Little Miss Imperfect

Katie Brown was frenzied. At the moment, Lifetime Television’s young, hip and relentlessly chipper lifestyle guru was sniffling her way through a change-of-seasons cold, which wouldn’t be so bad except that she was flying off to Los Angeles from New York that afternoon to tape her “Very Katie Christmas” special, and she was sporting a red nose that even Rudy (the reindeer, not the New York mayor) would envy. As if that were not enough, she was also trying to settle into her new production studio in SoHo. And she’s wondering if her contractor will ever finish work on her new Bridgehampton house in Long Island, which isn’t exactly a house but a compound fashioned out of two barns and a butcher shop.

“The real estate agent called one day and said, ‘I have the perfect house for you,’ so you can imagine that it was going to be crazy,” Brown said, ticking off a litany of quirks, including the 56 phone lines; the sellers who asked immediately if she’s a Virgo (she is); the indoor paneling made from rotted barn wood, and the windows that aren’t windows but sagging ‘70s sliding-glass doors. Still, she insisted, the place had an immediate charm.

“The butcher shop is my bedroom, and the two barns form the living room and the guest room. I was all excited--the way you are when you buy your first house--so I called my parents to describe it to them, and they said, ‘What! You’re living in two barns and a butcher shop?’ ”

If Brown’s life seems a bit like the chocolate-factory episode of “I Love Lucy,” her reality is anything but. Forget the nasal Sarah Jessica Parker voice, the angular Molly Shannon toothiness, the wide-eyed Lucille Ball giddiness. Truth is, the 35-year-old star of “Next Door With Katie Brown” is as sharply focused and fiercely driven as Martha Stewart, to whom she has been endlessly (and happily) compared.

“I don’t want a topiary to go out without my approval, and I don’t want a lawyer to OK my contract unless I know every point,” she said. “But I don’t know how to balance very well. My mother says there are different seasons in life; well, this is the season where I try to keep my head above water.”

It’s beginning to pay off. After two years in the hyper-saturated world of lifestyle television, where the cable airwaves crackle from morning to midnight with more than 150 variations on bed, bath and beyond, Brown has become the first of the Gen-X Martha-wannabes to break out of the pack. It’s not something you can easily quantify. According to the latest Nielsen ratings, “Next Door” averages 225,000 households in its 9 a.m. weekday slot and about 750,000 in its 1 p.m. Saturday spot.

That may be infinitesimal compared with such daytime heavyweights as Oprah and Judge Judy, but Brown’s growing visibility and viability are evident in such zeitgeisty barometers as appearances on the “Today” show (Katie and Katie out-perked each other recently as they made picture frames) and on “The Tonight Show With Jay Leno” (where she did a pizza-with-a-hole-in-it thing). It’s measurable, too, in extracurriculars: the Katie Brown home-entertaining book that’s in the works for next spring and the Katie-brand plans she’s percolating to capitalize on her facile-and-fun view of domestic life.

“‘She’s no Martha yet, but who is?” Marc Berman, senior television correspondent for Media Week Online, said a few days before the $1.2-billion initial public offering of Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia Inc. Still, Berman adds, “Katie is more of a recognized name than many of the other cable hosts, and that gives the show brand identity. If she’s on ‘Today’ and ‘Leno,’ the next thing you know she’ll be popping up in some sitcom situations.” And, she hopes, coloring the world Brown.

Making Do With

What She’s Got

On this unusually brisk fall morning, Brown slipped into Lifetime’s West 49th Street headquarters dressed in her Michael Graves colors--gray flannel pants and gray turtleneck topped with a raspberry-colored scarf and periwinkle knit cap, a combination that evokes the famed architect’s iconic teapots. She laughs at the comparison. But as she soothes her cold with a Diet Coke and a heap of ice, she’s quite serious about trying to explain her appeal.

“When Lifetime said they were looking for the next Martha Stewart, I said, ‘Keep looking.’ I told them I don’t have any money, but I love beautiful things. I can’t cook, but I love to eat. I don’t have any time, but I love to make things. I also have a sense of humor about myself. I think it’s ridiculous to take this all so seriously. What I do is the good stuff of life, so I want to have fun doing it, and I think that comes across on the show.”

Hers is a universe built on mashed potatoes, homemade soap and an unflagging can-do spirit. Indeed, while Martha’s world dazzles as flawlessly as the acorn-sized diamond studs that dot her ears, Brown seems to relish a mess and finds nirvana in the process, not the perfection, of housework. It is a philosophy that she repeats endlessly, like some anti-Martha mantra, but beyond its marketing appeal, the notion clearly marks a sea change, a passing of the lifestyle baton from the baby boomer to Generation X.

“The baby boom went out and said we can have it all, do it all, at any cost, where Gen-X is saying we’re going to have it all, but on our own terms,” said Dawn Tarnofsky-Ostroff, Lifetime’s executive vice president for programming and production. “It’s a very different message. It’s the difference between wanting the perfect blue Easter egg and just saying let’s just have Easter eggs.”

Brown, who sits on the cusp of both generations, just wants everyone to relax.

“I grew up with a mother who went crazy if you didn’t have handmade Christmas stockings on the mantel,” she said. “She made a new stocking every time someone new came home for Christmas. Last year, we did store-bought stockings and adapted them. There’s something satisfying about taking care of the people you love, but you can take shortcuts. I tell people all the time that you can use boxed cake mix.”

She’ll Try Whatever

Seems to Work

Not only does she use boxed mix, but Brown--whom the Wall Street Journal dubbed “the diva of domesticity for dummies”--isn’t a snob about anything. She turns white sheets into tablecloths, iron headboards into garden trellises and sheets of sod into centerpieces (with an admittedly earthy scent). The mechanics behind it all are more basic than a three-egg omelet. Brown and her staff develop a theme for each show and then divide it into three segments, a blend of food, decorating and gardening. It’s all rather loosely defined. On a show titled “Into the Light,” for instance, Brown offered up a (lopsided) angel-food cake, a lesson in making votive candles and tricks for a sunflower arrangement. In “An Evening Affair,” Brown prepared canapes, crafted decorative hors d’oeuvres platters and shook out the perfect martini.

What holds it all together is Brown herself, who’s more eager to coach than lecture. If an eggshell falls into the mix, she fishes it out while the camera keeps rolling. When her pal, New York chef Bobby Flay, owner of Manhattan’s Mesa Grill, shows up, Brown, who still considers herself a novice cook, asks questions that make it clear she’s eager to learn.

“I think people are relieved to see the imperfections,” she said. “It’s reassuring. You laugh, because you recognize something in it.”

For all her domesticity, Brown, who is single, was hardly born with glue gun in hand. To the contrary, she comes from a long line of overachievers who set their sights outward. Reared on Mackinac Island, Mich., in the tiny town of Petoskey (population: 6,056), Brown is the granddaughter of onetime U.S. Sen. Prentiss Brown, who was instrumental in building the Mackinac Bridge, which connects Michigan’s upper and lower peninsulas.

Her father, Paul, runs the Mackinac ferry and spent 24 years on the University of Michigan Board of Regents. Her mother, Meg, stayed home to rear Katie & Company-- her siblings are Lynn, Marlee and Bing--then opened her own travel business when they flew the coop. What Brown learned about the care and feeding of homes comes, she said, from her far-flung family --she has 32 cousins--and her mother, the sort of woman who set out project tables in the basement every Christmas and taught the kids to make decorations.

“I’m just doing what my mom did,” she said, “but on a public scale.”

When Brown graduated from Cornell University in 1985, the last thing she expected to do was cook. With a degree in art history, she headed to Manhattan to pursue an acting career, which, was the least of what she did.

“I was a waitress, and it was wonderful to sit and watch the chefs,” she said.

In 1990, she headed to Los Angeles to try her hand at film (you might remember her as the girl in a Saturn car commercial) but wound up sidelined for several years after she was hit in the knee by a stray bullet from a drive-by shooter.

Back on her feet--literally--Brown began catering parties.

“That,” she said, “lasted until I got tired of my car smelling like curry.”

Instead, she moved her pots and pans into a 700-square-foot storefront in West Hollywood, christened it Goat (“I just loved the word”) and began offering up a heady mix of quirky finds (old sofas, bubble bath and writing journals) and hearty Midwestern cuisine (freshly made soups, breads and desserts). People loved it. “Instead of dinner parties at home, I’d have them in the store every Friday night. I’d set up a table in the store and charge $25 a head, and people came.”

Hearty Food Drew

Big Names and Success

Did they ever. With Brown’s reputation spreading to the trendy corners of Hollywood, she was soon catering for celebs and cognoscenti alike. Over the next five years, there were raves for her chicken and mashed potatoes in magazines such as Vogue, and there were Goat parties galore: a sit-down birthday bash for 75 for Creative Artists Agency super-agent Brian Lord; a fest for actress Mira Sorvino; a party when actor Harvey Keitel signed a three-picture deal. “He was sweet. He came early and picked out things to send his daughters.” Her happiest recollection--besides the night Drew Barrymore gave her a comic-strip wallet--is the time Diane Keaton looked up and said, “You make really great chicken.”

Which was how Lifetime Television, which was looking to build a show around a new lifestyle maven, heard of Katie Brown. These days, though, it’s Stewart’s finances more than her finger sandwiches that this Martha-wannabe envies. Ask who her role models are and Brown doesn’t miss a beat.

“I love entrepreneurs--they’re my heroes,” she said, adding that she was elated to speak at a recent management conference in San Francisco, along with executives of the Gap and Restoration Hardware. “Those people have built a strategy to build something out of nothing. I look to them instead of artists for inspiration.”

Brown isn’t in their league yet --not even close--but she has plans, big plans. First up is her dinner-party book that, she says, will offer all the nuts and bolts, from menus to table settings. She dreams of a household line--sheets, towels, paint--and her own magazine. Still, she said, it’s pretty hard to think of herself as a brand.

But not to worry. Katie (the person, not the brand) works as hard at keeping grounded as she does at coming up with new chicken recipes. And if she needs a reminder, she need only think back to the halcyon days of the now-closed Goat and a night one of her dinner guests approached her.

“It was Kevin Spacey,” she said, “and he brought me a present--a cockroach from the kitchen.”

“Next Door With Katie Brown” airs at 9 a.m. weekdays, 1 p.m. Saturdays on Lifetime.