Beck/Smith Hollywood

Billy Campbell AMC photo

            AMC’s “The Killing” series has earned untold legions of ardent fans since its launch this month, much to the enjoyment of Billy Campbell.  He was aware the show was getting good buzz ahead of its  premiere, but the former “Once and Again” star admits, “By this point in my career, I try not to get too excited.”  The series, the adaptation of a hit drama from Denmark, has to do with just one murder case, that of a young girl, as details and clues emerge from the perspectives of the cops working the case, the girl’s parents, the suspects, and a local politician — Campbell’s character.

            Of course he’s not going to tell how his character is connected to the case.

            But Campbell can say, “The genesis of my involvement is actually pretty funny.  I auditioned for this thing ages before anything happened.  I went on tape for the casting director and I didn’t get a good reception.  They went right on by me and kept looking for their Darren Richmond.  It was disappointing.  The show was going to shoot in Vancouver, where I wanted to stay.”

            But Campbell brushed off his dismay and turned back to the other great love of his life — sailing.  He made the commitment to join the crew of the tall ship Picton Castle and circumnavigate the globe, something he’s actually done before.  “I was a hair away from disappearing for 14 months.  I was going to give up my apartment in Vancouver, when my agent called and said, ‘Remember that thing you really wanted that you didn’t get?  The director was on your flight the other day.  You got the job, and I’ve arranged for you to have dinner with her tonight.’”

            It turned out that director Patty Jenkins (“Monster”) was on a plane with Campbell from L.A. to Vancouver.  She watched him while aboard and decided he’d be perfect to play the character, called her “The Killing” team and said, “‘I think you guys are crazy.  I think this is the guy.’ …I had no idea she was on the plane,” Campbell says.   Jenkins turned out to be “this backpacking chick I saw at the airport.  She and her husband — I was looking at them with envy,” Campbell recalls, because they looked like they were headed off on an adventure. 

            Which is where Campbell will be, once he wraps shooting of the first season of “The Killing.”  (Yes, there could be a second season, he says.)  “I did the pilot, then went and joined the Picton Castle on their current circumnavigation for five months in the South Pacific.  When we’re done here, I’ll rejoin them for the last couple of months of their present voyage.”

            He notes, “There was always a part of me pining away to get to the open sea, but I spent a lot of years wasting my life away in Los Angeles.”  When his friend and one-time cast mate Stephen Lang got him started reading the Patrick O’Brien Master and Commander novels, Campbell says, “it peaked my appetite and I realized, ‘Wow, if I don’t start doing some of the things I want to do now, I might never do them.’”  He started off spending “a few years on a ship in Norway, then the captain of that vessel told me about the Picton Castle” — and he took his first sail around the world. 

            Now, “I have this wonderful job, with people in front of and behind the camera that I really enjoy, doing it in the city of my dreams, and every day getting do to well-written, juicy scenes.  I’m really soaking it all up.  The toughest part is being away from my ship.”

Sebastien Stella

          If Reese Witherspoon ever gets tired of acting, it sounds like she could have a circus career, for real.  At least, that’s the sense one gets when talking to “Water for Elephants” choreographer Sebastien Stella, who spent weeks training Reese and Christoph Waltz for their circus performances in the feature that also stars Robert Pattinson.  He tells us that both stars were “great, just awesome” to work with.  Reese especially so.  “She was willing to do anything asked of her, and we made the most of her background in gymnastics and tumbling when creating her act.  Pretty quickly I was expecting her to do difficult tricks, pushing her to do more and more,” says Stella, whose background ranges from starring stints with Cirque du Soliel to serving as aerial choreographer and co-performer with pop superstars the likes of Pink.  (He’s also seen performing in the film.)

            In fact, Stella says the only challenging part of working with Reese was trying to find rehearsal times.  “She’s a very busy lady.”  Challenges of choreographing the movement in the film included authentically recreating a 1931 circus experience — complete with old-fashioned rigging — while making sure it had enough wow factor “to connect emotionally for 2011 audiences.”

           He not only dealt with the human performers involved, but all the animals.

            “Of course, the story of the movie has to do with violence with the animals, which is terrible” — and the reason veterinarian Jacob Jankowski (Pattinson) enters the picture.  But behind the scenes, “Everyone took amazing care of the animals,” Stella assures.  “They were treated like stars, respected as artists.”

Kelsey Grammer

For decades, TV executives and advertisers have based decisions about what you watch on the numbers of 18 to 49-year-olds who are looking at various shows.  The importance of the 18 to 49 bracket has been unquestioned, unassailable.  Until now.

The greying of America in general, and television viewership in particular, has already had a transforming effect on the TV landscape, with more shows fronted by stars in their fifties and up than ever before.   Kelsey Grammer is the latest, with his “Boss” dramedy heading into production for Starz and Lionsgate TV.   Gus Van Sant makes his TV directing debut on the project about a Chicago mayor with a dark secret.

There are obvious absurdities in the thinking that’s dominated demographic considerations for so long.  David Poltrack, Chief Research Officer of CBS Corp. and President of its CBS Vision business unit, points out, “The idea that a 49-year-old woman and her 18-year-old daughter are of equal potential in buying a product, and then when the mother turns 50 she ceases to be of any value, doesn’t make any sense.”

In fact, “Traditional age-based targets are less and less relevant,” according to Poltrack, with whom we spoke for an AARP.org story about current trends in TV as the audience, and stars, age up.

“We now have very large databases and analytical tools that allow us to look at audiences in much more meaningful ways — by lifestyle, family situation, technology orientation.”

He explains, “What happens now, with cable television and satellite television connections with set-top boxes that are able to monitor what is being watched in a home, you’re able to get information from hundreds of thousands, even millions of households.”  At the same time, each time consumers use shopper cards at markets and pharmacies, their purchasing data is recorded.   Combining and comparing data on shows viewed and products purchased provides information on the effectiveness of commercials.

With such a wealth of pertinent data available to mine, making ad buying decisions based on age ranges seems clunky and outmoded.  Poltrack informs that a new CBS study using these cutting-edge means debunked the notion that shows viewed by 18 to 49-year-olds generate more product sales.

Could a paradigm shift in how advertisers view audience demographics be at hand?

“That’s what we’re hoping,” he says.

Beaches, the Broadway musical, is “very close to being finished” reports Iris Rainer Dart, whose beloved 1985 novel was adapted into the hit 1988 feature starring Bette Midler.  She owns the rights to her novel and has been working with composer David Aaron Austin on the stage musical for “about four years.  He’s half my age.  When I work with him I feel I’m half my age,” adds the esteemed writer with a laugh.

Dart has recently been focusing her considerable energies on her The People in the Picture, which gets its official opening tonight (4/28).  The original musical, written by Dart with songs and music by Mike Stoller and Artie Butler, has two-time Tony winner Donna Murphy playing a woman both in her prime and as a grandmother — in her 1930s life as a member of a Yiddish film company in Poland, and in her 1970s life as a New York City-based Bubbe. Theatergoing bloggers have been lavish in their praise of Murphy’s performance as she transitions back and forth between youth and old age as her saga comes to life.

Dart says she brought Beaches musical material along with her from her Monterey, CA home to New York, “naively thinking I would have time to work on it here.”  Instead, she’s been caught up in a whirl of People activities, including a pre-opening night party she and Stoller planned for last night, and an opening night party put on by the Roundabout Theatre Company tonight.

Iris Rainer Dart

Works like The People in the Picture are “the reason we have to support not-for-profit theaters,” Dart feels.  “They’ve reached out and taken a risk.  This is not a movie adaptation, not a cartoon character — but actually an original story.  Not-for-profit theaters are the ones that are able to, and should be, taking those risks.  Our experience with Roundabout has been A-plus.”

People in the Picture winds its limited run June 19, and Dart is hopeful, of course, that it will do well enough to find its way into a commercial theater.  “I’d like to be strong enough to not pay attention to reviews, but I know I’m not,” she admits.

She recalls that Stephen Schwartz was her earliest musical collaborator — when she was a 19-year-old theater student at Carnegie Mellon, and the multiple Oscar-winning composer of Wicked was merely a promising 16-year-old tunesmith.  And “Wicked is still running five years later after bad reviews.  So who knows?  We’ll hold a good thought and hope they give us good points for originality and all the things Broadway says that it wants.”

Dart started The People in the Picture when her daughter was 10.  Now she is 25, and Dart says she told her, “No matter what the outcome, I wouldn’t trade a minute of this experience.”

And once the show is launched, she’ll turn her attention back to Beaches, the musical.  She says she stays in touch with Bette Midler, by the way.  “In fact, she’s coming to see The People in the Picture next week.”

Warren Christie, Anna Chlumsky Hallmark Channel photo

Hunky Warren Christie of “October Road” and “Happy Town” fame steps into the realm of family-friendly romantic comedy with “Three Weeks, Three kids,” premiering May 7 on The Hallmark Channel.  He tells us the change of pace project not only gave him the opportunity to reunite with Anna Chlumsky — they’d done a pilot together a couple years ago — but to show off his acting chops to his nieces and nephews.

“There’s a lot of things that I do that aren’t really age-appropriate,” Christie admits. “This allows them to see their uncle in something.”

“Three Weeks, Three Kids” has Chlumsky as a commitment-phobic, maturity-averse graphic artist, who learns some giant life lessons when she volunteers to take care of her nieces and nephew while her sister is in Europe.  Christie’s the neighbor who gets called upon for help.  “It was a lot of fun to play a nice guy in a lighthearted movie,” he says.

The actor recently wrapped McG’s 2012 action-comedy “This Means War,” with Tom Hardy, Chris Pine and Reese Witherspoon.

“Mine is a small little part.  I play Reese Witherspoon’s ex-boyfriend.  Every time they run into each other, it’s awkward — for her.  Clearly, he’s moved on and his life is perfect,” says Christie, “so it’s fun.”

Right now, he’s getting ready to begin shooting SyFy’s July-premiering series, “Alphas,” with David Straithairn.  “I actually just relocated to Toronoto,” notes Christie, who grew up in the area.  “I’ll be here shooting for the next five months.”

“Alphas” is about a group of people “with heightened abilities — we’re not saying super heroes — and David Straithairn is the doctor who helps them all to cope.  These abilities have drawbacks in their personal lives,” he says of the series, created by “X-Men: The Last Stand” and “The Incredible Hulk” writer Zak Penn.  “It’s cool — a nice blend of action and comedy and all that stuff.”

Chad Michael Collins

Chad Michael Collins credits his parents for his casting as the lead of “Sniper: Reloaded.”  The folks provided (among other things, of course) just the right DNA for Collins to resemble the young Tom Berenger.

“I did a film for Sony, ‘Lake Placid 2,’” explains the handsome actor, “and when the producer wanted to get a reboot of the ‘Sniper’ franchise up, he kept me in mind.  He said, ‘Chad has such a physical likeness to Tom Berenger, we could use him for an origin story.”

The thought, initially, was to have Collins in flashback scenes as Berenger’s character during the Vietnam War.  Later, plans shifted toward a new contemporary story instead, with Collins playing the estranged son of Berenger’s character from the 1990s’ “Sniper” films — and Billy Zane back as his partner, Richard Miller.  The actioner, being released on DVD and Blu-Ray today  (4/26) by Sony, has Collins as a Marine leading a UN peace-keeping mission in war-torn Congo — a mission that goes harrowingly wrong, and forces him into reluctantly using his innate gift for marksmanship.

The film is “wide open” for a sequel, according to Collins, and “me and Billy are both excited to entertain the idea.”  A fan of the original movies, he also enjoys entertaining the idea of a possible encounter with Berenger at some point, but for now his attention is on the first movie.

They shot in South Africa over five weeks, in a “a really majestic location,” Collins says.  “The wildlife was incredible.”  His role  was extremely physical — lots of “running, jumping, fighting, shooting guns and clawing through dirt” as he puts it.  But that suited Collins just fine.  He recently guested on “CSI: Miami” as an Ultimate Fighting Champion, and looked the part.

Bobby Flay NBC photo

Superstar chef Bobby Flay sounds amused by critic and fan response to his daughter, Sophie’s appearance on NBC’s “The Next Great American Restaurant” last week.  Words such as “harsh,” “toughest judge,” “disturbingly mature” and “the first 14-year-old who’s intimidated me” have been filling the blogosphere in the wake of her crisp critiques of the restaurateur wannabes’ food and plans for giveaway toys on the show’s kid-centric installment.

“I think she was fair.  I don’t think she was harsh.  We told her, ‘Just be honest about what you taste and what you see,’” says Dad.

According to Flay, Sophie’s involvement “just came about at the last minute.  I didn’t know the rundown of all the challenges, and when I was reading that the next show was going to be with kids, I said to the executive producer, ‘If we’d thought about this, it would have been fun to get my daughter to come out and comment…She’s grown up around food.  Food is really important to her.’  She said, ‘Let’s get her on a plane.’  Sophie is pretty relaxed about everything.  She liked the idea of coming to L.A. and doing a little shopping.”

So, can we expect another Chef Flay in future years?

“No, definitely not,” he answers.  “Her clear vision is, she wants to be a fashion editor at some point.  That’s what she really wants to do.  People have always asked her whether she wants to be a chef like her dad, and she always says, ‘We already have that covered in our family.’”

MEANWHILE:  With just a couple weeks to go before “ANGR’s” season finale May 1, Flay acknowledges getting caught up emotionally with some of the contestants.  “I think you can’t not,” he says.  “It’s just a natural thing that happens.  I have to admit, I have some people who – I wouldn’t say they’re favorites, but whose stories definitely pull your heartstrings a little bit more.”  He adds that he finds it interesting that viewer favorites “seem to change from week to week.”

Flay also finds himself getting peppered with questions wherever he goes, pertaining either to 1) Who is going to win, or 2) How to sign up to audition for the next season of the show.  Of course, he avers when it comes to Question 1.  “People would really rather see how it plays out for themselves,” he notes.  As for Question 2, first we’ll have to find out whether there’ll be another season of the reality series.  Despite its obvious ratings challenges, he feels, “We’ve picked up traction as we’ve gone along.”

Edward Asner, Warren Buffett

The assignment of playing Warren Buffett in HBO’s forthcoming “Too Big to Fail” movie has left Edward Asner “very impressed” with the Bershire Hathaway billionaire.

“He seems to be, from all I’ve ever read about him, a square shooter.  He makes his money about as honestly as you can when you’re working in billions, and that’s quite an achievement.  Unfortunately, there aren’t that many who imitate him,” complains the esteemed, seven-time Emmy-winning actor and former Screen Actors Guild president.

Asner has learned through mutual acquaintances that Buffett is happy with his casting in the saga about the 2009 bank bailouts.  “I was pleased to hear that,” he says.

Asked whether he’d like to meet his real-life alter ego, he replies, “I’d love to.  I hear it’s quite possible, too.  Funny, I know of a rich entrepreneur who called him and said he’d like to meet with him.  Buffett said, ‘Sure, how about tomorrow at 4 o’clock?’  That surprised him and he said, ‘Well, I was thinking, I’ll be in town in June and I wondered if we could meet then?’  And Buffett replied, ‘Oh, I never know where I[m going to be that far in advance.’”

Chockablock with stars (William Hurt, Paul Giamatti, Matthew Modine, Bill Pullman, Billy Crudup, Topher Grace, Cynthia Nixon, Michael O’Keefe, Tony Shalhoub and James Woods), the event presentation, directed by Curtis Hanson, is coming our way May 23.  Asner says he’ll be flying to New York for the May 16 premiere.

“Mine is not a big role, but it gave me a chance to work with Curtis Hanson,” he notes.  “I liked it a lot.  He’s a very calm fellow who strikes only when he needs to.”

Among the challenges that faced Hanson and company, of course, was keeping the drama from downing in the myriad complexities of the threatened financial melt-down.  Does it?

“It better,” is Asner’s response.  “The book (Andrew Ross Sorkin’s best-seller, on which the film is based) was so successful in pinpointing the high crimes and misdemeanors of the period, if the movie doesn’t achieve that, it would be a surprise.”

Dr. Lisa Masterson

Dr. Lisa Masterson of “The Doctors” says she thought long and hard before deciding to include the most bitter aspects of her bittersweet childhood in her new “Paper Dollhouse” memoir.  She paints a vivid picture of her late mother as relentless, beguiling and daring, finding ways to see to it that — despite being a single mother with little money — Lisa could get into top private schools, mingle with the elite and achieve her dreams.  But she also shows that among other things, her mother, on occasion, had her strip and then beat her until she bled.

“I really wanted to portray her as a hero,” says the USC-trained OB/GYN, who is on staff at Los Angeles’ Cedars-Sinai Medical Center.  “Heroes are human beings.  They have all the shortcomings and humanity that everyone else does.  You can still be a good person and an amazing person and not be perfect.  You can go down the wrong road.”  Of those awful episodes of being hit with a belt, she says, “She never meant it maliciously; it was a vent.”

Dr. Lisa is also unsparing of herself in parts of the book.  Feeling threatened by an also-smart Asian girl during her school days, she became downright malicious toward her — something she still feels badly about.  “It’s the same thing.  If I’m going to tell the whole story about my mother, I’m going to share this about me,” she says.

Her hope is that fans see her story in a wider sense, as a story of a black woman and her daughter determined to achieve the American dream — using every bit of wits, wherewithal and wiles they possessed to make it happen.

Which it certainly did.  Dr. Lisa’s long list of accomplishments includes not only television fame and a thriving private practice, but speaking before the UN on issues of women’s health in developing nations, founding the first OB/GYN residency program in sub-Saharan Africa, and starting birthing clinics in Kenya and India.

“You see a woman with a lot of education sitting in front of you, one who fought very much against racism and sexism.  It has not been an easy road here,” she says.  “I have scrambled for what I’ve achieved.  But I’m also showing that I got started in medicine as a candy striper because I didn’t want to babysit my baby brother.”

Hal Linden

To say that Hal Linden’s “Never Too Late” album was a long time coming would be quite an understatement.

The beloved star of “Barney Miller” fame tells us his yearning to make a record “goes all the way back before I was an actor.  I started out as a musician.  I had a band, I played with bands, I sang with bands.  I looked forward to recording, and then what happened was, I went into the Army, and when I came out, I was a dinosaur.  Everything was rock ‘n’ roll.  It was traumatic at the time.  I put music aside, and decided to go into the theater, which had a pretty good result, didn’t it?” says Hal, whose long list of credits spans Broadway, TV and film.

His musical dreams remained alive, however, and today finds him wrapping up a string of 28 concert dates in Florida — as well as getting ready to launch “Never Too Late” on Amazon.com, his own hallinden.net website and elsewhere.  The album has him working with different musical configurations — big bands, combos etc. — and features musical styles from jazz standards to classic pop songs, big band numbers and favorites from the American Songbook.

“The title tune is what it’s about it’s about — ‘Never Too Late,’  just that.  I’m using that as my encore, my signature song,” says Hal.  “Audiences are really responding to it.”  As far as his record, he adds, “It’s already been very rewarding just to put it together, to make it work.  If it’s only for me it’s satifsying.”