This week’s Comediva made her celluloid debut in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. She played a Vulcan Starfleet officer, Lieutenant Saavik. The year was 1982. The comediva in question was 31 years old at the time and still considered herself more of an interior designer than an actress. It might be the last role she ever played that didn’t involve shrieking in frustration at an infuriatingly childish, yet somehow totally doable, leading man. Usually one with side burns.I bet you five dollars you’ll never guess who it is.
Okay, fine. So her name is in the title of the article. You people are no fun at all.
Yes, we’re talking about Kirstie Alley – a comediva whose thirty-plus-year career has led her from starships to neighborhood bars to lingerie companies to weight loss oriented reality TV shows and everything in between. Kirstie’s opening act as a stoic Vulcan is ironic considering that she then proceeded to build a career out of roles that cast her as a slightly uptight career woman who is forced to unwind in order to deal with a manchild costar who she just can’t help but love.
Whether she was struggling to keep her cool in the face of Ted Danson’s Sam on “Cheers” or trying not to smack John Travolta’s James in the Look Who’s Talking series, Kirstie was one of the few who could make this tried and true character model really come to life. Kirstie manages that magic combination of competence, strength and flustered bewilderment that grants both sympathy and wish fulfilment for comedivas facing the same challenges out in the real world. Maybe that’s why Kirstie has had so much success in turning even her struggles with weight and body image into entertainment success.
Who else could have gained quite a lot of weight, and then used it to construct a new sitcom for herself at the age of fifty-four? “Fat Actress” took the struggles that Kirstie had in real life, ballooning weight and a career in a field where age is rarely a friend to the ladies, and turned it into comedy. But, not resigned to being a “Fat Actress” forever, Kirstie did a champion turn on “Dancing With the Stars,” started her own organic food business, and lost more than 100 pounds as of September 2011.
She’s sixty.
Apparently, feeling that becoming a runway model, business woman and DWTS finalist wasn’t enough to fill a sixth decade of life, Kirstie is putting together a new sitcom for herself. “The Manzanis” sounds like another classic Alley role. She’ll play a woman who moves in with her family in New Jersey, and considering she’s recruited her fellow Cheers alum, Rhea Perlman, to play her mother-in-law, we can only assume that Kirstie will once again be a polished fish out of fabulously brash, Jersey-style water.
We could accuse dear Kirstie of allowing herself to be type cast, but I choose not to be a judgy-comediva, but rather to be an excited-fan-girl comediva. Kirstie has found a way to be a part of a new trend that seems to be pushing us further and further towards a world where funny ladies are not resigned to playing b-role mothers and mothers-in-law once they pass the age of fifty. Rolling with the punches of her life, and her career, have allowed Kirstie to land back on the top of the heap at age sixty, and she’s done it not by reinventing her career, but by sticking to the one she built when she was thirty. And that, comedivas, is the lesson we learn from Kirstie. Aging gracefully doesn’t mean letting Hollywood, or anyone else, stick you in the same old familiar old lady box. You’ll be just as funny in thirty years as you are today, and don’t let anyone tell you otherwise!
