Swelling the ranks of The Practice

By FRANCES GRANT

Timing is everything. Just ask Kelli Williams, who plays lawyer Lindsay Dole on David E. Kelley's serious legal drama The Practice.

Followers of The Practice, which begins its fifth season here this week, will remember that we last saw Lindsay in white wedding gown tying the knot with Bobby in a hastily arranged ceremony on Fenway Park (home to Bobby's beloved Boston Red Sox).

But, true to form, there's no mention of the newlyweds' married life in the new season-opener. The criminal defence lawyers of The Practice — and their equally committed opponents over at the District Attorney's office — are getting on with the real business of the show: demonstrating creator Kelley's talent for exploring morally complex legal cases and arguing both sides with equal conviction.

For those wondering whether Lindsay and Bobby live happily ever after, however, the woman to ask is on the phone.

"At least for a year they do," says Kelli Williams, speaking from her home in Los Angeles. "And am I allowed to tell you that my personal pregnancy is written into the show?"

Certainly. And congratulations are in order for an impeccable sense of timing. "We [she and husband, writer Ajay Sahgal] were thinking, okay, we'd like to have a second child and then it kind of worked out that Lindsay was getting married and I thought, 'Wow, leave it to Lindsay to get married and have a kid quickly'."

Not only does Williams have her pregnancy immortalised in telly fiction, she also had the relief of not having to conceal her state for the cameras. "When I was pregnant with my now 3-year-old son, I had to hide. And this time I actually get to show my belly, which was
really nice."

Another advantage of the pregnant state was providing fertile ground for a good storyline. Lindsay, who has already suffered a near-fatal stabbing at the hands of a lunatic with a bad nun's habit, becomes a sitting duck for another Kelley plot special.

"There is a lot of great stuff that happens when I'm pregnant," says Williams. "There's a good three-part story with a psycho who stalks me and even more frightening because I'm pregnant and much more vulnerable to him at that point.

"He's a serial killer and on trial, he's a mastermind who can manipulate the law and he used me, knowing I would make certain legal choices."

Williams' pregnancy isn't the only swelling of the ranks, however. Cast member Camryn Manheim's pregnancy is also written into the show this season.

"We weren't sure if he [Kelley] would write it in or not because we thought two pregnancies in the same show might be a bit much but he didn't mind showing both of them.

"It was interesting because mine is more doing it the traditional way, hers is the unconventional way of being a single mum."

Lindsay is one of the more conventional characters in a cast which sports its fair share of mavericks. Does that make Williams' job harder?

"Yeah. Lindsay, she goes below the radar a lot because she makes more the typical choices. But I like her lack of fear in terms of confrontation, she's certainly strong-minded."

Her character is, after all, a Boston girl, she says. "When I went to Boston, people — or law students — who identify with my character would come up to me and it's the same bob haircut and the same nicely tailored clothes. It's the mirror image of my character."

Although Williams says she is not nearly as conservative as Lindsay, not everyone can separate her from her fictional character, which can be a worry. There's a downside to playing a highly talented legal beagle.

"I've got a couple of letters from prisoners asking me to represent them, which is very weird. It's like, 'Oh gosh, you watch this, you really believe, you think I may have a chance at your acquittal' ... so that is a little off-putting. I don't want someone to come find me to represent them in their parallel universe of Lindsay Dole."

Williams, a native of Los Angeles, says she spent the early years of her career working as a journeyman actor and imagining she would not want to be tied down to a series.

"And I smartened up a few years later. It turned out to be the best thing I could do," she says of landing the role in the Emmy-winning best drama. "So often shows don't go on very long and I have so many friends who have done nothing but pilots every year and they're never picked up."

The 31-year-old actor says Kelley comes on to the set of the show regularly but is "a little bit of an enigma. He'll come on by and he's very like an everyman. If you see him you wouldn't think he's this high-profile, famous writer/producer."

While some of the actresses of Ally McBeal, along with The Practice's Lara Flynn Boyle, have had much attention for their dramatically shrinking figures, Williams says she doesn't feel any pressure from being a female in a Kelley show.

"No, I stand between Camryn and Lara Flynn and I'm very different from either one of them."

While Courtney Thorne-Smith, for example, is reported to have left Ally McBeal, saying she was tired of the pressure put on her by producers to lose weight and tone up, Williams says she has not experienced anything similar.

"No, not a bit. But right now the climate of weight is very thin in Hollywood. Hopefully it's a fad and will come out of fashion because a lot of women are getting too thin ... And in fact, dress sizes now — there's negative sizes. I mean, come on — it's ridiculous."

But back to the fuller figure: any word on the sex of Bobby and Lindsay's baby? In real life Williams gave birth to a daughter. On a Kelley show, as viewers know, it pays to expect the unexpected.