‘Liz’ Producer Defends Merits of Miniseries

For one thing, Elizabeth Taylor can’t stand being called “Liz.”

So that’s just starters for why the actress is so enraged about “Liz: The Elizabeth Taylor Story,” this weekend’s NBC miniseries based on C. David Heymann’s unauthorized biography of the same despised three-letter name.

“That’s the whole point,” says producer Lester Persky. “It’s a very clear expression early on [in the miniseries] when a young director calls the young Elizabeth Taylor ‘Liz,’ and she says, ‘Elizabeth! I don’t like the name Liz.’ That’s the point of it. It’s something she objected to--her battle against conceptions of her.”

So maybe Persky understands Taylor’s battle to maintain her image. But that doesn’t mean he’s about to surrender to her.

“I think that there are many aspects of Elizabeth Taylor, and an actress will play her interpretation,” he says. “It’s no different from playing Mary Queen of Scots. Whether the person is alive or dead doesn’t influence the performance, which is its own entity.”

Sherilyn Fenn’s conception hasn’t been seen by critics; NBC isn’t providing review tapes. But the actress, best known as voluptuous high schooler Audrey in TV’s “Twin Peaks,” admits she felt overwhelmed at finding herself in the middle of the Taylor-bio cyclone.

“It’s one thing to play a character that’s fictitious. It’s quite another to play somebody that is alive and well and fighting [to stop the film]. But I’ve always been drawn to challenges. And I just think she’s an amazing woman and an amazing character.”

Persky insists that “this is not some exploration of all of the vicissitudes of Elizabeth Taylor’s love life.” But that’s the way many critics have viewed the tell-all book by Heymann, which luridly relates details about physically abusive lovers (and their anatomical attributes), Taylor’s “hypochondria,” her voracious pill-taking and drinking, and many catty descriptions of the actress by colleagues who saw her as spoiled, self-centered and manipulative.

* “Liz: The Elizabeth Taylor Story” airs Sunday and Monday at 9 p.m. on NBC.