JOYCE DEWITT
Joyce DeWitt, who is best known for her work as the perky Janet Wood on the award-winning late '70s-early '80s sitcom "Three's Company," began her career in the theatre and boasts a resume that includes productions of Chapter Two; Sweet Charity; Damn Yankees; Middle of the Night; Star Spangled Girl; The Crucible; Medea; Tartuffe; A Hatful of Rain; Desire Under the Elms; Macbeth; The Mikado; Li'l Abner; South Pacific; The Man Who Came To Dinner; Peter Pan; Brigadoon; All the Way Home; A Month in the Country; The Tempest; The Impossible Years; Dracula: An Original Rock Musical; Stop the World, I Want To Get Off; and Same Time, Next Year. DeWitt, who was also recently seen in the critically acclaimed Canadian premiere of Dinner With Friends, is currently making her Off-Broadway debut in the title role of Miss Abigail's Guide to Dating, Mating, and Marriage! Written by Ken Davenport and Sarah Saltzberg, the production casts the accomplished actress as the "most sought-after relationship expert to the stars" and also features Mauricio Perez as "her sexy sidekick Paco." Earlier this week I had the chance to chat with DeWitt about her many theatrical outings, including her current Off-Broadway bow; that interview follows.

Question: Since we've never spoken before, let's go back a bit. Where were you born and raised?
DeWitt: Wheeling, WV. That's where I was born. My childhood was split between West Virginia and Indiana— half and half.

Question: And, when did you start performing?
DeWitt: When I was 13, I started working on the stage.

Question: When did performing change from a hobby to when you knew this was going to be your career?
DeWitt: Oh, it was never a hobby. I wasn't even in school yet, and I knew what I was going to do. Of course, everybody just laughed at me. [Laughs.] I knew very early on.

	Joyce DeWitt in Miss Abigail's Guide.
	photo by Jeremy Daniel

Question: Was your goal originally stage or film?
DeWitt: I never even thought about going to Hollywood. It never even occurred to me. I started on the stage when I was 13; that was my home, and that's how I was trained. I had an enormous passion and love for it, so I was headed to New York. I was going to go to New York and starve and struggle on the city street until I got a job on Broadway. I did a summer-stock season in Chicago just after I finished undergraduate work, and one of the founding members of the department at the theatre at UCLA directed a play that summer in celebration of the theatre because he had designed it ten years before. He Svengali'd me — he literally, relentlessly kept saying to come to UCLA and go to grad school, and I kept saying, "No, I'm going to New York," and ultimately he twisted my arm far enough and hard enough that I said, "Okay, I'll come out for a quarter," [laughs] because UCLA is on a quarter system, not on a semester system, so I intended to go out for three months and then go to New York [laughs], but life sort of unfolded in a very different way.

Question: What happened while you were out there?
DeWitt: I did the MFA program and got my Master of Fine Arts, and I was cast in the lead in Stop the World, when I literally got off the bus, so to speak, although the truth is I drove my $50 car out there. [Laughs.] I had a '63 Rambler that I paid $50 for it, and drove it out to California, and after Stop the World, I was cast over and over and over again. I was given the opportunity to do my work continually. There was never a time when I wasn't working as an actor while I was there, so the time just went by, and all of a sudden I had a degree, you know? [Laughs.] And then I thought, I'll give it like six weeks — if I don't get an agent or a job or something, I'll go to New York — and each time something would happen. I'd get a really good meeting with a really good agent, or I'd get a Charmin commercial [laughs], one little thing, and then there were like six things that led directly to "Three's Company," one right in a row.

	DeWitt with "Three's Company" co-stars Suzanne Somers and John Ritter

People had seen my work when I was at UCLA and had offered to help me when I was ready — in terms of meeting people in the business. When I was ready, they came through, and they introduced me to people, and one person to the next, to the next. I did an industrial film for Universal, and Reuben Cannon, who produces Tyler Perry's movies, cast me in this industrial film, and then a few months later, he was casting "Baretta," which was the number one show on television at the time, and he asked me to come in and read for it, and I was like, "Wow, thanks."… When it aired in September, the people at William Morris saw it and came looking for me, and then they showed it to ABC, and ABC said, "Well, it's really good, but it's not funny," because it was a drama — and they were trying to become the kings of comedy at the time. Shortly thereafter, they were auditioning for a girlfriend for the Fonz, because they were thinking to spin Henry [Winkler] off into his own series, and they were going to have a guest star of a girlfriend, and see how that worked, and spin them off — so I went and auditioned. Because he was such a huge star for television at the time, everybody from New York and Los Angeles were in that room when we auditioned. All of the VPs and everybody — anyone who had a say in casting for that part was there. Usually when you do an audition there's like the casting director, and maybe the director there — not always — and maybe one other person. You read with the casting director, even if it's a love scene with a guy and she's a girl, you're reading with her— it's very simple, sitting around a coffee table. But there's like 20 people in this room, and I'm like, "Oh, my Lord." So before I got home, literally, my agent left a message to call, and they said they are going to go a different way with the part, and I said, "Well, no kidding!" I'm in there with all of these women who are gorgeous with huge hair, and beautiful bodies [laughs], and I'm this little chubby, brown-headed person, and he goes, "But they want to pay you a lot of money not to work for another network until they find a show that you want to do."