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May 22, 2005
Moloney Moonlights as Frey
By Jay Bobbin
zap2it.com
LOS ANGELES (Zap2it.com) - Some names are so well-known, they seem to tell entire stories.
Amber Frey is one, but Janel Moloney didn't know much about her until agreeing to play her. The co-star of "The West Wing" portrays the former mistress of convicted murderer Scott Peterson in the new CBS movie "Amber Frey: Witness for the Prosecution" Wednesday, May 25.
Adapted from Frey's autobiography, the film dramatizes the start of her romance with Peterson (Nathan Anderson), her realization that he had a pregnant wife -- Laci -- who was missing, and her eventual effort to help Modesto, Calif., police gather evidence against him. "Saturday Night Live" alumna Nora Dunn plays Frey's attorney, Gloria Allred, a co-executive producer of the movie.
Commenting on the women's resemblance, some television reporters told Moloney she might be offered the Frey role. "To me, it was just hilarious," the actress says. "I would have never thought it would happen. Then I was asked to do this movie, I thought about it, and I decided to do it."
At that time, the story of Amber Frey literally came as news to Moloney, who'd had "absolutely no interest on any level" in the Scott Peterson case as he became the prime suspect in the deaths of his wife and unborn son.
"In fact, I had more of a distaste for it," Moloney says. "I thought it was the typical overblown, sensationalistic story of the kind we Americans love for some reason. Most people like scandals involving attractive people."
Playing Frey began to intrigue Moloney after she "read her book and started to think about the challenge of doing the role. It became appealing to me as an actress. The story itself is pretty straightforward, and there was nothing about Amber or what she did that I had any trouble with. It was more the aspect of our fascination with the story and the media's attachment to it. Every second, you'd turn on the news and there would be something about it, when all these really important things were going on in the world."
In making the movie, Moloney tried to forget all the "buzz" around the Frey-Peterson story and focus on the individuals involved. "I felt I needed to understand what Amber's big dreams and hopes were. I viewed her as an innocent, someone with an almost childlike openness and faith in people. It's challenging to play that without seeming corny or naive."
Frey briefly visited the film's set, and Moloney found her "just a nice girl, nothing way out of the ordinary. She was under so much scrutiny, I think she had to be someone she maybe really wasn't. She got her butt kicked no matter what she did, and I think she handled things extremely gracefully."
Had "The West Wing" not ended its run early this season, the Frey movie would have pitted Moloney against herself as Donna Moss on NBC's Emmy-winning White House drama, which enters its seventh year this fall. The reshaping of the series is sure to continue as President Bartlet's (Martin Sheen) administration wanes, and Moloney is unsure just how Donna will figure in.
However the show's next election turns out, Moloney doubts Donna "will be an assistant anymore. She's kind of found her own voice. More than almost any other character on television, I think she's really grown up on the show."
Posted by Jo at May 22, 2005 09:14 AM