‘Very funny family’ prepared Pressly for role

By Mike Hughes, GANNETT NEWS SERVICE, September 17, 2007

Some moves seem terribly logical after they happen. One was making Jaime Pressly a situation-comedy star.

These days, Pressly savors her “My Name is Earl” role. She plays Joy, sexy, selfish, and single-minded.

“She’s very strong-minded and says what she’s thinking,” Pressly says. “That’s just the way Joy is.”

Pressly has mastered her persona. That includes a generic accent, because the producers didn’t want a specific locale.

In each of the first two seasons, she’s had Emmy nominations as best supporting actress in a comedy. It’s a category without a front-runner, which would seem to give her a decent shot at winning.

It’s also new turf for her. Pressly’s first two series — “Push” and “Jack & Jill” — were angst-filled dramas; “Earl” is closer to her natural state.

“I come from a very funny family,” she says. “All the Pressly men were funny.”

They were businessmen in Kinston, N.C., but they knew how to have fun. “My dad would tell these great stories, where every character had a different accent … We laughed at each other, all day.”

What she took seriously was dancing, modeling and acting. Pressly ended up in a lot of crime-show episodes.

Then came the “Earl” script.

“It read like an independent short,” Pressly recalls. “I said, ‘This is not going to make it unless it has an amazing Earl.’”

It has one in Jason Lee. Pressly, however, is the one with the Emmy nominations.

In the first season, “Earl” won Emmys for the writing, directing and casting of its pilot and for the editing of another episode. Pressly was the show’s only nominated actor.

In the second season, it had two nominations for guest stars (Beau Bridges and Giovanni Ribisi), two for editing and one for sound-mixing. Pressly is the only nominated regular.

“Earl” would win any contest involving body balance. Lee is a former skateboard champion; Pressly is a former dancer and gymnast.

Last season, she had to hold off on the sight gags because she was pregnant. Pressly says she and her fiancé, Eric Cubiche, planned that as precisely as possible. Their son, Dezi, was born May 11, shortly after the season was done.

Pressly was back for the new season ready for fairly long days. “This year, it’s like a well-oiled machine,” she says.

Besides, she’s working with people who have been doing this awhile.

“This is this great set of people,” Pressly says. “I think of them as like old rock stars … We laugh all day.”

From Delaware Online