HAPPY families are all alike, Tolstoy wrote – but he never met Zoe Perry’s clan.
Zoe’s the actress daughter of divorced actors, now both on Broadway: Her mom, Laurie Metcalf, is in “November” and her dad, Jeff Perry, is in “August: Osage County.”
Years before they starred in plays named for months, they helped launch the Steppenwolf Theatre Company, which in turn launched many a career . . . and Zoe, who was 2 when they split. Only in this case, a family divided, multiplied. (Paul McCartney and Heather Mills, take note.)
“I’m so lucky,” says Zoe, 25, who has her father’s blue eyes and the earnest/ironic voice of her mom, who memorably played Jackie on TV’s “Roseanne.”
“My stepmom reminded me of a conversation she had with my mom early on, who said, ‘Well, we’re a family,’ and that generosity sort of bred. So I have four amazing parents who support me!”
Adds her dad: “We just knew we loved this girl, and we weren’t gonna screw that up.”
Over breakfast the other day, the three discussed how one failed marriage turned a small family into a happy, extended one that keeps growing. As they spoke, the latest addition, Metcalf’s young foster son, was making a mountain out of sugar packets.
“I don’t know what to call my relationship with Linda, it’s so solid and strong,” Metcalf says of Perry’s wife, Linda Lowy.
“There’s not really a term for it, but I love her, so I call her my sister-in-law.” Several weeks before, Lowy – a casting director for “Grey’s Anatomy,” who once cast the exes in the same episode – flew Metcalf’s 21/2-year-old daughter home to LA. (Metcalf’s married to Matt Roth, who played Fisher, Jackie’s abusive boyfriend, on “Roseanne.”)
“Laurie was fine, or pretended to be, when Zoe called Linda ‘Linda-mom,’ ” says Perry. “It led to a pretty great menagerie.”
Zoe grew up on the set of “Roseanne” – a setting her mom calls “inappropriate” (“Grossly inappropriate!” chuckles her dad), given the loose talk in the dressing room.
But other than playing the young Jackie in a flashback, acting was off-limits till after high school. It wasn’t until she was in college at Northwestern that she finally summoned the nerve to audition for a play, and her mom and stepmom flew to Chicago to see it.
Their verdict? She can act, which relieved her dad.
“Part of me is nauseous at the rejection she’ll have to face,” he says. “I didn’t want to hear on top of it, ‘Oh, she stinks!’ ”
You may have caught her on “Cold Case,” where, as her mom says, proudly, “She was the third rape victim from the left.” She also shot a film with two other second-generation actors, Bryce Dallas Howard and Mamie Gummer.
Still, she has a Plan B: She has applied to grad school for social work. Who knows? She might just make a good marriage counselor.