Beck/Smith Hollywood

Jennifer Ehle, Patrick Wilson CBS photo by Heather Wines

Patrick Wilson’s “A Gifted Man” is gearing up to finish its first season with a bang.   They’re about to shoot the final episode, according to Executive Producer Neal Baer.  And, he lets us know, the last two episodes should be especially satisfying for those viewers who’ve embraced the ambitious series that’s attempted to meld medicine and spirituality.

Expect Broadway’s Tammy Blanchard to make an important appearance — and Eriq LaSalle’s role to be key.

Baer says the show — which changes time slots to 9 o’clock Fridays starting Feb. 17 — will revisit questions about the nature of surgeon Michael Holt’s (Wilson) late ex-wife, Anna (Jennifer Ehle).  Is she a ghost?  His conscience?  Why is she there?  “Then you’re going to see something pretty emotionally moving involving the character.  Patrick has a big scene, a wonderful scene,” Baer says.  “We’ve been very careful, up ’til now, that nobody ever sees him in conversation with Anna, other than a word or two, but Eriq La Salle catches him in a screaming match with her, and from his point of view, Patrick is just yelling in the air.”

That will lead to issues being addressed, explains the distinguished writer/pediatrician, whose credits include “ER” and “Law & Order: SVU.”

He adds, “I love doing this through Eriq La Salle.  It’s a wonderful deja vu.  He hasn’t aged in 18 years.  He looks the same as when I first saw him in 1994.  I said, ‘Eriq, have I been here before?’”  However, Baer stresses that La Salle’s current character, psychiatrist Edward “E-Mo’” Morris, is nothing like his former TV doctor.  When Baer talked to La Salle about “A Gifted Man,” the actor said, “‘Don’t make him anything like Peter Benton.’”  La Salle also directed the Feb. 17 episode that features Christina Milian.  “A Gifted Man” may not surmount its ratings struggles, but no one can say they’re not making a worthy effort.

Neal Baer

MEANWHILE:  Baer’s dividing his time right now between multiple writing chores.  His and Jonathan Greene’s just-released (ital.) Kill Switch (end ital.) page-turner is already earmarked for the big-screen with Katherine Heigl attached to play the heroine, forensic psychiatrist Claire Waters.  Baer says, “We’re working on it.  Kevin McCormick, who just finished a film (“Gangster Squad”) Sean Penn and Emma Stone is going to produce.  It’s going out to studios and companies.  The movie business takes time, you know.  That’s what I like about TV.  A script I wrote last week is going to be shot next week and it will be on in February.”

Ironically, Baer and Greene originally wrote “Kill Switch” as a movie, “about 10 years ago.  We wrote about a 35-page outline, and worked on it for a couple of months.”  Time passed.  “I was busy doing ‘SVU’ and life…a couple of kids were born…”  The outline literally sat in a bottom desk drawer until Baer’s literary agent let him know she was looking for a medical thriller.  Now he and Greene are into writing the second book of their three-book deal.

This is the second time Baer’s been involved in a project that lay dormant for a decade before coming to life.  The first was a drama Michael Chrichton had written based on his experiences while a med student at Harvard in 1969 that “was in a trunk in Steven Spielberg’s office for 10 years, as I heard the story,” relates Baer.  Baer, a later Harvard Med grad, wound up updating that script — “ER.”

Janet McTeer on Browadway in Mary Stuart

Best Supporting Actress Oscar nominee Janet McTeer is enjoying her time in the Academy Awards spotlight for “Albert Nobbs” much more than she did when she was nominated as Best Actress in 1999 for her portrayal of a single mom in “Tumbleweeds.”  The reason:  “It’s easier because it’s a bit less scary,” she explains. 

“I suppose I’m older and wiser so I suppose I can take it more lightly.  I know more people here now.  I’m more likely to bump into a lot of mates.  When I first went to the Academy Awards, I knew not a single person.  You think, ‘Oh my God, I’m going to do the wrong thing, fall over my dress, do something embarrassing and lose every friend I’ve ever met and end up without a dime in my pocket,” she dead-pans. 

Now, she says, her feeling is, “How lovely.  What an honor to be included and see all these wonderful people.”

The RADA-educated, Tony and OBE-awarded actress was quoted in the past, talking about the whole Oscar business as “silly” and noting that the English tend to be embarrassed by the idea of admitting they’d like to win, whereas Americans have been known for declarations about the nominations constituting the best day of their lives and such. 

Reminded of that statement, she says, “I would probably say the best day of my life was the day I got married, as opposed to the day I got nominated.  It’s a wonderful thing, not a defining thing.  Don’t get me wrong.  I don’t mean to sound trollish.  I think they’re wonderful.  I think they’re a great honor.  And it’s absolutely fantastic for the film — how many more people will see it and see what Glenn (Close) has achieved.  I’m grateful for that, and genuinely, hugely flattered.”

McTeer’s awards season whirlwind continues.  She has the big screen chiller “The Woman in Black” starring Daniel Radcliffe opening Feb. 3.  She’s also been busy with projects for the BBC and HBO, and a German film, in addition to her upcoming guest arc on Close’s “Damages.”  She tells us, “I’ve been going back and forth, racing back toMaineto see my family whenever I could.  I live inMaineand work inNew York.  Truthfully, I think when we get to March I’ll vacation for a week.”

Steven Tyler

With Steven Tyler’s “American Idol” gig bringing bigger attention to Aerosmith than the band has enjoyed in awhile, work is moving forward swiftly on the first full-fledged Aerosmith rock album in seven years.      

“I got all the guys to come out here except for Joe (Perry) and I promised them, ‘You come out, we’ll get a song a day and we did,” the 63-year-old rock icon reports.  “Seven songs, and I listened to four of them the other day, looking at the ocean — and I heard one I know the radio is going to play,” he adds.  “I know what a good song is.  I know something that’s melodically compelling, that’s got a really good melody line.  And you know, I found some just right words over it.”

Tyler has already made it clear he’s enjoying the positive impact his “A.I.” exposure is having on the music side of his career, including new young fans wherever he goes and a 260 per cent increase in sales of the Aerosmith catalog.       

Hey, what’s not to like!? 

Of the forthcoming album, expected in the spring, he says, “Is it the right game?  Is it the only game on the block?  No, but it’s Aerosmith and people are going to love it.”  Some of it, he says “is so strange and so different.”  Other parts sounds as if they could be “outtakes of the second album.”

Paul Blackthorne ABC photo

ABC’s promising “The River” chiller, from the creators of “Paranormal Activity,” features handsome and charismatic British actor Paul Blackthorne.  Ironically, Blackthorne confesses, “I absolutely can’t bear the idea of watching anything scary.  I used to get nightmares from ‘Dr. Who’ — hiding behind the couch watching that,” he says, possibly not 100 per cent serious. 

He plays the crafty reality TV producer who volunteers to take a missing adventurer’s (Bruce Greenwood) family on a search into the Amazon jungle to find him — if he can document the whole thing for a show. 

Blackthorne says he had some fun with his part when they shot the first season (the show premieres Feb. 7) in Hawaii.  “Playing a reality show producer who has a mission besides their search, he’s obviously trying to create a lot of conflict and drama for their show.  But the game changes when things start to go bump in the night.” 

Filming found them “digging holes in the ground in the middle of
the night” and such, but Blackthorne says he loved it.  “In the paranormal world, all sorts of strange things can happen, can’t they?” he notes archly. 

“They’ve come up with all sorts of amazing twists and turns already.”

MEANWHILE:  Speaking of reality, Blackthorne is currently editing a documentary of his own, “American Crossroads.”  He and an Australian buddy (Mister Basquaili, a famed Australian photographer) road tripped across theU.S.A.right after the 2008 economic collapse, talking to everyday folks from farmers to preachers, cowboys to folk singers about the state ofAmerica.  What did they find out there?  “The optimism and basic hope people do have, in spite of the country’s state at the moment,” he replies. “People have that in common regardless of background.”  Nice to know.

Kathryn Joosten

Eva Longoria, Teri Hatcher,  Felicity Huffman, Marcia Cross and Vanessa Williams may be in for a wild  ride as they finish out their final season of “Desperate Housewives” — in fact,  creator Marc Cherry promised as much when he and the stars met with press  recently to talk about the end of the eight-year-old phenomenon.  However,  there’s one storyline in this crazy last season that’s being handled straight:  Mrs. McCluskey will be dealing with lung cancer.  The arc has everything to  do with actress Kathryn Joosten, who plays the character, and is a two-time  survivor of the disease.

“The show knows what my medical condition is.  They’re aware of it; it hasn’t interfered with anything,” says Joosten, who won Emmys in ’05 and ’08 for her work on the series.  “They came to me and said, ‘What would you think if we did this storyline?’  And I said, ‘Wow, I think it’s a great idea.’ So lung cancer is going to be prominent, and it’s a terrific way to give [the cause] a voice.”

According to her, they’ve already shot some of the scenes, and the
production people and crew “were very supportive.  They knew it was a
personal statement for me as well.  I was kidding around saying it was practice sessions.”  She adds that she and the team “collaborated to some extent on how this might go.  The show was eager to get it right.  We didn’t want a soap opera-y, non-realistic situation.”

Joosten expects the story to play out over “several episodes near the end, but I don’t know.  They don’t tell us anything,” notes the feisty 72-year-old.  A long-time activist against lung cancer — which she believes has failed to get the attention it deserves from the public and medical community compared to other forms of the disease — she plans to “play up” this “Desperate Housewives” arc.  She’s already involved in a Pfizer campaign to draw attention to new developments in testing for tumor bio-markers that she reports can make enormous differences in lung cancer treatment.

And after “Desperate Housewives” bids farewell?  Joosten is already working on a whole new thing.  She’s ratcheting up her equestrian know-how by learning how to train a horse, and documenting the whole thing as a TV show, or maybe webisodes.  She says she knew that buying her two-year-old mare, Sprite, was the right thing to do when she found out “the lady who was taking care of her in Montana is named Mrs. McCluskey.  Can you believe it?  That proves the horse is mine.”

Ben Stiller

At long — long — last, “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty” is set to go into production in April, with Ben Stiller directing and starring.  The James Thurber tale about a milquetoast with an extremely active fantasy life has inspired big-screen desires in Jim Carrey, Mike Myers, Sacha Baron Cohen, Owen Wilson, Kevin Anderson, Ron Howard and Steven Spielberg over the last decade or so as it’s been in and out of development hell.  But Stiller’s the one who’ll be uttering Mitty’s trademark ta-pocketa-pocketa-pocketa.  He’s in active preproduction on the feature that will shoot in New York for 20th Century Fox.

Stiller’s “Mitty” will be different from both the original short story and the Danny Kaye movie of 1947.  This time, we’ll find Mitty with a sister who wants to get into a local production of Grease, and his mother in an assisted living facility.  He’ll be seen working at Life magazine,where he catalogs photographs of other people’s feats and travels — until a crucial negative turns up missing, launching him on a real-life adventure.

Remember Geri Jewell?  She was the first performer with cerebral palsy to land a role on a primetime series, way back on “The Facts of Life.”  Now the actress and stand-up comic, who also did a memorable turn as Jewell on “Deadwood,” is getting back into series action again — on J.J. Abrams’ newly-launched “Alcatraz.”  She’s playing the sister of the warden played by Jason Butler Harner, a 1960s character.

“When they made me up I looked in the mirror and I saw my mother,” she cracks.  But seriously, “I think that my character allows Jason’s character to have empathy.  Because he works with brutal killers day in and day out, he’s become hardened in some ways.  And I’m like the door to his heart.  It’s a wonderful relationship.  She’s very sarcastic, very intelligent, and that’s all I can reveal at this point.  It’s such a cool show.  It’s so way out there.”

Jewell has reaped deep emotional rewards from the memoir she released last year,  I’m Walking as Straight as I Can: Transcending Disability In Hollywood and Beyond .  “The book has been phenomenal in the sense that it has created so much — how should I say it?  I came out as a gay woman, which was kind of scary for me,” she recalls.  “I’ve had tons of emails from people with disabilities who are gay, who are thanking me for being their voice.  I’m so thankful for being able to be exactly who I am.  I think that’s what the book allowed me to do.”

She’s also getting more involved in anti-bullying activities. Jewell herself was bullied in her youth, “but I look at the kids today and the bullying because of the internet and it’s just so much worse…Truthfully, being ridiculed and made fun of in my time, it had a lot to do with giving me the drive to become a comedian.  I channeled it into a different energy and made it into a positive force.  That’s what I intend to communicate to kids today – the importance of how to do that.  It’s a key to survival and keeping the faith.  If you can spend a certain amount of time each day taking something that’s negative, that’s hurting you, and channeling the energy into something positive, you’d be surprised by the effectiveness of it.”

Dean Cain Crown Media photo by Alexx Henry

Dean Cain says he’s getting a particular kick out of playing an Army colonel in his currently-shooting “Operation Cupcake” TV movie, because it’s a part that’s in line with a family tradition.  “I have a lot of military in my family, and have enormous respect for men and women in uniform, so this is a great thing for me,” says the actor who rose to fame as the Superman of the 1990s. 

According to Cain, his grandfather was a commander in the Navy, his uncle a lieutenant colonel in the Air Force.  “I’ve been out to Iraq with our troops.  I’ve visited them all around here.  I’ll do anything I can, charity-wise, to support them — the Wounded Warrior project.  Those guys, those men and women, are amazing, and I can’t do enough to support them,” he says.

As you no doubt deduced from the title, Cain’s character isn’t going to be seen in the middle of a war zone.  “My character has missed a lot of his kid’s life because he’s always been away on deployment.  So he’s back for a couple of months, and he’s considering whether to be promoted to a general or to leave the military.  It’s really about a guy coming back and trying to get back into a family.”  Kristy Swanson also stars as Cain’s wife.

In his real life, Cain is the devoted father of Christopher, 11, who sometimes travels with him to film locales — and in consideration of whom he likes doing family-friendly fare.  “My son is perfect, wonderful.  He’s so tall and so funny and so sweet.  He’s such a good boy,” he extols.  “I’m more proud about being his Dad than anything in the world.  He just got his report card and it was really good so I’m very happy.”

Stacy Keibler

MEANWHILE:  “Operation Cupcake” is among nine original movies that the Hallmark Channel plans to air the first half of 2012.  And Cain was among the stars on hand the other night for the elegant sit-down dinner hosted by Crown Media Networks for visiting press at Pasadena’s landmark Tournament House, official home of the Tournament of Roses.  Also there were names including Steven Weber, Luke Perry, Candace Cameron Bure, Jane Seymour, Jamie Kennedy, Valerie Harper, Vivica Fox, Joely Fisher and the gorgeous Stacy Keibler, a.k.a. George Clooney’s girlfriend, who is not one of those tall women who wear flats to downplay their height. 

The 5’11″ former WWE Diva with the famously long legs wore black pumps with rhinestone-encrusted heels that raised her into the stratosphere, towering over most of the guests.  She was an absolute knockout in her very short, white and black scoop-neck dress.