TV Week (Australia) 31 March 1990 - "House guest from hell!".
Transcription

"HOUSE GUEST FROM HELL !"  Kirstie has a great working relationship with Travolta... but wouldn't want to live with him.

Although Look Who's Talking co-stars Kirstie Alley and John Travolta admit they have a great relationship, Kirstie has a different story when she's asked to rate Travolta as a house guest.

Kirstie is in Los Angeles talking to TV WEEK about her latest movie, Madhouse, which is a comedy about a couple who are invaded by house guests who refuse to leave.

Kirstie and her husband, actor Parker Stevenson -- recently seen in Australia in All The Rivers Run II -- live in a large ranch-style house just out of Los Angeles with their 50 pets. And she admits they're often bombarded with their own "house guests from hell".

"I take people in -- friends with broken hearts or friends who just need a place to stay -- and they become my house guests anywhere from three months to a year," Kirstie says. "John Travolta rates as the number one hardest house guest in the world!'' she adds, slightly tongue-in-cheek about the actor, who was recently in Australia at the TV WEEK Logie Awards as a special guest.

"One time I was setting the house up for guests and the big mistake I made was telling John that I wanted him to be my guest and be a guinea pig like he was trying out a hotel, so I could set up my guest wing properly.

"I made out a questionnaire asking what soaps he'd prefer, what candies he'd like, what time he'd like tea ... I guess I got all that stuff from the Pierre Hotel (a luxury hotel in New York). John filled this all out and Parker and I ended up running around the house like slaves, saying, 'Here's thisJohn' and 'Here's that John'.

"He was horrible and took all of his stuff with him -- all the shampoos -- and that was the end of the Pierre Hotel house guests!''

Kirstie, who stars in Cheers as the vivacious Rebecca Howell, is even more over-the-top in real life, displaying a delightfully raunchy sense of humor and absolutely no fear of what her outrageous comments will look like in print.

"If you believed what they wrote, John is still living in the back room of our house," Kirstie says with a chuckle. "If somebody wants to do you in, they're going to do their best whatever comes out of your mouth.  If I keep checking myself, I'd be living to read my own articles, which would bore me to death."

In Madhouse, Kirstie and Night Court star John Larroquette play Mark and Jessie Bannister, a yuppie couple who've just moved into their first home. In a postal mix-up, a letter from Mark's cousin, who he hasn't seen for more than 15 years, arrives informing them that Fred and Bernice will be arriving that very day.

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Before Mark and Jessie can plot to get rid of the pair, who quickly take over their lives, more house guests arrive, until the pair are not just struggling to maintain their home, but their sanity!

"In most films the women only get to be the guy's sidekick," Kirstie says. "You're someone's wife running around saying,'Okay honey', or 'You're right, honey' and 'Yes honey'. I liked that Madhouse wasn't one of those type of roles and it gave me the chance to go further out on a limb and be a little wilder than I've been before."

With her own "house guests from hell" stories, Kirstie says it was easy for her to identify with her character, Jessie.

"It's hard enough to be married," she says in her breezy, sarcastic style. "You're gonna live with one person then you have children. Yuk! Your children are hard enough to live with!

"Now, they're blood so you don't have a choice but let's say your husband introduces this guy into your home that he knew from college. You have no real blood relationship so when he makes you sick, you want to kick his butt out ... am I right?"

It's this offbeat sense of humor which has endeared Kirstie to Cheers fans, as her character Rebecca goes out of her way to crush Sam Malone (Ted Danson) by bluntly telling him she's not interested in him romantically.

"What I want personally for Rebecca is to get pregnant with Sam's baby and not want him to marry her or be the father," Kirstie says with a wicked glint in her eye.

"I want her to force him to pretend he doesn't even know she's having the child then tell him she will be naming the baby Sam Howell and not Sam Malone ! "

Kirstie seems pleased that her role in Cheers allows her to exercise her wicked sense of humor, last publicised when she managed to take an embarrassing photo of Ted Danson in the shower.

''NOW we have a new game," she explains. "We call it Bright Lights, Big City. In this game you pay people in the cast to do things.

"For example, I paid George Wendt $150 during dinner to spray Woody Harrelson down with shaving cream, but then he turned around and gave Woody $20 not to spray him back. Naturally, Woody came after me instead!

"People's pants have been pulled down; people have been sprayed; people have been spat on.

"After last week's show, the set looked like the Hell's Angels had been in a hotel room ! "

Cheers has another season to shoot before its seven-year contract is up, but Kirstie says she's able to work on other projects during her hiatus.

She confirms that a sequel to Look Who's Talking is set to begin production later this year.
 

From Jenny Cooney in Los Angeles
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