Trash talker’s simple message
By Stephen Downie, THE DAILY TELEGRAPH, August 16, 2007

LIKE Earl Hickey, Jaime Pressly is a firm believer in karma. While she may not be trying to rewrite the wrongs of her life, or carry a list with her misdeeds with her wherever she goes, just like Hickey, Pressly believes you reap what you sow.

As it happens, the Emmy-nominated actress, who stars in Seven’s comedy, My Name Is Earl, is harvesting a bumper crop of good fortune.

As well as being part of one of the standout comedies on TV, Pressly gave birth to her first child, Dezi James Calvo, in May.

She can trace her Zen state of being back to when she was a 15-year-old model in Japan.

“I had to walk through this temple every day in order to get home from the modelling agency and I would always stop and kind of watch everybody, and it was pretty amazing to me,” she says.

“Just the whole vibe that do unto others as you would have them do unto you, do good things and good things happen, and do bad things and bad things happen – it’s very simple, you know.”

It’s a simple philosophy that is at the heart of My Name Is Earl. Hickey, played by Jason Lee, is a small-time crook who, while in hospital, suddenly deduces that his run of bad luck is caused by bad karma. Pressly plays Hickey’s ex-wife, the sexy, although trashy, Joy Turner.

Born in North Carolina, Pressly moved to Los Angeles with her mother. A model from a young age, she would seemingly have little in common with her Earl character, apart from a fiercely determined streak.

But Pressly says she sees similarity between Joy and her own tough-talking grandmother, who has passed away.

“My whole life she would say things like, ‘Jaime, men are like parking places. All the good ones are taken. The only ones that are left are handicapped. So, honey, you just need to calm down and find you a man and settle down’. I was 17,” Pressly recalls.

“She just had this spitfire way about her. But the same things you hated about her were the same things you loved about her, just like Joy.

“That blatant, blunt honesty, is what’s very endearing about the character, and most of the women that come up to me say they love her and they quote her. They live vicariously through Joy, because she is that woman who goes out and says whatever the hell she wants to say and has no fear.

“She tells it like it is and speaks to a man in a heartbeat like she’s a man, and that’s kind of cool. She just is what she is. May we all be as honest as Joy.”

My Name Is Earl is back this week after a short hiatus and the action picks up roughly three-quarters of the way through the second season.

The remaining episodes focus on Joy’s pregnancy(she is acting as a surrogate mother for her sister).

Fortunately, producers were able to work Pressly’s own pregnancy to fiance DJ Eric Calvo into the show.

Pressly says she’s grateful to be employed on a show that has a great sense of “camaraderie” between cast and crew.

“I think that really comes through on the screen so you realise that everybody generally does care about each other and that’s very endearing.”

* My Name Is Earl, Sunday, Seven, 8pm

From The Daily Telegraph

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