walter tells me she was not deterred. Walter would soon become the next big sitcom star. But this was the one that was going to be a hit, inspired heavily by her own routine as the working mother aiming to “have it all.”ĪBC promoted the hell out of “Life’s Work,” comparing Walter to its established roster of superstar comedians fronting their own half-hours, including Roseanne Barr, Ellen DeGeneres, Brett Butler and Tim Allen. She had already starred in a short-lived comedy for Fox, a midseason entry that didn’t get much attention. One of those sitcoms was ABC’s “Life’s Work,” starring a promising, brash, hysterical comic named, you guessed it, Lisa Ann Walter. ![]() In those hopeful months before September premieres, anyone has the chance to break out and go the distance. That first TCA was a boot camp in learning how new TV shows are launched, and I still vividly remember that freshman crop of fall 1996 series. (And lying to network execs by telling them I was 25 - apparently, I thought that made me sound seasoned?) I was a young 22-year-old kid suddenly thrust into reporting at events like the Television Critics Association press tour, where nearly everyone else around me was a crusty newspaper journo twice my age. When I arrived in Los Angeles and first started covering television, it was summer 1996. And actually, as someone who has been covering the TV business for a few decades, I’ve been waiting for Lisa Ann Walter to have this moment as well. “ Abbott Elementary” star Lisa Ann Walter has been ready for this moment. ![]()
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