‘Earl’ to remain man behind bars
By Alex Strachan, CANWEST NEWS SERVICE, August 23, 2007

It’s a rule of thumb in TV — especially comedy — that a baby kills the show, but don’t tell that to the people who put together My Name is Earl.

Earl repeats one of its funnier episodes of the past season, Guess Who’s Coming Out of Joy, in which the nefarious Earl (Jason Lee) flashes back to Joy’s (Jaime Pressly) pregnancy with a baby he assumed — wrongly, it turns out — was his.

The episode, which first aired in February, was written by My Name is Earl’s creator, Greg Garcia, who was responsible for lame-o sitcoms like Yes, Dear before he struck it rich, creatively speaking, with Earl.

This is a change-of-pace episode, in that Earl doesn’t repair any past misdeeds or cross anything off his to-do list. It’s all about karma and life’s strange twists and turns, and — in a strange, almost offhand way — it reflects My Name is Earl at its sweet, wise best.

There’s a deliriously zany reveal, in which Earl (Lee) learns definitively that the baby isn’t his, and a wonderful “whoa there” speech by Earl’s best bud Darnell (Eddie Steeples), in which Darnell talks about hypotheticals and what-not (“What if things are complicated with the real daddy right now? What if Joy doesn’t seem to love the real daddy anymore, and the real daddy’s fiscal instability, volatile living conditions and possible secret identity doesn’t lend itself to creating an environment that is conducive to raising a child right now?”).

When My Name is Earl ended the season in May, Earl found himself in the crowbar motel as a guest of the state — with free room and board, you might say — and when the new season picks up next month, he’ll still be there.

“He’ll be in prison for a while,” Garcia confirmed at the Television Critics Association’s recent summer meeting.

“We didn’t want to come back in season three and go, ‘Oh, he’s out. There was a technicality.’ When we decided to do it, we knew we were going to go all the way. We’re fortunate in that Earl has a past where he knows a lot of people in prison.”

Earl will still work on his karmic list from behind bars. There are people he wronged who are in the hoosegow with him, so he will continue to do good deeds, to make amends.

Garcia insists My Name is Earl won’t morph into Prison Break; he plans to rely on flashbacks, and there’ll be an hour-long homage to Cops at some point during the season.

Garcia says that if Earl is to remain fresh, each season has to leave a distinct mark.

“In the first season, we felt we needed to set up the premise of the list, and really stick to that. We tried to find as many ways to tell that story as differently as we could, and we felt we did a good job going into season two. Then we decided to tell some stories (that) take place over the whole season. And now we’ve put him in prison. It’s about wanting to keep it fresh every year. We’ll always have the list. The list will always be there. But it’s fun to have other things to go with, too.”

My Name is Earl returns with new episodes Sept. 27. Until then, do catch the reruns, if you’re so inclined. Earl is that rare TV comedy that holds up well on repeat viewing. Global, NBC

From CanWest News Service

My Name is Earl: Season 3 Updates
By Kris De Leon, BUDDY TV, August 23, 2007

My Name is Earl returns for another season this fall. While season 2 ended with a cliffhanger of sorts, series creator Greg Garcia hints on some details that will hopefully satisfy the curiosity of its anxious fans.

Earl, played by Jason Lee, takes the fall for ex-wife Joy, played by Jaime Pressly, and so ends up in the slammer as the new season begins.

Read on to find out what’s in store for season 3.

“He’ll be in prison for a while,” Garcia revealed. “We didn’t want to come back in season 3 and just go, ‘Oh, he’s out of prison. There was a technicality.’ When we decided to do it, we knew we were going to do it. We’re very fortunate that Earl has a past where he knows a lot of people in prison. So there are people on his list that are in prison. It’s actually fortunate for him to be there for a little while.”

“We tell stories in a way that we have a lot of flashback episodes so that it’s easy for us to get out of prison for a while just the way we tell stories. We’re doing another Cops episode this year, an hour-long Cops episode. So we have a lot of ways to get out of there,” he added.

Although Earl’s list remains to be a principle element of the series, Garcia intends to add in a few twists and turns to avoid a lackluster show.

“I could say we wanted more flexibility. In the first season we really felt that we had a premise that we wanted to set up and really stick to the list, and we tried to find as many ways to tell that story differently as we could. We felt like we did a good job of going to season two. So that’s the first one we decided, ‘Okay, we’re going to really tell some stories that take place over the whole season.’ I think it’s like wanting to keep it fresh every year. That’s why we put him in prison at the end of the year and that’s why he’s going to be in prison this year. We’re always going to have the list. We’re always going to have that to go to. We’re always just doing stories that just have to do with a list but it’s fun to have other things to go with,” he explained.

According to Garcia, Earl ending up in prison is also a strategy for allowing the character to gradually grow.

“We were always worried about him changing too fast, the character, and so we tried to spoon it out a little at a time. But knowing where we were going to end last season with him going to prison, we weren’t afraid to go ahead and start giving him a lot of things that he wanted in life, and we did a little arc of three or four at the end where he actually started getting his life together. The whole time, we knew we were going to take it all away from him and send him to prison, so that was kind of by design,” he said.

As for other season 3 updates, My Name is Earl has also added a new recurring character in the form of Michael Rapaport, popularly known for his role on The War at Home. The 37-year-old actor will be gracing the series as an inmate in the jail where Earl is serving time.

My Name is Earl season 3 premieres on Thursday, September 27 on NBC.

From Buddy TV

Jaime: I was no body double
THE SUN ONLINE, August 14, 2007

STUNNING JAIME PRESSLY has laid to rest rumours she was used as a body double for DREW BARRYMORE in Poison Ivy.

The My Name is Earl actress says she was mistakenly thought to have been the naked stand-in for Drew, who never appears in the sequel, because stills of Jaime were used in the second film.

She told Playboy magazine: “Drew plays Ivy in the first Poison Ivy film, and in Poison Ivy 2 ALYSSA MILANO plays the art student who moves into Ivy’s old room in a house with other students.

“She finds a diary and pictures of Drew’s character in a closet. The pictures are supposed to be of Drew, but they’re of me, though you never see my face.

“When Alyssa reads Ivy’s diary – Drew’s diary – she imagines her, but instead of Ivy being Drew, she’s me.

“People say I body-doubled her and it was my boobs and my ass in the movie instead of hers, but that isn’t the case.

“I haven’t had a body double myself, but I’m not opposed to it.”

From The Sun Online

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

DOA Features Jaime Pressly In A Bikini – DVD News
By Rafe Telsch, CINEMA BLEND, August 28, 2007

The movie adaptation of DOA: Dead or Alive is finally headed for DVD. This shouldn’t come as much of a shock. After all, for the longest time it was expected the movie would be a straight-to-DVD release, bypassing theaters altogether. This was partly due to quality and partly due to Jaime Pressly’s rising career. With her My Name Is Earl success, some people thought DOA would be buried.

Actually, it’s the exact opposite. Of the seven stills I was sent promoting the upcoming September 11th DVD release, two were box shots (see below) and five were of Pressly’s bikini-clad opening scene (see right). Like it or not, Pressly is the poster child of the movie, above her other attractive co-stars, Devon Aoki, Holly Valance, or Sara Carter.

The DVD is being released under a new “Dimension Extreme” banner. No doubt that refers to the combat sequences of the movie, because it certainly doesn’t apply to the bonus material. As of right now the only reported material on the disc are some deleted scenes and a featurette about the action of DOA.

Take a look at the cover art below. DOA: Dead or Alive hits DVD on September 4th.

From Cinema Blend

Everybody loves Joy
By Sarah Nicholson, THE COURIER MAIL, August 29, 2007

JAIME Pressly didn’t have to look far to find the inspiration for her My Name Is Earl alter-ego Joy Turner.
“My Grandmother Pressly, rest her soul,” the actress says of the family member who reminded her of the character.

“And she’s smiling her ass off up there now because she and I didn’t get along whatsoever.

“When I was 17 she would say ‘Jamie, men are like parking places, all the good ones are taken and the only ones left are handicapped. So, honey, you just need to calm down and find you a man and settle down’.

“I was 17. Why do I need to settle down at 17? Come on. She just had this spitfire way about her that she would walk into a room and you had better notice her.

“But the same things you hated about her were the same things you loved about her. Just like Joy, that honesty, that blatant, blunt honesty is what is very endearing about her.

“The difference between them is Grandmother Pressly had money and she was far from a whore.”

Pressly says she’s constantly being stopped by My Name Is Earl fans who want to tell her how much they love her sassy character.

“They live vicariously through her because she is that woman who goes out and says whatever the hell she wants to say and has no fear and tells it like it is,” Pressly says.

“She speaks in a heartbeat to a man like she’s a man and that’s kind of cool. You know what I mean? She doesn’t realise that what she’s doing is wrong.

“I love comedy and I love that, as an actress, I have the ability to make people feel every kind of emotion there is.

“That’s what’s really great about Joy. Television characters can become very monotonous to play because it’s the same thing every day. And she, God bless her, is the most colourful character I’ve ever been able to play.”

Pressly was born in North Carolina but moved to Los Angeles with her mother and started modelling at a young age, so it would seem she has little in common with Joy.

But she does have a bit in common with Earl Hickey, the sitcom’s lead character played by Jason Lee, because they are both big believers in karma.

“I lived in Japan when I was 15 on a modelling contract and I had to walk through this temple every day in order to get home from the modelling agency,” she says.

“I would always stop and watch everybody and it was amazing to me, just the whole vibe, the whole idea ‘do unto others as you would have them do unto you’. Do good things and good things will happen and do bad things and bad things happen.

“You project good things and put it out there and that’s what is going to happen. When you think bad thoughts, bad thoughts are going to happen. It’s kind of like when it rains it pours.”

It seems to be working for the 30-year-old actress who’s having success on both the personal and professional fronts – she’s been nominated for a couple of Emmy and SAG awards and had her first child, a boy called Dezi James, in May.

“The show turned my life around and the baby will turn my life around,” she says.

“Everything is for the better.”

My Name Is Earl is on Seven, Sundays at 8pm.

From The Courier Mail

Joyful new mom Jaime Pressly loses the baby fat
By Donna Freydkin, USA TODAY, August 9, 2007
Jaime Pressly is back in shape — and heading back to work.

The My Name Is Earl star gave birth to son Dezi James on May 11. “I was back in the gym when he was 10 days old, working out with my trainer,” she says. “I’m almost back to where I was before.”

Pressly, who earned her second Emmy nomination for playing trashy Joy Turner on the NBC series, flaunted her post-pregnancy curves and flat abs while celebrating her 30th birthday at a July 27 bash at Pure nightclub in Las Vegas with her fiancé, Eric Cubiche.

“I personally don’t think I look smoking hot, but Eric tells me I do. I think he’s biased,” she says.

Earl goes back into production Monday, and Pressly’s Joy will be pregnant when the series returns with new episodes Sept. 27 (8 ET/PT).

That’s a bit galling for Pressly. “I’m going to deliver the baby on the show. I’m coming back in shape and I have to wear a fat suit,” she says with a sigh. “Incredible.”

But she has plenty of pleasant summer memories to reflect on. She and Cubiche spent their first family vacation with Dezi and his nanny in the Bahamas, and the actress is getting the hang of going on the road with a baby. It requires enough gear to fill all of fictional Camden County, where Earl takes place.

“We came with 15 bags instead of three. For one child, you have 800 bags,” says Pressly with a laugh. “I know people look at us and think, ‘Jesus, how many shoes did you pack?’ But, hello, it’s diapers and formula and toys.”

Fortunately for Pressly, Dezi is “such a good baby. He’s an angel. Chill, relaxed, calm. We got lucky. I’m scared the next one will be the devil. It’ll be a girl.”

They also visited Pressly’s family down south.

“We went to North Carolina for six days before we went to the Bahamas. I got him used to the time difference in a day. He slept the whole flight, during each flight. He’s a mellow, relaxed baby,” says Pressly.

Being a first-time mom is “tiring, but it’s amazing. It’s tough at times. But it came naturally to me because I’ve wanted a child for so long. Finally, when I had him, I could do all those things I knew about.”

So, who does he look like?

“He’s honestly a perfect 50-50 of the two of us. He has my eyes, mouth, and skin coloring, And Eric’s cheeks and nose and the divot above his upper lip.”

From USA Today