Former ‘Showgirl’ Crosses ‘Threshold’
The dramatic arc of this story would be better if the actress, having starred in a widely derided film that would for years be an easy Hollywood punchline, picked herself up and vowed, Scarlett O’Hara-like, never to go hungry, creatively speaking, again.
Instead, Elizabeth Berkley just went back to work.
“It really has been a great lesson,” she says. “Even though people knew me from ‘Saved by the Bell,’ after that movie it was really up to me to pave my own way.”
That movie, of course, is “Showgirls,” the legendarily savaged production that also was Berkley’s first major role in a feature film. Ten years removed, though, Berkley has forged a nice working actor’s career for herself, bouncing between stage, movie and TV work. Her latest role comes Tuesday (Nov. 22) on CBS’ first-year drama “Threshold.”
In the episode, she plays the trophy wife of an oil magnate who becomes infected with the alien DNA that the government team led by Molly Anne Caffrey (Carla Gugino) is trying to contain. Her character starts to behave rather strangely — and violently — but, Berkley notes, “she feels she has a purpose for the first time ever.”
“Her drive to spread [the alien DNA] is uncompromised,” the actress says from New York, where last week she was filming an episode of NBC’s “Law & Order: Criminal Intent.” “That’s her mission, and she’ll stop at nothing to do that, because of this passion and newfound thrill of actually having that purpose. Whether that means seduction, fighting — whatever it takes. So it was kind of fun to play the bad girl.”
The part also allowed her to do something she’s never done before: punch through a window. “It was fake glass, obviously, but I’ve never done a stunt like that in my life,” she says, adding with a laugh, “I’m not used to punching.”
Berkley has landed a number of guest roles on high-profile shows in recent years, including spots on “CSI” and “Without a Trace.” She says doing guest roles requires a somewhat different approach than longer-term work, but it boils down to respecting the fact that a show’s regular cast determines the tone on set.
That wasn’t an issue on “Threshold,” she says, partly because she and Gugino are friends outside of work and partly because the show’s cast and crew “are excited about what they’re doing, and you can feel that.”
“You can really feel the tone on set if people are creatively happy,” she says,” because then people don’t care about the hours. They just love the work. That’s what I felt here — people really cared about what they were doing.”
Berkley, whose recent work also includes turns on stage in “Sly Fox” and “Hurlyburly” and the well-received indie film “Roger Dodger,” says she doesn’t really know what’s up next for her. (She does mention that she’d love to work on FX’s “Nip/Tuck.”) But that’s okay — in fact, it’s part of the appeal of acting for her.
“I wouldn’t want to know exactly what the next thing is all the time,” she says. “The adventure is what moves me …
“I love what I do so much, and even with the highs and lows of the business, my love for what I do is my salvation, always. It’s always exciting that way.”
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