PRESS ARCHIVE
Good Morning America: Ally McBeal Reunion - Part 1

Host: Ally McBeal, the quirky show about a young single woman working at a eccentric law firm in Boston. Well for the first time, the entire Emmy winning series is out on DVD. So we brought the cast back together for a reunion and none other than Tom Bergeron caught up with Calista Flockhart who played Ally as you know, along with the shows fabulous creator David E Kelley. Also on hand here in Los Angeles, other important members of the cast: Courtney Thorne Smith, Peter MacNicol, Greg Germann, Lisa Nicole Carson, Vonda Shepard, and Jane Krakowski joins in the fun from here in New York.

Voice Over: Ally McBeal hit close to home for many single career women searching for love , dreaming of motherhood, while toying with an overactive imagination.
Ally, played by Calista Flockhart, worked at a law firm with ex-boyfriend Billy. It was frequently awkward since Bily married, not Ally, but Georgia. The quirky, comedic drama took us all the way from the court room, to that famous unisex bathroom. With a complicated character who made Time magazine famously ask "Is Feminism Dead?". Now 7 years after the series wrapped, the original cast is back for their very first reunion ever.

Host: You haven't seen each other for a while and you're all having this kind of emotional reunion kind of thing.

David E Kelley: It is a little surreal I think, we;re seeing each other, a lot of us, for the first time in many years. Fortunately we have happy memories, so it's a fun occasion.

Host: Now, Calista, do you find that you immediately are drawn to some more than others?

Calista: No, you know, I have an affection for every single one of them. I don't think that I'm more drawn to ....well maybe I am more drawn to Peter.

Courtney: I was just excited to see everybody, and I didn't have any contact information. The first thing I did was get everybody's numbers. They're such funny, fun interesting people, that they were a ball.

Host: Why do you think that people responded to Ally that much?

Calista: She was searching for her soul mate and she was passionate about that search and I think that is the plight of a lot of young women. You know, they want to be career women, but they wanna have a family, they wanna find they love and they wanna have babies and how do you kind of do all that in this crazy world that we live in

Host: That dancing baby, I would imagine, represented things she yearned for?

Calista: I think it was her biological clock. It was representative of that tick. I thought. But I might have gotten it wrong.

Host: For you and Gil, you had to devote a relationship than had spanned a life time, so I would imagine that of everybody, that was probably the most difficult dynamic to get to, or was it? Was instant chemistry there, or did you loathe each other?

Calista: Well I didn't loathe him, but I can't speak for Gil.

Gil: Well I didn't loathe her either, in fact, I knew Calista a little bit in New York and liked her very much and it just felt really easy.

Calista: Whenever I did watch an episode, I always would say 'My God, I actually really believe we love each other, that's so weird'. But it's sort of true, it sort of worked.

Courney: It was hard to play for 3 years, the married woman. Because I feel like the audience really sort of wanted Ally and Billy to end up together and it was hard to know that. It was like I always sort of felt that, I felt that in my life because you play it day after day after day. The sort of unwanted wife. Ow God it's all coming back.

Host: There's nothing better than two women knocked out.

Calista: At least we had out lipstick on.

Host: Jane, is it true that you actually took the face bra home at the end of the series?

Jane: I did take a face bra home. I'm probably gonna get in trouble now with David Kelley. I think everyone was allowed to take something off of the set when the series ended.

Cast: No! (Calista: she stole it!)

Host: You were the least eccentric.

Lisa: Well that's a testimony to what a good actress I am

Host: Because you're the most eccentric in real....ok, there you go

Host: Vonda, how did you music come to play such an important role in the show?

Vonda: I was doing a gig in LA and my friend David came down, you know, to see me play and the songs I think resonated with what he was formulating at the time which was this show about lawyers, Ally McBeal.

Jane: You know, the show changed all of our lives. There's no other way to say it.We became known around the world for that show. Days that were magical were either days where many of us were in the unisex bathroom or to the club that was fictionally downstairs from our office.

Host: You convince yourself that every project is wonderful and special and only in hindsight realize that sometimes you are right and sometimes you were wrong.

Calista: I think you know when things are really crappy, right from the very beginning.

Greg: I remember thinking this was, I love the actors and the writing was so great, so I was certain that were were doomed. It's usually the things that you love so deeply that don't get a chance to do, so it was such a gift that we got a chance to run with it.

Host: Does it get a little uncomfortable though as a series goes along and you see new characters being added. Does it make you kind of want to mark your territory a little bit more?

Greg: I'm the only one who actually did mark my territory. No it was great to have all those just fantastic people coming in.

Peter: I was in a war of egos with Barry White, I let him know where things stood.

Peter: It doesn't go on too long.
Date of this item added :
2009-12-09