The script calls for a woman who's zany. Or daffy. Or quirky. Above all, lovable. And very, very funny. TV producers know just who to cast. When they need a charming space cadet who can bring an audience to its knees laughing, they call Carol Kane.
Not bad, considering that 11 years ago Kane approached the producers of ABC's Taxi for a role because she liked the series so much, she wasn't known for her comic talents. Most of her work has been as a serious actress cast in soulful character roles in such films as "The Last Detail," "Carnal Knowledge" and "Hester Street," for which she was nominated for an Oscar.
Kane's television debut on Taxi, protraying Simka, the saucer-eyed innocent who married Andy Kaufman's Latka Gravas, was so successful that she walked away with two Emmys, and she's been regarded as a comediennne ever since. She followed up Simka with the role of Nicolette Bingham, a wacky, romantic Southern belle, in NBC's short-lived All Is Forgiven.
And now in NBC's American Dreamer (Saturdays at 10:30 P.M. [ET], the actress portrays Lillian Abernathy, the delightfully neurotic assistant to Robert Urich's newspaper columnist, Tom Nash. An over-reaching, underachiever with a squeaky, little-girl voice, Lillian wants only to please her boss and make her mark in "journalism". It's Urich's sitcom, but for some viewers, Kane steals the show. Urich admits, "She's able to take any line that looks pretty much straight-ahead to me, and she'll read it and she's just funny. There's some special gift she has."
But if Kane can be so funny, how come she's so serious in person? Life is complicated." she replies with classic understatement. Arriving for an interview at her favorite Chinese restaurant in West L.A., she looks funky, wearing a 1940;s print dress and shiny black combat boots with socks. An unusual mass of hair frames her face, unembelished by makeup. This isn't cute funky, but honest funky, not a look-of-the-week but a deeper kind of statement; a need to reflect the inner soul.
Although her characters may be daffy, Kane is serious, intense, introspective. The 38 year old actress has been in and out of psychotherapy since she was 14, shortly after her parents divorced. A self-described square peg who once would talk openly about her propensity for attracting difficult men, Kane, never married, now is close-mouthed about her personal life. "It's nobody's business." she says when asked. She does reluctantly acknowldege that she is back in therapy at the moment, and credits it with helping her to become more accepting of herself, less obsessed with work.
For years she wasn't comfortable with her idiosyncracies, at one point even going so far as to radically alter her fragile, wide-eyed Renaissance-waif look. She cut her hair and straightened it, began wearing makeup and dressed for success. "I was trying to fit in," she says. "But I ran into Bette Midler once in a beauty shop, and she said, 'Why wouldn't you just be proud of whatever is special about you? I thought: here's a novel idea."
Her offbeat American Dreamer character is definitely one of a kind. But asked to psychoanalyze Lillian, Kane hedges, "Lillian is only me, and I'm only Lillian." The show's executive producer, Gary David Goldberg, agrees that the character owes much to Kane. "I think it would be a much more linear, straight-line role in anyone else's hands. What you see is really Carol and wha she brings to it. She gives everything when she goes out there."
James Brooks, who gave Kane a chance on Taxi and has remained a close friend, can attest to the actresses's commitment to her work. "She gives her soul when she goes in for a ward-robe fitting, let alone when she's acting." Such intensity can make for some tense moments on the set, though. Brooks recalls the first time he worked with her on Taxi. "You should never talk to an actress about her hair. I did- and she murdered me."
On the set of American Dreamer so far, no such nightmares have occured. The nutty chemisty between Urich and Kane seems to appeal to viewers. The show has been winning its time slot regularly, and Urich gives his costar much of the credit. "[Carol] is the biggest cheerleader I've ever worked with." he says. "She wants the work to be good. While I'm doing a scene and she's not it it, I'll look over and she's sitting there watching."
What he sees is the serious actress who's making this comedy click. END
Elaine Warren is a staff writer in TV Guide's Hollywood bureau.

The article is accompanied by a small color photo of carol with her chin on her left hand, looking wistfully at the camera; a small color photo of Robert Urich and Carol Kane talking at a table- Left: Some say Kane steals the show as Robert Urich's daffy assistant Lillian on American Dreamer; A small color photo of Carol holding Andy Kaufman's hand- Right: Kane with Andy Kaufman on Taxi.