The Show’s in Fashion

Though she’s the star of one of television’s hottest comedy series, Laura San Giacomo can still have an iced coffee at a cafe in anonymity.

San Giacomo, who plays the acerbic writer Maya Gallo on NBC’s sassy, sophisticated sitcom, “Just Shoot Me,” doesn’t even seem to cause a ripple of recognition when she walks into Lulu’s Beehive in Studio City on a recent hot and smoggy afternoon.

Of course, San Giacomo isn’t into star turns. In fact, her dark-rimmed glasses, unruly hair, minimal makeup and casual skirt and sweater help her blend in with the rest of the patrons of the neighborhood coffeehouse.

San Giacomo, who came to fame nine years ago in Steven Soderbergh’s award-winning “sex, lies & videotape,” acknowledges that these days a few more people are approaching her to talk about “Just Shoot Me.”

“It’s a little bit more than usual, but not like a whole lot,” the actress says, lighting up a cigarette.

In fact, she adds, “I had no idea that the show was doing so well. Since we stopped work [last spring], I haven’t been keeping up with the numbers or any of that stuff. Slowly, I would start hearing from people about the ratings.”

Just as with ‘Cheers” and “Seinfeld,” “Just Shoot Me” has slowly built an appreciative audience. The comedy debuted with a six-episode tryout in the spring of 1997 in a less-than-cushy Wednesday time slot. Last fall, NBC awarded the series the time slot after “Frasier” on Tuesdays, then moved it to Thursdays after “Friends.” It finished No. 12 for the season with an average weekly audience of 17 million.

This summer, “Just Shoot Me” has been besting repeats of “Seinfeld” in the 9:30 p.m. Thursday slot. “I think the audience is really finding us,” says Steve Levitan, the show’s creator and executive producer. “That momentum will help us” come fall, when the series takes over “Frasier’s” old berth on Tuesdays at 9 p.m.

“Just Shoot Me,” which is set in the offices of a fluffy Manhattan women’s magazine called Blush--think of a dumbed-down Cosmopolitan--also stars George Segal as Maya’s much-married father and Blush’s publisher; Wendie Malick as the hedonistic beauty and fashion editor; David Spade as Segal’s wisecracking assistant; and Enrico Colantoni as the mag’s womanizing photographer.

“We’re not an ‘add water and it’s instant comedy’ cast,” says San Giacomo, 35. “Everybody in their own right has done really funny stuff and it all blends together nicely.”

Born in West Orange, N.J., San Giacomo graduated from Pittsburgh’s Carnegie-Mellon University. “I went to New York and I was there for five years. I did a lot of theater--first just readings and then I did regional theater. Then I slowly started getting more and more theater in New York. It was a nice progression.”

She went on to appear in the films “Quigley Down Under,” “Suicide Kings” and “Under Suspicion,” and didn’t pursue series television before “Just Shoot Me.”

“I didn’t want to commit to something for that long,” she explains, glancing at the patrons walking into the cafe. “I didn’t want to play a character for that long. I liked more of a vagabond kind of lifestyle. I didn’t want to work that fast; I thought television was really fast.”

But the more low-budget independent features she did, “I realized there wasn’t that much difference.” Plus, San Giacomo became more open to series’ work after the birth of her son Mason, who is almost 3.

Doing the series, she says, “has been really good for my son and I to be in one place and know that I will be there and that I have some sort of schedule. I can count on certain times when I can see him.”

Mason occasionally drops by the set to visit. “But I’m on my feet all day,” she says. “I really can’t see him. So when he comes, he comes for like an hour and a half one day and sometimes comes to dinner. He likes to roam. He likes to check out all the lights. He loves George’s office--the couch, the table.”

But he’s a little too young to be a fan of the show. “He will watch the show until everyone makes their entrance,” San Giacomo says, laughing. “Then it’s like, ‘Get this off. This is not ‘Barney.’ I only watch ‘Barney.’ Whatever this is, I don’t want to watch it.’ ”

Her initial qualms about doing a series have long since subsided. “I am so totally enjoying it,” she says. “The assumptions that I would have made about Maya have been broken by different plot points and different episodes.”

San Giacomo hasn’t given up on films. She’s awaiting distribution for “With Friends Like These,” an independent feature she made last summer. But she ended up taking this summer off. “[Doing a movie] didn’t work out with my schedule. Some jobs that I really liked I didn’t get. I got offered some jobs that didn’t work out with what I wanted to do for the summer.”

She feels that after a season and a half she’s finally finding the groove of doing a sitcom. “I just recently watched one of the [first] six episodes and I kept going, ‘Whoa. Calm down, Laura. Hold back a little bit there.’ I haven’t seen any of this year’s in a while, so I would like to see one to see if I have relaxed into it. I think it’s relaxing into the style and the certain quality of energy it requires.”

Levitan says that San Giacomo grounds the show “in a lot of ways. You really believe that Maya is a real person and not some flighty sitcom creation.”

She is pleased viewers are responding to Maya. “Someone brought up that they really liked Maya as a role model for their daughter,” she says. “I hope so, because the thing I really like about how the writers deal with Maya is that they let her have this really strong stand about something and then let her learn about it through experience.”

“Just Shoot Me” airs Thursdays at 9:30 p.m. on NBC.