Billy Burke and Giancarlo Esposito (Brownie Harris/NBC)
Matthew Perry (Justin Lubin/NBC)
Michael Chiklis (
)
Demi Lovato (FOX)
When Dakota Johnson was a mere 16 years old, in 2006, she was asked by the Hollywood Foreign Press Association to be a Miss Golden Globe. Anyone who’s watched the annual awards ceremony will recall these young, glittering figures. They gracefully hand out statuettes to winners, smiling and gliding across the stage before they disappear behind a curtain. Johnson’s mother, Melanie Griffith, had been a Miss Golden Globe, in 1975. So it was like the passing of a baton, in a way. An honor, no sweat. Until Johnson, now 23, had to tell Harrison Ford that he was in the shot.
“It was so scary,” says Johnson. Why would I ever go up to Harrison Ford and say, ‘You can’t stand there; you have to stand behind this line.’ His nose was sticking into the side of the camera. I was afraid to touch his elbow because he was holding a drink. I was freaking out. He didn’t give a f- – – at all. It was an existential crisis for me.”
All these years later, Johnson is starring in her own sitcom, Fox’s “Ben and Kate,” the touching and funny story of a single mother (Johnson), who has to raise two “children” — her daughter, Maddie, and her older brother, Ben (Nat Faxon), the kind of bumbling misfit who complicates every situation he’s in. One recent episode found Ben making a mess of Kate’s admission that she used a false address to keep Maddie in a better school district. Even though things were heading south, Ben managed to smooth things over with the principal. There’s a freshness to the writing that makes this show one of the surprises of the fall season. It has already received a full-season pickup from Fox.
“It’s awesome,” says Johnson, who’s on set, staving off a cold with a lunchtime bowl of soup from a nearby Ralph’s supermarket. “It’s a big relief. The show’s funny and sweet, and I have an amazing cast.”
Playing the straight woman to Faxon’s Ben requires her to keep it together during their banter. It’s not always possible.
“When we’re doing a lot of improving, it’s sometimes weird to rein it in,” she says. “We’re really good at playing off each other. And I can tell what’s coming.”
Johnson has experience dealing with the antics of siblings (she has older brothers and younger brothers and sisters), but playing a mom threw her for a loop.
“It makes me feel old. It’s nice to get home at the end of the day and not have a kid,” she says. “I was even mentally prepared for playing a mom. This is the kind of thing where I get to have a really different sort of relationship with my kid. The characters are friends. That’s so different from what you see on TV. It’s usually the mom yelling at the kid and the kid’s getting into trouble.”
The kid, Maggie Elizabeth Jones, knocks her out, though. “She’s an incredibly smart child. The minute they call action, she’s working,” she says. “It’s really cool to watch her grow physically and become more comfortable, worrying if something she does or says looks stupid. I will help her as much as I can to not have that feeling.”
Johnson’s dad, Don, starred in two long-running series, “Miami Vice” on NBC and “Nash Bridges” on CBS, but did not offer advice on handling the workload.
“There’s no advice anybody can give you at all. It’s really personal to each actor,” she says. “It’s insane. While people are watching one episode, we’re filming five more episodes. There are a few bits that were filmed the day before the show came on the air. It’s an insanely physically taxing job.”
Johnson is looking forward to Kate getting a little wild as the season progresses and she confirms that the she will have a boyfriend, played by Geoff Stults. “He comes on in Episode 5. He’s Will, the hunky neighbor,” she says.
While Kate’s social life is looking up, Johnson is acclimating herself to the grind of successful TV series. When she has her upcoming Christmas break, she says she will be calling the friends that remember her and saying, “I’m so sorry I didn’t call you back for 5 months.”
BEN AND KATE
Tuesday, 8:30 p.m., Fox
OTHER FALL SURPRISES
“Revolution”: worth watching
There was every sign that NBC’s “Revolution” could have been another high-tech disaster like last season’s “Terra Nova.” Both are set in a post-apocalyptic future, both rely on green screens, and both come from high-pedigree filmmakers – “Terra Nova” from Steven Spielberg and “Revolution” from J.J. Abrams (“Star Trek”) and Jon Favreau (“The Avengers”).
But “Revolution” is a well-plotted thrill ride with twists, turns and surprises that come about every five minutes. The show tells a story on two tracks – one about a power-free future, the other about what happened right after the power went out. The potential for utter confusion was great, but under the sure hand of executive producer Eric Kripke, things get all the more interesting.
Billy Burke (at far left, with Giancarlo Esposito) stars as the swashbuckling Miles, former architect of the Monroe militia and a sword-swinging badass. If the show has one weak link so far, it’s that Charlie (Tracy Spiridakos), Miles’ niece and the show’s central character, is so annoying. Still, “Revolution” is sprinkled with the snarky humor that made superhero movies like Favreau’s “Iron Man” so popular, and it works just as well here.
All of that explains why “Revolution” is the season’s highest-rated new show, averaging nearly 9 million viewers on Monday nights at 10. — Paige Albiniak
“Go On”: It’s actually funny
“Go On’ is this fall’s highest-rated new comedy, averaging more than 6 million viewers on Tuesday nights on NBC.
As popular sports-talk radio host, Ryan King, whose wife was killed in a car accident, Matthew Perry (below) proves he can carry his own show. “Go On” is about watching oddballs become friends, even though what all seem to have in common is that they’ve all lost someone close to them. The show finds a balance between quirky, touching and laugh-out-loud funny. Like TV’s most successful sitcoms, “Go On tell hilarious stories about people we really care about. — PA
“Nashville”: so good/”Vegas”: so bad
“Vegas,” starring Michael Chiklis (below), is so sloppily done that there are satellite dishes on top of McMansions in what is supposed to be 1960s Las Vegas. Worse, the motorcycle gangs have “Sons of Anarchy” hair and outfits! It’s also so badly written, it’s painful.
“Nashville,” on the other hand, is pitch-perfect, with music to match. Connie Britton is tough and tender as Rayna James, a country-music superstar who is about to be eclipsed by a pop princess, played to vixenish perfection by Hayden Panettiere. — Linda Stasi
Demi Lovato on “The X Factor”
The 20-year-old pop princess has become the one who can go toe to toe with the intimidating Simon Cowell. Who knew? Lovato (below), whose legions of fans are known as Lovatnicks, is a Disney star — that’s code for a sappy and sweet preteen idol.But in the past two years her image changed, as she made tabloid headlines for an eating disorder. She went to rehab and then did a TV confessional about her other secrets, like self-mutilation, being bullied and being diagnosed as bipolar. This took guts. She took that moxie to Cowell’s front door. Watch how she stands up to him, how acerbic she can be as a judge, and also how compassionate. When a contestant cried about being bullied, Lovato ran on- stage to hug her. And it was believable. — Mary Murphy