Pilot Veteran Is Happy to Land in ‘Wings’ : Television: Amy Yasbeck, who appears in ‘Mask’ and other movies, says she’s always wanted to do series TV.

Amy Yasbeck likes to play women with inquiring minds.

The red-headed comic actress, who plays an ambitious reporter in the blockbuster “The Mask,” will pose a lot of questions to TV sister Helen (Crystal Bernard) when she joins the cast of NBC’s “Wings” this fall.

“She wants to know everything,” Yasbeck, 31, says of Casey, Helen’s older, “perfect” sister, who’s been living elsewhere for many years. “She can’t believe that Helen’s still stuck in their hometown.”

What Yasbeck does believe, though, is that she finally has a TV series after nine years of active but unsuccessful pilot work (“Rockhopper” and “Splash,” to name a couple). In a statement uncharacteristic for an actress with film success, she declares: “I’ve always wanted to do a series.”

And yet right now, she’s flying high on the success of “The Mask.”

“I take such joy in being part of what I like to call a ‘historic comic movie,’ even though it’s all Jim (Carrey) and has nothing to do with me,” she says, enthusiastically leaning over the table in a small Santa Monica greasy spoon she says reminds her of places her family ate at on summer trips to Florida when she was a child.

“It was so fun, too. Jim was exhausted, coming right off of (“Ace Ventura”) ‘Pet Detective’--but exhausted for Jim Carrey is hyper for anyone else! When you’re talking to him in a scene, he can just lift an eyebrow or wiggle an ear or nostril, but does it with such flair, it’s just amazing.”

Carrey’s vast comic abilities made her funnier, offers the Cincinnati native, who got her start at age 6 as a model on the box for an Easy Bake Oven toy. “He’s just so perfect for comedy. It makes you want to go, ‘I’m funny too, watch this and this, ha, ha!’ ” exclaims Yasbeck, who easily drops into different accents and personas to make or emphasize a point.

“ ‘Mask’ is really the first big role where I look more like myself,” points out Yasbeck, whose roles in “Pretty Woman,” “Problem Child,” “Problem Child 2” and “Robin Hood: Men in Tights” found her either heavily made-up or costumed.

Thanks to the heavy cable play “Robin Hood” got in July, Yasbeck got quite a bit of recognition--from fans, which warmed her heart, and from the “Wings” producers, which warmed her career.

Executive producers Howard Gewirtz and Mark Reisman said that as they watched the film, they were struck by Yasbeck’s resemblance to Bernard. “But she made us laugh,” Gewirtz added. “We would’ve hired her without that strong a resemblance.”

He calls it serendipity that they look alike. “She’s a real find, very rare,” Gewirtz says. “A pretty, sexy and funny woman is a rare combination. We’re lucky to have two of them on one show.”

As Yasbeck describes it, the character of Casey (who turns up in the season’s second episode, on Sept. 27) has returned to Nantucket to congratulate her sister on her engagement to the wealthy Davis (Mark Harelik). But when Casey, whom Yasbeck deems a “classic passive-aggressive,” finds out that Helen might also have taken back up with Joe (Tim Daly), with whom they grew up, she’s incredulous. And there may be a love-hate attraction in the works between Casey and Brian (Steven Weber).

This works nicely because Yasbeck’s Casey can provide some romantic tension in the wake of the departure of Farrah Forke’s character, Alex, who was Brian’s girlfriend last season.

“We haven’t addressed the chemistry between Casey and Brian yet,” Gewirtz says coyly, “but we may be pointing in that direction.”

Regardless of where the character might be headed, Yasbeck is thrilled to be on the show. Now in her third week of filming, she says the first day was nerve-racking: “It was tough doing it and not being star-struck, since I’m a fan of the show! I had to do this slow decompression, so I didn’t get the bends. I didn’t want to blather, but I’m sure I did. But they seem to have forgiven me.”

Any other fears were put aside by the initial reaction to her character. “I don’t know how the TV-viewing audience will take Casey, but the studio audience was so nice. But then, they’re just so happy to be there. Just like me.”