NBC Steels Itself Against World Series

Danielle Steel likes to stay as close to her books as possible as they wend their way to the screen. But even though she may be a modern-day equivalent of Wonder Woman, she can’t do everything.

“Because I was moving my family, I saw no dailies on ‘Daddy,’ ” Steel said. “So when I saw the completed film, there was one scene that bothered me. I’d have caught it if I’d been watching.”

“Daddy” is based on Steel’s 1989 bestseller about a man whose wife deserts him to go back to college, leaving him to raise their three children. “Daddy” stars Patrick Duffy, Kate Mulgrew and Lynda Carter.

So what kind of horrible scene did the director slip in when Steel wasn’t looking?

“It’s the scene where the mother leaves the children forever,” Steel explained. “And it may not bother anyone else, but it drove me crazy. Why was the father standing 50 or 100 yards away when the children were crying? If my children were crying, I’d be standing there with my arms around them.”

“Daddy” is one of two Steel stories coming to television this week as NBC counters the World Series. “Palomino,” starring Lee Horsley and Lindsay Frost and based on Steel’s 1981 bestseller, airs Monday. “Daddy” airs Wednesday. This comes as Steel’s 40th book, “No Greater Love,” is about to reach bookstores.

Steel, 44, is raising nine children, five of them under 8 years old. She said she is an “overly protective mother” who organizes her life so that she can be with her children every waking minute of their day. Steel has a large support staff, but she is the one who drives three carpools, buys their clothes and wipes their tears away.

“As long as the phone isn’t pulled out (which happens sometimes when Steel is outlining a new book) and I’m alive and breathing, they want to consult me about every Rice Krispie they put in the bowl,” Steel said. “I’m looked on as the person who can decide. I tend to do everything myself.’

She even cleans up after her husband’s Vietnamese pot-bellied pet pig. “This pig is as adorable, sweet and loving as a dog, and she was housebroken in one day,” Steel said. “But she weighs 115 pounds. You can imagine what the litter box looks like. There I am shoveling hippopotamus poo. It lacks charm.”

Steel said she would never make the choice of the mother in “Daddy,” who felt it necessary to leave home to have a career. Steel herself took the Supermom approach, carving out work time out by convincing her body that it needed only a few hours of sleep.

“I work at night,” she said. “I start writing about 7:30 p.m. and go until 3 or 4 in the morning.”

Her third husband, financier John Traina, must deal with all this, including Steel writing in the bedroom. “He is amazingly patient,” she said. “He never gets mad or loses his temper. I don’t know how he stands it. He needs eight or nine hours of sleep a night, and before he married me he slept in a quiet room. Now he sleeps with the shuffling of papers and the banging of drawers.”

Steel got together with Traina eight years ago. Born into the Lowenbrau Brewery family (her maiden name was Schulein-Steel), she married a French-American banker when she was 17 and had one daughter. Her second marriage, to an alcohol and drug abuse counselor in 1977, produced one son. She and Traina, who has two children from a previous marriage, have five children together.

“I’ve thought seriously a couple of times about giving up writing, but I just keep pushing,” she said.

She would like to write the television adaptations of her books, but “I don’t know where I’d find time to do that in a week that includes only 30 hours of sleep.” Her deal for NBC’s movies of her novels allows her to edit and comment on all scripts.

“Douglas Cramer (executive producer) is always consulting me,” she said. “I know my milieu in publishing, but I hesitate to speak out about television. People tell me, ‘Shut up, go home, we know what we’re doing.’ ”

But Steel is accustomed to being in charge. How long will she continue to bite her tongue? If she had her way, “Daddy” and “Palomino” would not be airing opposite the World Series. “They’re categorizing them as women’s stuff,” she said, “but I have a lot of male fans. If they’d give me a normal, run-of-the-mill night, why, I could really break some ratings.”

“Palomino” airs Monday at 9 p.m. on NBC. “Daddy” airs Wednesday at 9 p.m. on NBC.