Life's a "Party" for Lacey Chabert

by Bridget Byrne

"I have 'HO' and he only has 'HORS.' I'm beating him," Lacey Chabert says, with natural glee, after the basketball finds the net.
Chabert has been playing a quick game of HORSE with one of the crew members outside the Sony Studios sound stage where Fox's "Party of Five" is filmed.
In the hour-long drama series, Chabert portrays Claudia Salinger, one of five siblings learning how to survive and grow, as both individuals and a family, following the death of their parents.
Throughout the coming year, the show's third season, Claudia will continue to mature both physically and emotionally in front of our eyes. Chabert has had to do that too—off-screen as well as on—while confronting the challenges of being a teenager in modern-day America.
Just 14, Chabert is a slim, dark-haired girl with lively brown eyes who somehow manages to seem thoughtful and responsible even when she is giggling about the excitement of meeting Brad Pitt. That happened when she attended the Golden Globe Awards last season; her show won Best Dramatic Series. "I got my picture taken with him and everything" she exclaims. "It was so exciting when we won. I see the pictures of me standing up on my chair, but I don't remember doing that. It's all a cloud, but I do remember locking eyes with Steve Martin!"
Chabert's manner is charming—neither jaded nor falsely pert. So it sounds believable when she says she considers acting "kind of like my hobby, something I would do like I might play baseball or take dancing class after school. My parents say I must keep it a hobby."
But, of course, being cast in a long-running series is a full-time job, a long day's work during which schooling is built into hours on the set. Inside the "Party of Five" sound stage, where the interior of the Salingers' Victorian-style San Francisco home has been created in all its charming clutter, an intense scene is taking place in which the oldest family member, Charlie, played by Matthew Fox, deals with the emotional breakdown of his on-again, off-again girlfriend, Kirsten, played by Paula Devicq. Chabert has only a couple of silent reaction shots during much of the day's shooting.
"It's hard to play the scenes in which you are just watching. It's harder to act without words, to try to reveal something which just comes from your emotions and feelings without the help of words," says Chabert, who likes acting because "…it communicates, and to touch people is the greatest joy."
Soon she must head to her school room, which she admits is "sometimes a bummer" because she's the only member of the cast who has to do so. The actors playing the other teenage family members are portraying characters younger than their age and the baby of the bunch is played by 3-year-old twins.
However, reminded that she's filming on the old MGM location where such stars as Judy Garland once had to attend to their lessons, Chabert reacts with interest and enthusiasm. "Ooh, `The Wizard of Oz.' I love that movie. I was a dancing Munchkin once when I was 7 or 8 back in Mississippi."
One of four children growing up in Purvis, Miss., Chabert began acting in local community theater following the lead of older sister Wendy. At 9, in New York, she auditioned at an open call for "Les Miserables" and found herself starring for two years in the Broadway musical as the Young Cosette. Now that she's working in Hollywood, her whole family, father Tony, mother Julie, sisters Wendy and Crissy and brother T.J. have all moved West.
"There's been a lot of sacrifice from my parents," she says, gratefully, noting how her mother has to work doubletime to combine being with her every day on the set and avoid neglecting the needs of the other family members in a household whose favorite TV program, Chabert informs us, is "Jeopardy."
Julie, her mother, in turn notes her daughter's exceptional qualities. "Lacey always sees the good things. She's an upbeat person. She's always had this great curiosity and energy."
Another champion of the young actress is the show's loquacious creator and executive producer, Chris Keyser, who joins her in her dressing room, where she is talking happily about boys and clothes. She's been experimenting with makeup, which is scattered on the dressing table, and says her current favorite shoes are funky, silver Doc Martens. She's dressed simply this day, however, wearing a black T-shirt and cutoff denims.
As for boys, Chabert is hoping that the show will give her somebody "cute" as a boyfriend. Last season it gave her her first kiss, with a boy called Enrico, played by Jonathan Hernandez. "It was so weird," the young actress remembers, "because my first screen kiss really was my first kiss. It was incredibly embarrassing and we had to practice it over and over and my lips were chapped the next morning."
But she also adds that the show's producers are considerate about asking for her input on how teenagers really think and feel confronting new experiences. "We talk pretty frequently," producer Keyser said. "If Lacey has a thought about something, we talk about how it might impact the show."
The show has been praised for reflecting real-life dilemmas. Keyser, co-creator with Amy Lippman (with whom he also co-executive produced and wrote the drama series "Sisters") says "Party" is a show in which "big things happen in small ways." But he admits, "It's not really real life. It's more intense than life. More happens to this family than happens to any family."
While Keyser continues, talking about maintaining the mix of upbeat and downer that gives the show its complexity, Chabert heads off to her schoolroom trailer for a lesson. Inside, the trailer looks like any another schoolroom, the walls pinned with math and geography charts and illustrations of assorted insects. Chabert must spend three hours here every day in sessions lasting a minimum of 20 minutes.
"Sometimes I miss a rehearsal and they have to block it out without me, and sometimes it's hard to come back to take a math test after an emotional scene," Chabert explains. It is clear from her sense of life as a whole that she takes her lessons seriously and conscientiously.
Away from both work and school, Chabert practices music, including playing the violin, something incorporated into Claudia's character. She likes to golf with her dad, enjoys karate lessons with her brother and hangs out with her dog, Abu. "He's the most adorable dog," she exclaims about her miniature Pinscher. "So hyper. He thinks he's human. He's so protective and he talks to me on the phone, trying to talk like a human." She also likes going to the movies, citing recent favorites as "Phenomenon" and "Sense and Sensibility."
"I like films that leave you with a happy moment when you come out of the theater," Chabert says, "I don't like to feel…"—she struggles for a moment to select the right word—"…attacked, that's it. I don't like to feel attacked by a film."
This particular comment reflects Chabert's young personality, free of the need to try to sell something she doesn't truly feel. It's a trait visible as well in her work on "Party of Five."