Hollywood Dream Snowballs for ‘Dinner’ Star Teri Hatcher

Fairy tales still come true.

Especially for Teri Hatcher, who stars in Norman Lear’s new CBS sitcom “Sunday Dinner,” premiering, aptly, Sunday, and is featured in the just-out movie “Soapdish.”

Seven years ago, Hatcher was a college student living in the Bay Area. Fate stepped in when a friend dragged her to a nationwide talent search. The ABC series “The Love Boat” was spanning the globe for “The Love Boat Mermaids,” a group of dancers who would appear weekly on the show.

Hatcher got the job. “I had never been to Los Angeles actually, except to go to Disneyland maybe once or twice. I moved down here without an agent. I never even heard of an agent. Originally, I thought, ‘I can do this for a year and then go back to school.’ ”

That didn’t happen. “I got down here and the harder I worked, the better I got and the harder I wanted to work. It just kind of snowballed. And here I am.”

In “Sunday Dinner,” Hatcher plays an environmental attorney who is engaged to a widower (Robert Loggia) and who frequently chats with God, whom she calls “Chief.”

The series has drawn the wrath of the Rev. Donald Wildmon of the conservative American Family Assn.

“If you have seen it, you’d certainly say it isn’t for or against any religion or denomination,” Hatcher says. “It’s more about questioning the spirituality within yourself.”

“Sunday Dinner” was a welcome change of pace for Hatcher. “So much of the time, I end up playing the real sexy bombshell bimbo. So it was a wonderful feeling to bring a more fuller sense of myself to a character.”

She does plays a “real sexy bombshell bimbo” in “Soapdish,” a comedy about the daytime soap-opera world. “This character doesn’t feel exploitative to me because it’s within such a funny piece of work,” Hatcher says. “It’s a purposeful choice to make fun of that kind of person, rather than being some bimbo in some cheesy movie.”