Sitcoms Online Photo Galleries - Pearl: Rhea Perlman

Pearl aired from September 1996 until June 1997 on CBS.

Pearl ( Rhea Perlman) was a spunky blue collar working widow in her fourties who wanted to better herself. By day she labored as loading dock manager for University Electronics. She was ecstatic when she was accepted to night classes at prestigious local Swindon University. Not so her doofus-like 20-year-old son Joey ( Dash Mihok), a single dad who depended on his mother as a live-in babysitter for his infant daughter. Nor was Pearl's sister-in-law Annie ( Carol Kane), her best friend and coworker , who feared that Pearl would become " one of them intellectuals" and lose touch with her blue-collar friends. Then there was Professor Stephen Pynchon ( Malcolm McDowell), a pompous , condescending elitist who taught Swindon's most difficult humanities course, " The Meaning of Life." He was convinced that uncultured Pearl had no business being in his class. Almost every week he did or said something to belittle or embarrass her, inevitably resulting, by episode's end , in some form of apology or reconciliation. Three of Pynchon's other students were seen regularly-Frankie ( Kevin Corrigan), likable but socially inept, Ami ( Lucy Alexis Liu), a driven perfectionist from San Francisco who was obsessed with her grades; and Margaret ( Nikki Cox), a bright, sexy girl from Manhattan who had difficulty adjusting to the cultural world when there were, like , clothes to try on.

A Review from The New York Times

Carla Goes to College, but Who'll Educate Whom?

By CARYN JAMES
Published: September 16, 1996

We all want different things from education. But Malcolm McDowell, playing a supremely arrogant humanities professor, makes his class an offer hard for anyone to resist. ''Survive this class, and you'll be able to swim in the shark-infested waters of the corporate world, handle French maitre d's, flummox cab drivers and maybe even hold your own with those awful little men who install telephones,'' he promises. Stephen Pynchon says he can turn a freshmen into an intellectual, ''someone who can listen to the 'William Tell' Overture and not think of 'The Lone Ranger.' ''

Mr. McDowell's surprisingly funny and warm performance is the freshest element of ''Pearl,'' a pleasant, promising, shrewdly made sitcom that seems to come with a built-in safety net. Rhea Pearlman's Pearl, a middle-aged, working-class widow who goes back to college, is a slightly softer, smarter version of her hilariously tough Carla on ''Cheers.'' Pearl dresses almost as garishly. (An orange leather jacket, purple blouse and tiny skirt suggest her idea of school clothes.) Although she yearns for an education, she can turn sharp-tongued in a second.

Pearl is surrounded by some too neat student stereotypes, including a beautiful dumb woman and an obsessively brilliant Asian-American woman. At home she lives with her grown son (definitely a ''Lone Ranger'' type) and his baby daughter. She has a ditsy sister-in-law played by Carol Kane. And of course there is Professor Pynchon.

''I happen to love bowling,'' Pearl defiantly tells him in class.

''What a shock,'' he says, with a world-weary smile.

No fish-out-of-water, home-versus-school, highbrow-meets-lowbrow possibility has been left unexploited.

But Ms. Pearlman and her co-stars expertly turn this predictable premise into an engaging, likable show. Ms. Pearlman knows when to make Pearl sincere and when to make her feisty.

In what could have been a deadly stiff role, Mr. McDowell shows a glint of humanity that suggests Pynchon is capable of being amused by Pearl but will never lose his self-assured pomposity.

And Kevin Corrigan, as a goofy, none-too-bright student named Frankie Spivak, is the funniest among the other co-stars. ''I'm socially inept,'' Frankie matter-of-factly tells Pearl when they meet. When Pynchon calls on Frankie in class, Mr. Corrigan puts his head in his hands with obvious despair and terrific comic timing.

The show works best when it draws on these three characters. It goes flat when it strains to prove how valuable Pearl's life experience is. She has a tortured, supposedly bright explanation of how Ahab in ''Moby-Dick'' is like Charlie the Tuna.

Although ''Pearl'' is not daring, it already seems comfortably at home in every way except its time slot. This week only, a second episode will be shown on Wednesday, where the show will eventually settle in. It will stay on Mondays for another month, until the Ted Danson-Mary Steenburgen comedy ''Ink'' appears. If you can follow this season's presto-chango schedule, maybe you can even flummox cab drivers.

PEARL
CBS, tonight at 9:30
(Channel 2 in New York)

Written by Don Reo; directed by James Burrows. A Witt-Thomas Production. Don Reo, Rhea Perlman, Paul Junger Witt, Tony Thomas and Gary S. Levine, executive producers.

WITH: Rhea Perlman (Pearl Caraldo), Malcolm McDowell (Stephen Pynchon), Carol Kane (Annie Carmen), Kevin Corrigan (Frankie Spivak), Dash Mihok (Joey Caraldo) Lucy Alexis Liu (Amy Li) and Nikki Cox (Margret Woodrow).

An Article from The New York Times

Leaving a Barroom for a Classroom

By ANDY MEISLER
Published: September 22, 1996

In a town that worships youth and beauty, Rhea Perlman is merely talented. In a profession that rewards egomania and faux family values, she is genuinely self-effacing, and a genuine wife and mother in the generally accepted meaning of those terms.

Yet even if you look hard, it's difficult to find anyone in Hollywood who has cashed in -- both professionally and financially -- as completely and seemingly inevitably as has this 48-year old character actress.

Do you have trouble understanding why? Well, it might help to watch an episode or two of ''Pearl,'' Ms. Perlman's new sitcom, which will run on Monday nights at 8:30 on CBS for at least five weeks, in the time slot eventually to be held by ''Ink,'' a new show that is being retooled.

''Pearl,'' whose basic concept is credited to Ms. Perlman, is centered on a diminutive woman who decides to tackle a complicated, high-pressure world: in this case, academia.

''Am I a big thinker? I'm not a big thinker,'' said Ms. Perlman, sitting in her large airy dressing room a few feet from her sitcom's sound stage. ''I mean I like to think, I like to talk about stuff, I like to read, stuff like that. But I'm not the kind of person who sits around and mulls. I don't like to sit around and agonize and labor over things.''

This gracious and somewhat shy woman, still best known to the world as Carla Tortelli, the acerbic and definitively non-shy waitress in the long-running NBC series ''Cheers,'' leaned back into her comfortable couch and took the thought a bit further.

''Am I a dreamer? I mean, I think I am,'' she said. ''I'm a dreamer in the sense that I feel you can do whatever you want to do. And it frustrates me to see people bogged down.''

Dreams -- unfulfilled, but only temporarily -- are what everyone concerned with ''Pearl'' considers its dominant motif.

Ms. Perlman plays Pearl Carraldo, a widowed middle-age electronics store clerk who, thirsting for knowledge, applies to a local university and is accepted.

Opposed vigorously by her divorced, resolutely blue-collar son (played by Dash Mihok), and supported halfheartedly by her best friend, played by Carol Kane (''Taxi''), Pearl nevertheless enrolls in the toughest humanities course in the college, and runs right into Prof. Stephen Pynchon, played by the English actor Malcolm McDowell (''If,'' ''O Lucky Man,'' ''Time After Time'').

Pynchon is a self-infatuated snob and martinet (''Like most self-made men, I am in awe of my creator,'' he announces to his class in the pilot episode), who has an unpleasant penchant for running intimidated students out of his course. Pearl becomes one of his targets, of course, and the conflicts and eventual backhanded bonding between the two will constitute the meat of the series.

What distinguishes this series from most others on the air, however, is that between punch lines Pearl and Pynchon actually discuss philosophy, ethics and literature. ''Pearl'' may be the only sitcom in which names like Herman Melville, Thomas Moore and Abraham Maslow, and the ideas they had, are invoked.

This quality of continuing education was a central point of Ms. Perlman's pitch to the network.

''It's amazing,'' said Don Reo (''Blossom,'' ''The John Larroquette Show''), who is Ms. Perlman's fellow executive producer on ''Pearl.'' ''In the classroom scenes, Pearl and Pynchon have six, seven-minute-long monologues.''

CBS executives also give an unqualified endorsement of the concept, at least when they're speaking publicly. ''It doesn't scare us at all,'' said Billy Campbell, an executive vice president. ''It's a wonderful message: she's there to learn.''

Which is not to say that CBS always looked favorably on ''Pearl.'' Ms. Perlman is one of several established sitcom stars (including Bill Cosby and her fellow ''Cheers'' alumnus Ted Danson) being counted on this season to draw viewers to the network, which now ranks third. The initial drafts of the ''Pearl'' pilot reportedly left CBS's new programming chief, Leslie Moonves, underwhelmed.

In the hope of a better reaction, and of working out some of the kinks, Ms. Perlman and her husband, Danny DeVito, organized a staged reading of the pilot script in their home. They recruited some longtime friends, including Ms. Kane and Mr. McDowell, to help. The move apparently turned the tide with CBS, and Ms. Perlman quickly moved to engage the two actors on a longer-term basis.

''The whole thing went through a lot of drafts and incarnations,'' said Ms. Perlman. '' The only reason for me to do another show was because I had every reason to feel it was good, really good. And I really wanted it to be.''

The successful show to aim for, of course, is ''Cheers.'' Ms. Perlman was a vital component of the ''Cheers'' ensemble cast, one of many actors whose reputations -- and fortunes -- were made by the long-running hit.

A framed cover of Life magazine, with the ''Cheers'' cast assembled for its final episode, has pride of place on Ms. Perlman's dressing room wall.

''I never dreamed this is where I would get to,'' Ms. Perlman said. ''I always figured, if I was going to be an actress, I would just be one of those struggling ones in New York, playing character parts. But, look, I was always sure that 'Cheers' was a hit TV show, even when we were in last place for the first two years.''

When ''Cheers'' had its premiere in 1982, Ms. Perlman's struggling years were over. She was born in Coney Island and was brought up primarily in Bensonhurst. After she graduated from Hunter College, she began taking a number of jobs, including one as a waitress at the Rainbow Room, to support her acting career. She and Mr. DeVito met in 1970 and began living together shortly thereafter. They married in 1982 and have three children: Lucy, 13; Gracie, 11, and Jake, 8.

The couple moved to Los Angeles in 1976. The hit ABC sitcom ''Taxi,'' with Dr. DeVito as irascible dispatcher, began in 1978. Ms. Perlman made several guest appearances on the show. In 1984 she starred with her husband in his first full-length directorial effort, a comedy for Showtime called ''The Ratings Game.''

Since 1993, when production of ''Cheers'' ended, Ms. Perlman has had roles in several movies, most notably ''Matilda,'' the recent critically acclaimed Roald Dahl adaptation that Mr. DeVito directed and also stars in.

Now, she says, she has everything and nothing riding on ''Pearl.''

''I'm a pretty positive person,'' Ms. Perlman says. ''I like to watch all kinds of stuff. I like very dark and sick things, too. But I choose to spend -- hopefully -- the next five years of my life being involved in something I'm happy with. I like doing stuff that sort of pushes you forward.''

An Article from USA TODAY

Rhea Perlman finds that 'Pearl' is her oyster in the TV world

By Jefferson Graham
USA TODAY

HOLLYWOOD-When Rhea Perlman played barkeep Carla on Cheers, she had a tiny dressing room at Paramount Studios.

But now she's the star and executive producer of CBS' Pearl, and she rates big digs with space for a treadmill, TV, stereo, children's drawings and enough snack food to keep her son and his friends fed for weeks.

On Pearl, Perlman is a widow who decides to improve her life by going back to college. There, she butts heads with her tough-as-nails professor played by Malcolm McDowell.

The show is CBS' second-highest rated new series, ranked No. 16 for the season to date. The network has ordered nine more episodes to take it through the season.

Perlman, 48, came up with the idea, and her agent hooked her up with writer Don Reo, creator of Blossom and The John Larroquette Show. Together, they worked for nine months on " drafts and drafts and drafts" of the first script.

" It's scary to be back on TV when your previous series was so successful," she says. " You want the new one to at least be substantial."

CBS loved what it saw. When production problems delayed former Cheers cast mate Ted Danson's new series, CBS gave Pearl several weeks in the network's highly rated "Big Comedy Monday" lineup to find an audience. After Danson's Ink premiered, Pearl moved to Wednesdays at 8:30 p.m. ET/PT.

There are no plans for guest spots by her old Cheers buddies on Pearl yet, and she hasn't asked husband Danny DeVito to stop by either.

" All those years on Cheers he didn't do anything, so there's no reason to think he'd be here now," she says. " He's very busy." But she'd love for DeVito ( Matilda, The War of the Roses) to direct a few episodes, she says.

Perlman's old Cheers boss James Burrows directed the first episode of Pearl and has signed to do others as well. " He's the king." she says. " Nobody else can do what he does." ( Burrows also is directing episodes of Friends, Frasier, Caroline in the City, Men Behaving Badly and NBC's mid-season shows Chicago Sons and Fired Up.)

To make the transition from Carla to Pearl , Burrows says, " She needs to do what Kelsey ( Grammar) did when he moved from Cheers to Frasier-move to the center. Viewers need to see the show through the lead character's eyes, so she has to give Malcolm more of the comedy and play it straight."

Around the Cheers set , Carla was known as " The Sniper," for her skill at delivering zingers.

" Pearl has more dimensions," Perlman says, " Carla was a miserable survivor and a nasty person. Pearl has the ability to be very edgy, but she also has a very understanding side. She's much more grounded and secure in herself.

" I'm enjoying this," she says. " I feel the show is good, and I'm proud to be in it. Malcolm is a dream to work with-he's been an idol of mine since A Clockwork Orange-and (co-star) Carol Kane is one of my dearest friends. Best of all, the show has a lot of potential to grow,

" The fun of doing a show is to see how and where the twists will come in."

An Article from Entertainment Weekly
Published on December 6, 1996

Television News
EDUCATING RHEA
PUTTING MALCOLM MCDOWELL TO THE TEST

By Dave Karger

If only every sitcom actor had the class of Malcolm McDowell. Whereas countless other current TV stars can cite only stand-up gigs as their pre-tube oeuvre, the charming 53-year-old British actor has carved himself a place in cinematic history with the landmark films If..., Time After Time, and A Clockwork Orange -- which is why it's sometimes jarring to see him trading yuks with Rhea Perlman as Pearl's stuffy Professor Pynchon. We gave McDowell our own oral exam on fanatic Trekkies, tabloidy royals, and that freaky Stanley Kubrick flick he made nearly half his life ago. -- Dave Karger

-- You've said your late friend, the director Lindsay Anderson (If..., O Lucky Man!), was the inspiration for Pynchon. How are they similar?

There's a lot of Lindsay when [Pynchon] gets very short with [Pearl] and rips off at her. Lindsay didn't suffer fools lightly. He'd go, ''That was absolutely bloody dreadful! What the hell are you doing up there?'' I loved it. Of course, he was right.

-- Pynchon has mostly been confined to his classroom on the show. How would you like to see his milieu expanded?

I think what they're going to do is have an anteroom for him. I want him to have a French bulldog as a pet; he'll be nice to the bulldog and horrible to the human beings.

-- Have death threats from Star Trek fans died down since you killed Captain Kirk in Generations?

Actually, I did wave the red rag at the bull by saying ''For God's sake, all you Trekkies, get a life!'' I've never shown up to one of their conventions. I'd probably get tarred and feathered.

-- Considering you've got two teenagers [with ex-wife Mary Steenburgen], are you concerned about the increasing amounts of sex and violence on television?

What I do disapprove of is gratuitous violence. I'm not so worried about nudity. I think it's worse to see somebody being shot 20 times or butchered than seeing somebody's left tit. I suppose I'm European in that way.

-- Are you a royals watcher?

I think the whole thing is ludicrous. All that newsprint -- what a waste. The sooner it's a republic, the better.

-- How painful was that eye-prying scene in Clockwork?

Very. I scratched my cornea. You don't want to do that, believe me. I had to have a shot of morphine.

-- Has anyone ever told you that there's a porn flick out there called A Clockwork Orgy?

No, but wow -- I'd like to see that. I know there's A Clockwork Banana. It was at the Cannes film festival. I gave it a miss.

An Article from The New York Times

Malcolm McDowell Mellows (Sort Of)

By ILENE ROSENZWEIG
Published: December 8, 1996

THERE IS A WELL-WORN teddy bear on the sofa in Malcolm McDowell's dressing room near the set of ''Pearl,'' the new CBS series in which he stars with Rhea Perlman. Given any other sitcom principal, this would be a charming detail, but it is almost chilling when connected to Mr. McDowell, the British actor whose name is associated with some of the most sinister performances in film. It makes you wonder what happened to the kid.

The fact that the bear turns out to be Mr. McDowell's most beloved childhood toy is no more unexpected than the actor's presence in an American sitcom in the first place. ''I've always thought of myself as a comic actor, and thought of my performances as rather comic,'' the 53-year-old Mr. McDowell says, though he realizes this point has long eluded casting directors.

''They can't see the wood for the trees,'' he continues, ''but I, because I know the material so well, think the choices I made were often hilariously funny.''

As an example, he points to perhaps the most disturbing scene in ''A Clockwork Orange,'' Stanley Kubrick's acclaimed, controversial 1971 movie, which featured Mr. McDowell as the playful psychopath Alex. ''It was admittedly a very black-humorous way to go,'' he says, referring to Alex's crooning ''Singin' in the Rain'' and tap-dancing as he beat a man whose wife he was about to rape. ''But it's even more scary and more terrifying because it was funny. It showed a total lack of empathy. There was no caring at all, no guilt.''

Looking back over Mr. McDowell's film career is a bit like re-experiencing a series of unsettling dreams. Three years before ''A Clockwork Orange,'' he grabbed the attention of film critics with his portrayal of the anarchic schoolboy Mick in Lindsay Anderson's ''If . . .'' (The two other films that Mr. McDowell made with Anderson, ''O Lucky Man!'' and ''Britannia Hospital,'' complete a surreal trilogy on the disintegration of British culture.) In 1980, he was the degenerate emperor in Bob Guccione's widely condemned ''Caligula.'' He has also appeared as a demonic werecat in ''Cat People,'' a sadistic army officer in ''Blue Thunder'' and a post-apocalypse tyrant in ''Star Trek Generations,'' among many other villainous roles.

His talent for evoking gleeful malevolence may have earned him a place beside Jack Nicholson, Dennis Hopper and Christopher Walken, but those names rarely come up at casting calls for sitcoms. Don Reo, the creator and an executive producer of ''Pearl,'' says he wasn't optimistic when Mr. McDowell was suggested to read for the part of Stephen Pynchon, the pompous professor in ''Pearl.''

''We said: 'Malcolm McDowell? He's a villain!' '' Mr. Reo recalls. ''But Malcolm came in and killed. It was so funny. Then there was never any other choice. Luckily, it came at a point when Malcolm was more interested in staying at home rather than running around the universe blasting Captain Kirk.''

Mr. McDowell says, simply: ''You're born to play certain parts, and Pynchon is one I'm born to play. It's like putting on a pair of gloves.''

''Pearl,'' which is on at 8:30 on Wednesday evenings, has earned good ratings and good reviews, with Mr. McDowell receiving particular praise for his comic skills.

He plays Pynchon as a kind of British Don Rickles with a Ph.D., quoting Goethe, Milton and Joyce in between heckling his students because of their ignorance. ''Miss Boswell, if I were to shake your head and look in your eyes, would I see snow falling on a plastic village?'' he asks.

He also epitomizes British snobbery about American culture. ''Class, take 15 minutes,'' he says. ''That's two sticks of chewing gum and a Stephen King novel.''

His favorite target is Pearl Caraldo, the working-class mom turned student played by Ms. Perlman. When she offers Pynchon some trail mix on a car trip, he replies drily, ''Did you know the Donner party had bags of trail mix and yet chose to eat each other?''

Mr. McDowell didn't really watch sitcoms before he starred in one, but now he speaks of them with the utmost reverence. ''Once you're inside it, it's very different from being on the outside sneering at it,'' he says. ''Make no mistake about it, the best writing in America right now is in television.''

For a Website dedicated to Malcolm McDowell go to http://www.malcolmmcdowell.net/

For more on Pearl go to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pearl_(TV_series)