When they pitched the idea for "Fat Actress" to Showtime executives, Kirstie Alley and Brenda Hampton sent 24 dozen Krispy Kreme doughnuts to the network's offices.
Enclosed was a note: "If you have any left over, send them back to us."
"I think we ate them all," said Robert Greenblatt, Showtime's president of entertainment.
The 288 doughnuts sweetened the pitch, but Greenblatt said Showtime thought the series was hilarious from the start. He was a little hesitant at first because he "wasn't sure how people would take it . . . but we've touched a nerve with this topic, and that surprised me. I didn't know how much of a hot button it was."
For Alley, "Fat Actress" has been "100 percent liberation."
"The tabloids were saying that I was 100 pounds heavier than I was. Basically, the phone stopped ringing. . . . The only jobs I was being offered were characters and parts older than myself. I thought, 'Uh-oh.' "
So she came up with the idea of a fictionalized, exaggerated version of herself, playing an overweight actress trying to shed pounds and find a job.
Alley, 53 and 5-foot-8, said she weighed more than 200 pounds when she started the series.
She knew she was overweight, but "when I saw the first episode, I thought, 'Oh, my God! I had no idea I was that fat.' "
Alley created and produced seven half-hour episodes with Hampton, who started as a comedy writer before she dreamed up WB's family drama "7th Heaven."
"Fat Actress" is an unscripted comedy with a lot of improvisation -- and a lot of saucy language.
"There are very tight outlines that Brenda and I write," Alley said. "We know what we're doing as we go in and out of a scene but sometimes we veer, so it's improv in varying degrees."
Populating Alley's fictional world are Bryan Callen as Eddie, a wannabe actor who is Kirstie's personal assistant, and Rachel Harris as Kevyn, Kirstie's makeup artist and hairstylist.
Alley, who seems to know almost everyone in Hollywood, got many celebrities to guest star, including John Travolta, Kid Rock, Carmen Electra, Melissa Gilbert, Mayim Bialik, Kevin Nealon, Mark Curry and Leah Remini.
