Trying to Improve ‘Almost Perfect’

It’s a good thing they called it “Almost Perfect.”

As the CBS sitcom prepares for its second season, the show’s original premise--how an ambitious career woman balances the pressures of a full-time job and a full-time boyfriend--has been ditched.

Gone is the boyfriend, played by Kevin Kilner. In is a new, more comedy-friendly premise: how an ambitious career woman balances the pressure of job and personal life when in fact she has no personal life.

“It still feels like the same show to me, but these changes definitely open things. Definitely for me,” said Nancy Travis, the movie-actress-turned-TV-star who plays the show’s main character. “I can now date a lot of good-looking guys. But the writers were having trouble trying to mix the two worlds--the work life and the home life--and this gives us all a chance to take more risks with the character.”

Travis and her producers insist that the show basically is still about the same thing: a woman, in this case the boss of a television police drama, trying to have it all. Now she just has farther to go.

“The real strength of the show has always been Nancy,” said Robin Schiff, the creator and executive producer of the series. “She is an extremely funny, strong character, and now she’ll be able to do different things, from dealing with the guys at work, to dating, to having a girlfriend. We found that it was hard integrating the central relationship into a story that was centered on work.”

By dumping the boyfriend, “Almost Perfect” probably will be in a better position to tap into a big natural audience: Men who view Travis as much more than almost perfect.

“Someone said to me just the other night that personally he is glad that I’m going to be single on the show,” said Travis, 34. She fires off her machine-gun, infectious laugh at the suggestion that he probably meant he would prefer that she was single in real life as well. She has been married to movie executive Rob Fried for two years.

“Right,” she chipped in. “And the next best thing is my character being single on the show. Whatever.”

“Nancy really does remind me of an old-fashioned great broad. Sort of like Rosalind Russell,” Schiff said. “She’s unapologetically driven, yet not afraid to show the flaws that make her funny and relatable. A lot of women see something of themselves in her that you want to laugh at. That obsessive, got to have it all, got to work out, got to succeed, got to have a relationship. Yet she is the idealized version because she is so attractive and sexy. And for men, I get calls from guys all the time, guys in the business that I know, who ask me if she is still married. She just looks like she’d be a lot of fun.”

Travis resists the tag “sultry sex symbol” or even “goofy sex symbol.” She claims that, in her early acting days, she often was rejected because she wasn’t attractive enough. But when challenged to name even one part she lost for lack of beauty, she can’t.

“OK. That may have been before I was so naturally California blond, before I knew the secrets of Lancome,” the ex-New Yorker joked in a silly suave accent. “I’m happy and flattered that people find me desirable, but the best compliment to me is, ‘Nancy Travis, she’s a really good actress.’ Not, ‘Oh, she’s a babe,’ or even that ‘She opens a movie.’ ”

Once, not that long ago, Travis was in the movie game. She did, among other films, “Three Men and a Baby,” “Internal Affairs,” “Chaplin” and a well-received turn as Mike Myers’ foil in “So I Married an Axe Murderer.” Although she worked steadily, the roles available to her were always the same, always the girlfriend.

“Look at the movies they make,” Schiff said. “Of the tiny percentage with a female lead, they aren’t making ‘His Girl Friday’ or ‘Adam’s Rib.’ You have Meg Ryan and Sandra Bullock movies, which is great, but they have more of a little-girl, gamin quality rather than a brashly intelligent, ambitious woman. These days, there is just more going on for women in television, especially if you want to do comedy.”

“I wasn’t going to do television,” Travis said. “I had a snooty attitude about it, but at the same time I found myself stuck, being offered the same parts, being stereotyped, not being challenged and not getting to do comedy, which I always loved. Look at the movies that are out this summer. What is there for women? There’s ‘Striptease.’ That’s not exactly ‘Out of Africa.’ ”

Travis wishes it were different, but she understands that the major studios, owned by huge corporations, demand big returns on their big investments, and those tend to come from male action stars or special effects wizardry, not from funny relationship movies.

“I’m not here to make any grand feminist pronouncements or be anybody’s role model,” Travis said. “In fact, I love the fact that, though Kim Cooper is successful, she’s human and she messes up and does dopey things all the time. But the idea of ‘Striptease,’ that for a woman to make a big salary comparable to men, that is what she has to do. That it comes down to how much skin will you show. That definitely bothers me.

“But I suppose it’s been like that from the beginning of time. You had the Ziegfeld Follies and dancing girls. It’s a societal thing. What do we look for from women? Well, ‘Baywatch.’ I’m personally not drawn to watch it, or be in it. I’m lucky that while the movies mostly ignore them, network television is aiming for smart, funny women. But I better shut up, because if my show gets canceled, you never know where I might have to audition.”

Nor has she given up on acting in the movies.

“Does this big TV exposure make me more bankable? Oy oy oy,” moaned Travis, explaining that when she went into a public bathroom just before this interview, a woman there asked her if she was Kyra Sedgwick, the movie actress.

“I’d like to think it’s true, but who knows? There really are no rules, because everyone in this business makes them up as they go. But I’m not that ruthlessly calculating. I genuinely love doing this comedy. What’s funny to me is Laurel and Hardy and Lucy. That very physical work. It’s not so much a wry line that makes me laugh, but a face or something. Here, finally, I get to do it so often that I have trouble actually doing it sometimes because I’m there laughing as I’m executing it.”

“Executing it” could very well be a more appropriate phrase than Travis would like. After surviving its first season with lackluster ratings, “Almost Perfect” is cursed this fall to be scheduled on Wednesdays at 9 p.m. against “Grace Under Fire” on ABC, “NewsRadio” on NBC, “Party of Five” on Fox and “Star Trek: Voyager” on UPN.

“So what are you saying, we’re going to have to do more than just get rid of the boyfriend?” Travis quipped. “It’s just such a lucky thing to be on TV; to stay on the air is amazing enough to me. So when they say, ‘Get rid of this guy,’ you go, ‘OK, OK.’ And when they come back and say, ‘Make it a show about Miami,’ you say, ‘OK. OK. Just keep sending the checks.’

“Oh, man this is making me ill. If I think too much about ratings and time slots and all that, I just want to put a gun to my head. But you know, if ‘Almost Perfect’ doesn’t work out, maybe I have opportunities I never even dreamed of. Maybe someone will accidentally give me one or two parts meant for Kyra Sedgwick. Or I can play her sister. That might be better than just being the girlfriend.”