Series Was Maid to Order for Actress

By RICK DU BROW

March 10, 1992 12 AM PT

TV or not TV. . . .

WINGING IT: The acting find of the 1991-92 TV season may well be Regina Taylor, the housekeeper of NBC’s drama series “I’ll Fly Away.”

But her initial inclination was to turn down the role.

“When they said, ‘We want you to play the part of the maid,’ my first response was to say, ‘No. Oh no, the role of the maid again,’ ” she says quietly on the phone from Atlanta.

To many viewers, “I’ll Fly Away,” filmed in and around Atlanta, is the best new drama of the season, co-starring Taylor and Sam Waterston as a Southern lawyer who employs her just as the civil rights movement is evolving in the 1950s.

On the phone and in the show, Taylor has a soft-spoken but penetrating directness that carries authority and impact.

What made her finally decide to take the part?

“When I read it, I saw the possibilities to personalize it. What I found intriguing is that it shows a black maid in the way that you normally haven’t seen--as a complex individual with her own feelings, her own dreams, her own life outside the family that she works for.”

Despite insider views of the series as a “soft” show, it has done respectably in the ratings, which NBC hopes will continue now that it has been moved from Tuesdays to Fridays.

“I’m very passionate about the quality of the series,” says Taylor. “I felt it was an opportunity to show a time in America in a no-holds-barred way, with race issues dealt with in an intriguing manner.

“I think that a lot of times the 1950s have been whitewashed, kind of draped in nostalgia. You have the sock hops and the ponytails and the cars. But you don’t really have a sense of what’s underneath the trappings, the race relations.

“You might have Chubby Checker playing in the background, but you don’t have the musicians traveling through certain areas where they couldn’t stay in hotels. A lot of times it’s washed over.”

A native of Dallas, Taylor says, “The maid in my community was, and still is, the backbone of the black community. The maids were the foot soldiers. It’s a job, not a state of mind. But when you saw her on the big screen or the television screen, you only saw her as a shadow. So I thought that this was a way to show her in her richness.”

THE BLUE KNIGHT: The splendid 1973-77 anthology series “Police Story,” created by cop-turned-author Joseph Wambaugh, gets a deserved tribute Wednesday night at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

But Wambaugh, whose show is being saluted as part of the annual Los Angeles festival of the New York Museum of Television and Radio, says he’s not interested in doing today’s reality series, which often involve police.

“Just putting the camera on somebody might be cinema verite ,” he says, “but it doesn’t mean anything--just another bucket of blood. As a storyteller, I would like to get in and find out what followed and preceded it.

“ ‘Police Story’ was a writers’ show. For us, plot wasn’t so important. Character was. And that’s what you don’t get with reality shows.”

Wambaugh’s series depicted cops as human beings, warts and all. And he thinks viewers’ attitudes toward police are pretty much the same now--except for the Rodney King case: “I think you’d have to address it.” The case, he says, has had an effect “all over the country.”

David Gerber, who produced “Police Story,” recalls: “We played things like internal affairs. It was supposed to be too technical. There was just bang-bang. Joe pointed out there were alcoholics, divorces. We got the stories from cops primarily. They had to instruct the writers about the cadence and dialogue of cops.”

LAW AND ORDER: A salute to “Hill Street Blues” opened the Museum of Television and Radio festival last week. Turns out that after “Hill Street” swept to early Emmy success, NBC research showed that viewers loved the far-out characters like Renko (Charles Haid) and Belker (Bruce Weitz). So NBC wanted a show with crazy characters. Voila! “The A-Team.”

PASSING THE BATON: “These are the kids that are gonna take over,” says Bob Hope. He wasn’t talking about his guests on his NBC special this Saturday--Milton Berle, Phyllis Diller and Betty White. No--Hope is showcasing eight up-and-coming comics. “I think it’s much easier breaking through today,” he says. “There’s a comedy club in almost every town. In the old days, we didn’t have the places to play.”

WILD THING: Rap singer Tone Loc appears on Fox’s provocative “Roc” series March 29 as an anti-drug neighbor of series star Charles Dutton.

PAYOFF: NBC’s “Fresh Prince of Bel Air” finally seems to be pulling in the ratings the network has been waiting for the series to deliver since its debut.

FREDDY’S REVENGE: Those two Fred Silverman series that NBC cut loose--”Matlock” and “In the Heat of the Night,” both picked up by competitors--are going to come back to haunt the network as ratings spoilers.

HAPPY DAZE: Last week’s “Happy Days” reunion special pulled a whopping 31% audience share for ABC. That’s about half the total audience of the Big Three networks. I don’t care about the rest of you guys--I liked it.

PROPHECY: Even before the 1976 film “Network,” the future corrosive effect of TV on taste and values was hinted at strongly in the 1959 movie “The Last Angry Man,” with Paul Muni.

STATUS REPORT: ABC says it hasn’t written off “Life Goes On,” one of TV’s best dramas, even though the network is planning a news magazine for the series’ Sunday slot. It would be nice to believe that.

POST TIME: So let’s see: When Ted Turner launches his 24-hour Cartoon Network on Oct. 1, he’ll have five nationwide TV channels. The others: CNN, Headline News, TNT and TBS. CBS never, never should have resisted his overtures in the 1980s.

BEING THERE: “Every time the picture comes up, you try to provide some kind of a caption.” --Vin Scully on announcing TV sports.

Say good night, Gracie. . . .