Coming of Age in a Comedy

Actors Robert Richard and Meagan Good looked every bit the part of junior executives in smart pinstriped suits as they waited for rookie director Shaquille O’Neal to start shooting a business-meeting scene for the upcoming Nickelodeon series “Cousin Skeeter.” But like most 16-year-olds, they were soon fidgeting, exchanging whispers and dancing off-camera.

“Skeeter” premieres Tuesday in Nick’s expanded block of original prime-time children’s programming. And because it’s so important for any TV series to have compelling, interesting characters, the cable network’s executives put their urban-flavored coming-of-age sitcom in the hands of two attractive and likable youngsters--who also happen to be accomplished actors.

The filmed, single-camera comedy is about shy, adolescent Bobby, his neighbor Nina, and the title puppet, exuberantly voiced by “MTV Jams” host Bill Bellamy. The “Alf”-like Skeeter is a big talker who incorrigibly drops names and hatches grandiose schemes guaranteed to get the kids into trouble. Amazingly, the celebrities whose names he drops usually show up, and the schemes always work out for the best.

“Bobby allows Skeeter to get him into fixes,” Richard explained, “but Skeeter always comes through, so that’s cool.”

Executive producer Mike Tollin said the show was actually built around Richard, a disarmingly bright Los Angeles native and a junior in one of the city’s public high schools who first took acting lessons as a way to spend Saturday afternoons.

He was spotted in late 1995 at an audition by Tollin and Brian Robbins, heads of kid-friendly Tollin Robbins Productions and creators of the Nick series “All That” and “Kenan & Kel,” and the feature spinoff from those two shows, “Good Burger.” At the time they were seeking a good actor and basketball player for “Nickelodeon’s Sports Theater.”

Richard, whose father, Andrew, owns a tenant services business, and whose mother, Beverly, is a court reporter, starred in two of the hourlong sports specials. Then he went on to earn a Daytime Emmy for best performance in a children’s special for last year’s two-hour Showtime movie “In His Father’s Shoes.” He played an adolescent who deals with the death of his father (Louis Gossett Jr.), while gaining a mystical insight into the racial tensions of the older man’s generation.

“Robert is a young Denzel Washington in the making; he’s so handsome and so commanding,” Tollin said. “He’s a genuine, likable boy-next-door type of kid.”

“Skeeter” co-star Good is a Granada Hills native who grew up in Santa Clarita with mother Tyra Doyle, who works as her manager, and father Leon, an LAPD officer. She’s been in commercials and cast in small TV parts since she was 4 years old, but her breakthrough came in last year’s critically acclaimed independent feature “Eve’s Bayou,” in which she played the spirited adolescent whose affectionate encounter with her father (Samuel L. Jackson) is misinterpreted, precipitating a family tragedy.

Viewers will see quite a different character in Nina.

“I wasn’t used to comedy at first, but it’s been fun,” the effervescent young actress said. “Actually, it wasn’t a hard transition.”

The youngster’s screen presence impresses “Eve’s” writer-director Kasi Lemmons.

“Meagan is so beautiful and fragile . . . she has a Marilyn Monroe [quality] there,” Lemmons said. “Marilyn was very, very sexy and very beautiful, and so is Meagan. She will be marvelous doing comedy.”

“Skeeter” has that aplenty, with a slapstick sensibility applied by co-creator Phil Beauman, a writer on both the whacky Fox series “In Living Color” and the politically incorrect 1996 Miramax comedy feature “Don’t Be a Menace to South Central While Drinking Your Juice in the Hood.”

Moreover, two stand-up comics--rubbery-faced Rondell Sheridan and former model Angela Means--were cast as Bobby’s parents. Series guest-stars range from hip-hop artist Usher and rap performers Monica and MC Lyte to long-toothed TV stars Erik Estrada, Ruth Buzzi and Gabe Kaplan.

But O’Neal, the Laker’s center-turned-rap star and actor, sparked the biggest flutters on the set, first in filling a guest role, and later in directing the season finale. With a commercial crash course in direction under his belt, along with many shorter-form credits--75 commercials, 29 rap videos and 117 public-service announcements--the 7-footer set to work hybridizing his vision.

A final decision on a second season will be reached when the series is shown and ratings are tallied. But on the final day of filming that capped a grueling 20-episode schedule, the “Skeeter” kids were eager to shed their roles for the summer.

Meagan was headed off to work on an independent feature, “American Pie,” starring Linda Hamilton and directed by Holly Goldberg Sloan.

Richard was intent on just getting out of Tinseltown.

“I’m going to camp,” he said. “And if someone offers me a job while I’m at camp, I’m staying at camp. That’s that.”

“Skeeter” will air at 8:30 p.m. Tuesdays and Thursdays in what Nickelodeon is calling its “Nickel-O-Zone”--original programming from 8 to 9 on weeknights and Sundays. Two other new shows in the block are the live-action “Animorphs,” premiering Friday and based on the popular series of children’s fantasy books, and the animated “The Wild Thornberrys,” also premiering Tuesday and featuring the voices of Tim Curry and Lacy Chabert. Rouding out “Nickel-O-Zone” are new episodes of “The Mystery Files of Shelby Woo,” “Hey Arnold,” “The Journey of Allen Strange,” “Kablam” and “Nick News.”