Operation Sitcom

STOCKARD CHANNING had to make up her mind about whether to commit to star in the new CBS sitcom “Out of Practice,” which premieres Monday at 9:30 p.m, right after the network’s most popular comedy series, “Two and a Half Men.”

But it was a no-brainer decision for the lithe 61-year-old actress, who has won a Tony (for “Joe Egg” 20 years ago), two Emmys in 2002 for “The West Wing” and the TV movie “The Matthew Shepard Story,” and an Oscar nomination for 1993’s “Six Degrees of Separation.”

“I sort of said to myself, ‘You know, this is clearly what is the next hand I am playing in my career,’ ” says Channing, who was primarily known as a comedic actress in the 1970s thanks to roles in the acclaimed TV movie “The Girl Most Likely to ...,” the underappreciated Mike Nichols romp “The Fortune,” and the blockbuster musical “Grease,” in which she played tough-girl Rizzo.

Then, in the 1980s, she reinvigorated her career by returning to the Broadway stage, starring in such high-profile dramatic productions as “The House of Blue Leaves” and, later, “The Lion in Winter.”

Like her “West Wing” character Abigail Bartlet, Lydia Barnes in “Out of Practice” is a doctor, this time a newly divorced surgeon. Her ex-husband (Henry Winkler), also a doctor, is dating his receptionist. Oldest son Oliver is a successful plastic surgeon and daughter Regina is physician in the E.R. Their youngest son, Ben, is a psychologist.

Will you still be appearing on “The West Wing”?

Yes. I don’t know what the plots are. We will probably have to do it during one of our hiatuses because we have three weeks on and one week off.

You haven’t done a sitcom since your short-lived attempts in 1979-80 on CBS, “Stockard Channing in Just Friends” and “The Stockard Channing Show.” Did you choose “Out of Practice” because it was created by Joe Keenan and Chris Lloyd, who were writers and executive producers on “Frasier”?

That was important. My agent and manager called me up about it. They had been talking to Joe and Chris; they sent [me the pilot script]. I had absolutely no interest in doing a sitcom.

Having said this, I read the script and I loved the character.

What do you like so much about Libby?

She is kind of Abigail Bartlet. She is as smart as Abigail and obviously she looks like me, but it is as if I was shot out of a cannon. This is a woman who is recently divorced -- whatever age I am -- and out there in the world and very, very accomplished. She has grown children and all of the rest of it, but is an interesting combination of someone who is wrapped pretty tight, very much an authority on everything and somebody who is very, very game and also has huge passions and a capacity for chaos that I found really kind of charming. And that has been enforced in the past few episodes. I really found her tremendously rounded, but her comic voice was very true. She was very much easy to find and I’ll never know if they wrote this with me in mind, but the rhythms.... I didn’t sort of have to talk myself into playing someone I didn’t want to be, and the writing was funny.

With “Friends,” “Frasier,” and now “Everybody Loves Raymond” gone from the networks, critics are saying that sitcoms are a dying genre. But here you are taking the plunge. You obviously don’t feel that’s true.

I don’t know. I have no idea. I think we have to refresh [the genre]. We are only on our fourth episode, but I think it’s being refreshed. I do think that one of the things that is interesting [in the series] is the relationship between these people. Even though the parents are divorced, it is more them thrown into the world on their own than it is about their resentment of each other. So far the writers haven’t had much problem writing stories for us.

Did you know Henry Winkler back in the 1970s when he was on “Happy Days” and you were making movies such as “Grease”?

We had mutual friends, but I don’t think I had seen him much over the years. We did know each other way back in the day as acquaintances, and we liked each other, which was nice, but we had never worked together before.

After your sitcoms failed, you opted to leave Los Angeles and go back to New York.

I had to rebuild my life after that -- my personal life, my financial life, every aspect of my life. This was in 1980, and I went back to the stage and my life changed dramatically in every way, and ironically from that life change and career change, I came back to acting on film in another direction.

It took me about nine months or a year to figure out what I should do with myself. I didn’t want to go back to where I had been and be discontent and “successful.” I had an opportunity to do what I wanted to do, and I wrote letters to three [theater producers] -- Ted Mann at Circle in the Square, Joe Papp at the Public and Arvin Brown at the Long Wharf Theater -- all of whom I had known in the past and worked with. I told them what I wanted to do, and I had a meeting with each of them. It was Arvin who contacted me and said, “You can do ‘Joe Egg.’ ” I read the play and said, “Don’t dangle this in front of me unless you are really serious, because I would love to do it.” That’s how it started.