LOS ANGELES – Look at a list of Reba McEntire’s gigs and you’ll agree with her mother’s assessment: “She has the attention span of a 2-year-old.”
Reba McEntire as Bobbie, Melissa Peterman as Gabby, Belissa Escobedo as Isabella.
In addition to hosting awards shows, serving as a judge on “The Voice” and starring in a drama on ABC, she’s now the lead in an NBC comedy, “Happy’s Place.”
“It’s something different,” McEntire says when asked about the breadth of her career. “I’m a gypsy at heart.”
After she took a pause from touring and did a critically acclaimed stint in “Annie Get Your Gun” on Broadway, television producers came calling and offered her her own show, “Reba.”
That intrigued her, since she could stay in one place for a period of time.
“You know your dressing room. You know your parking spot. Consistency is not something I’ve had the first 30 years of my career,” McEntire says. “So to get to do that, I just fell in love with it.”
After six seasons, the series ended. McEntire looked for another, thought she had an idea, then took a role in “Big Sky” that tested the boundaries of her likability. “The Voice” came calling and now she’s back where she wants to be. “It’s like family,” she says. “My fans have always been very loyal and they followed me.”
From left, Tokala Black Elk, Belissa Escobedo, Melissa Peterman, Reba McEntire, Rex Linn and Pablo Castelblanco.
In the new NBC sitcom, McEntire inherits a tavern from her father. What she doesn’t know is there’s a half-sister who also has a stake in it. The two have different goals in mind for Happy’s Place and, naturally, clash.
Newcomer Belissa Escobedo plays the half-sister; “Reba” co-star Melissa Peterman plays McEntire’s friend.
In the 20 years since “Reba,” “we’ve never really left each other,” Peterman says, “I got to go on tour with her and open the show and do standup. We vacation together. We hang out and we were just waiting for another project so we could work together again. It’s like riding a bike.”
When a first pilot didn’t quite capture what creator Kevin Abbott wanted, he asked the network if he could tweak the premise. They agreed and, now, “Happy’s Place” has more opportunities for stories and characters.
The tavern, he says, “is a way to bring in a diverse group of people that have different experiences in life.”
The place will have a stage – and likely a karaoke night – and a cast of regulars and employees who will bring out different aspects of McEntire’s character, Bobbie.
Melissa Peterman, left, and Reba McEntire are reunited in "Happy's Place."
“She’s very devoted to the tavern and to her dad’s memory and she wants everything to stay the way it is,” McEntire says. “She works very hard and has a wonderful team of people she gets to work with. She solely depends on it because her husband has died and her daughter is deployed.”
The half-sister, played by Belissa Escobedo, wants to introduce new ideas – and that’s where the friction emerges.
Reba McEntire
While Escobedo was worried about playing opposite a music legend like McEntire, the Grammy winner quickly put her at ease. “Reba is Reba, in the biggest way, but when you walk in, it’s just Reba,” Escobedo says. “She’s so sweet…and she made me feel so at home on the set.”
(The only rub? McEntire and her husband, actor Rex Linn, don’t think Escobedo should take public transportation to the set. The one time she got an Uber, she was late. “Traffic is unreliable,” she says. “But the Metro is reliable.”)
Because she has sitcom experience, McEntire is able to be a willing resource for her co-star.
When she started on “Reba,” there wasn’t a sitcom teacher. “I would pull (co-star) Chris Rich into the kitchen and I’d say, ‘What do they mean when they say this?’” McEntire recalls. “I went through Acting 101 class…and thank god for Chris and other folks. Now, I’m familiar. I’m the old show dog and I can help teach anybody who hasn’t done a sitcom, four cameras, before. The tables are turned a little bit…and I’m so thrilled, grateful and thankful to get to do this.”
