Seeing Red

Feisty Marg Helgenberger is back (but not on ER)

By Stef McDonald
TV Guide – March 8, 1997

In Murder Live! (NBC, March 9), Marg Helgenberger plays a trashy talk-show host held hostage in her own studio.

OK, it’s not Shakespeare. But the role is more complex than it sounds, Helgenberger says. “She actually believes she’s doing good by devoting programs to certain issues, but at the same time, she’s aware of what BS it is. You don’t often get the chance to play somebody multidimensional.”

Helgenberger’s characters are often smart and strong-willed. She won an Emmy as K.C. on China Beach, and soon she stars in Steven Seagal‘s “Fire Down Below” and in Elmore Leonard’s The Gold Coast, on Showtime. She won’t star in her own CBS series, however. The network passed on a drama she developed, and Helgenberger in turn declined subsequent scripts CBS offered her as part of their deal. “If I’m going to do a series,” she says, “it’s gotta be a character who’s gonna rock everybody’s world.”

Meanwhile, the actress is keeping busy working for the American Medical Women’s Association’s Life Without Limits campaign to destigmatize stress incontinence.

But despite her concern with health issues, she won’t return to ER. Not that she minded that onscreen fling she had with George Clooney last season (even though she’s happily married to Cybill‘s Alan Rosenberg); it’s just that “they wanted me to OD on drugs and have him save me,” she says, laughing, “and I didn’t want to be the sacrificial guest star.”     ♦