CALL it the ultimate in wishful thinking: telling the world that you’ve cast someone on your TV show before she’s even agreed to do it.
But that’s exactly what happened to Patty Hearst Shaw – who prefers to go by Patricia, but understands why no one calls her by that name – and her guest-starring role in this week’s episode of the teen noir drama, “Veronica Mars.”
“I was on the computer one day and read that I was going to be on ‘Veronica Mars,'” recalls Hearst with a laugh. “[Series creator] Rob Thomas was giving an interview and happily saying, ‘Oh yes, and we’re very excited.’ I was very surprised to see that. I forwarded it to my agent and said, ‘Really? When were you planning on telling me?'” Chalk it up to miscommunication between Thomas, Hearst and her agent, but everything was eventually worked out. In a bit of casting kismet, Hearst was signed to play Selma Rose Hearst, granddaughter of the founder of fictional Hearst College (Veronica’s alma mater), who may or may not have been kidnapped.
History and pop culture buffs will immediately remember Hearst – the real life granddaughter of publishing magnate William Randolph Hearst – from her infamous kidnapping by the Symbionese Liberation Army in 1974.
While she’s sworn to secrecy about what actually happens in Tuesday’s episode, Hearst does let slip that her character is a trustee at the college who mysteriously disappears the night before a vote determining whether or not the fraternities should be kicked off campus. Since she holds the critical swing vote, Veronica is charged with tracking her down.
While Hearst acknowledges that people will assume that her character is a clever nod to history, she says that there are no actual similarities between herself and the character, aside from their both being married.
In real life, Hearst married her former bodyguard Bernard Shaw, while, on the show, she’s married to Charles Shaughnessy (“The Nanny”), who’s also guest-starring.
In fact, Hearst says that the show’s fictional college’s name was chosen last year, because “Veronica Mars” needed “a prominent California name and there was already a Stanford University,” and that her character’s fortune stems from being the heiress of Hearst Mart. “It’s like Wal-Mart. When I read that in the script, I burst out laughing,” she says. “It was a spit-take kind of a thing. I almost fell over.”
Patty Hearst has long since left California. The mother of two, who lives in a “nice quiet suburb” of Connecticut, says that she’s never played herself on TV or in film, although she’s been asked. “I’ve always turned those roles down, it’s always been something too mortifying,” she says. “I’ve never seen anybody else [play themselves] where it didn’t just look like a pathetic attempt to get attention, to be honest,” she says.
Still, she admits that with every role she’s had, people ask if she’s ever had any first hand experience doing what the script tells her to.
“Even when I was a crossing guard in [John Waters’] ‘Cry Baby,’ people said, ‘Did you do that for your children’s school?” she says with a sigh. “Well, no, but almost everything has happened to me in my real life – I’ve had a lot of drama in my life – so you could draw some association to anything. In ‘Cry Baby,’ we were in a courtroom. I’ve been to court [in real life], so what the heck, you’re bound to end up with something that happened.” Prior to making her film debut in “Cry Baby,” Hearst says she had no intention of acting professionally.
It wasn’t until she met Waters at a dinner party in Cannes – when he approached her and said that he wanted her to be in one of his movies – that she actually gave acting a shot. “It wasn’t like I was sitting at an ice cream counter and sipping a soda,” she says.
“I know it drives a lot of actors crazy when they hear that. It’s usually not that simple, although, sometimes, things happen. What can I say? Of course, I would recommend waiting tables before I would recommend being kidnapped by terrorists to come to the attention of some director. It’s much easier,” she says with a laugh.
VERONICA MARS
Tuesday, 9 p.m., CW