Brooke Shields: Welcome to the 'Lipstick Jungle'

The Former Child Star Talks About Surviving Fame, Helping Britney and the Danger of High Heels

January 30 -- Is Brooke Shields channeling Carrie Bradshaw? No, but it may seem like it in her new 'Sex and the City'-ish dramedy 'Lipstick Jungle.' Only, instead of obsessing on the latest Manolos and Mr. Big, Shields' high-powered film exec Wendy Healy is busy juggling career, kids and Mr. Healy, her Mr. Mom hubby; it's the 'SaTC' women all grown up.

Shields, who's making her first foray back to weekly TV since the 2000 finale of 'Suddenly Susan,' talks to AOL TV's Kimberly Potts about her new show (based on 'Sex and the City' author Candace Bushnell's 2005 novel), her hot male co-stars, the problems of current tabloid favorites like Britney Spears and a recent shoe mishap that ended with a car crash ...

How did you get involved with the show?
You know, it's funny ... When NBC was starting to talk about it, they called me and asked me to read it, but when the time came around, I was pregnant. So I just let it go and decided that I would be a fan and watch the show, because I loved the book so much. And they decided to rewrite the script, and wait a year, and when that happened, the timing was perfect. It's the first thing I really identified with since leaving television a few years back.

How many episodes did you get to complete before the writers' strike?
We will have seven completed.

That's enough to get people hooked, get a good feel for the show.
And I have no doubt that people will. I was talking to someone who had seen the rough cuts of 1 and 2, and the woman said, "I was going to watch it and then do something else and watch the rest of it. But I couldn't do the other thing I wanted to do because I wanted to put in the next DVD and watch it right away." So I think people will be compelled to find out what happens next with these women.

How do you feel about the constant comparisons between 'Cashmere Mafia' and 'Lipstick Jungle'? Is it frustrating to have the shows put into a rivalry before you've even premiered?
I always say there's room for all of us. I mean, how many 'CSI's and 'Law & Order's are there? If the show is well written and if the characters are relatable, then that's all anybody has to think about. As far as the 'Sex and the City' comparison, we've got Candace, and that's a wonderful pedigree to come from. Her book is about these unbelievably fascinating, confident women, and the [series] just really shows who those women are without stereotyping them and without making them caricatures.

'Lipstick Jungle' is kind of the 'Sex and the City' women grown up with families and jobs and trying to juggle all that, no?
Yes! And it's not saying that you juggle it by walking into a board meeting and realizing you've got something sticking on you or that you have cereal or milk on your jacket … it's not that. It's the reality of putting on different hats. Going into that meeting and then when that meeting is over, you're BlackBerry-ing your nanny to make sure your kids get to school and to their playdates. And then you're running off to another meeting to make sure Leonardo DiCaprio doesn't go off and make that other film. It's about these characters multi-tasking, but in a realistic way.

As a mother/wife/actress you must identify with that ...
Kim [Raver] and I always joke that we're becoming our characters. As an actress you want to be able to identify with your character. But the truth of the matter is that there is something about playing this character that just makes me appreciate how much I do accomplish in my own life. And how empowering that is, and how much I need my friends. There's a genuine respect for each other amongst the cast, and that's what comes out.

Are the male characters on the show as richly written?
The men all have such depth and they have real issues that they all have to deal with, too. They have partners who are very powerful and are making more money than they are. That's the situation with [Wendy's] husband. It's really fraught with a lot of, "How do we deal with this? How do we maintain our own individual strengths, while dealing with the fact that we're so in love and attracted to this person, and yet, at times, also threatened and jealous?"

Paul Blackthorne, from '24' and 'The Dresden Files,' is playing Wendy's husband?
Yes, and he's pretty easy on the eyes, I would say. Don't have any problems there. All the men in the show are great ... Andrew McCarthy, who plays Victory's love interest, is just so appealing in this. And Kim has got this guy ... when we saw this guy's body, we all were just, "Oh my God!" I was like, "I think that was drool that just came out of my mouth."



And what is the set like? Do you bring your kids to work with you?
Recently, they've been there just about every day. We have a playroom set up near the stage. It's been great, like with Kim, who's breastfeeding currently, she can conveniently work around that schedule, and then my daughter, my older one, it's a little frightening actually how much she enjoys being quiet and watching and taking it all in. She loves coming on and watching the director work, so it's a little scary ...

Do you have a budding star on your hands?
I'm hoping she chooses to do something that she has a bit more control in, and she seems to like to be in the position of ordering people around, so I guess she'd be a good director.

You've been in the spotlight most of your life, all of your adult life. How have you managed the paparazzi and the tabloid coverage and the constant scrutiny so well?
People have been asking me that quite a bit lately. It's an interesting topic, obviously, in light of what's happening in the news and what we see every day. I was very lucky to have started so young, because then none of it really became a shock to me. I didn't have relative anonymity and then get thrust into the spotlight suddenly; I was sort of always in it. I also was surrounded by this barrier of people who were not in the business. And I think the topper for that, the thing that was a constant, was my education. I never didn't have the responsibility of my academics. I attribute a lot to my parents and college, really.

You always had the normal, everyday experiences that a lot of younger celebrities don't have now?
Yes. We were not going to move to California and get a fancy car, and we were gonna have to keep going to school and only do movies during the summer. It was my academics and then work. You know, you worked so that you could afford things, not so that you could just run wild. Back then, if anybody was running wild, it was my mother, it wasn't me. She was always sort of the wild child, and I think that, if you grow up in that type of household, you have a tendency -- I mean, I did -- to go the opposite way.

What if a Britney or a Lindsay or someone else who's struggled publicly in Hollywood came to you for advice ... what would you want them to take from your experiences that might help them?
It's so hard, because we're talking about people who've already had so much happen in their lives. I never became jaded, and I never had anything to sort of recover from. And, in a weird way in Hollywood, they don't celebrate that. They sort of like to have you fall so that they can either keep you down or help you come back up again. I would say, if they can understand the importance of longevity and whatever that means in their world, that's the thing that I would stress. And, you know, it's a whole other issue when kids are involved. They're the innocent ones. I don't ever agree with making my problem somebody else's, but especially my child's.

Okay, onto a lighter topic: I read a story recently about you accidentally driving your car into your house ... true?
Yeah. I was wearing these ridiculously high-heeled shoes that are very in fashion right now, and I didn't take into account that my shoe was gonna get caught. So I was easing into my driveway and wanted to stop and thought I was putting my foot on the brake and actually rammed it into the house. But thank goodness, nobody was home.

Oh no! But you were okay, no injuries?
I was fine, but I did take out the pillar that supports the house. I tried to argue that it was unnecessary anyway, but then my husband informed me that it actually held up the house. Every thing's fine now, though. My house is intact. And I don't drive in those shoes anymore. I have now become one of those little old ladies that has driving shoes, and I put them on and then arrive at my destination and put the high heels on.

One more thing, I love your playground mom video on FunnyorDie.com. So funny.
Yeah? Thank you! My husband ('Entourage' producer Chris Henchy) wrote it. He also wrote the episode of 'Entourage' I was in, so I'm lucky. When he writes something, I jump at it. The video was fun. The girl in it, Lili, is little Pearl's sister in real life. So, we needed to get her equal time, and not have her get jealous of the success her little sister was experiencing.

Go to our TV Tattler with Randy Jackson>>