"Saturday Night Live" alum Molly Shannon plays a foxy, 40-something and 'Hellboy' star Selma Blair plays her self-absorbed daughter, who share a love-hate, push-pull dysfunctional relationship that only a mother and daughter can have in NBC's new comedy "Kath & Kim."
"My character's really in a state of arrested development, which I see all the time," Selma says, describing Kim. "People don't want to grow up, so it's part of the humor that my character could be 20, she could be 30, she could be 40, and she's in her clothes from when she was in seventh grade and thinks that that's hot. We see it all the time. We see it in the tabloids, people not dressing their ages. And my character loves that and looks up to those people."
The series is based on the hit Australian show of the same name, and, surprisingly, Molly says a friend had sent her the Aussie version even before she knew NBC was adapting it. So when the role came up, she was up for playing the ultra-feminine Kath.
"I really love doing characters," she says. "I prefer that to playing close to myself. It just feels more fun to me and freeing. I could really relate to the dysfunctional family. I liked that my character Kath is positive, strong. She's spent her whole life raising her daughter, and now she's got the daughter out of the house and she wants to move on, focus on herself and her dating life and her figure and her diet, and she's ready to go for it, but the daughter moves back in!"
"Kath & Kim" premieres Thursday, October 9 at 8:30 p.m. on NBC.
