Cindy Walsh, the mom in the increasingly popular "Beverly Hills 90210" TV family, has had it rough since moving from Minneapolis to the ritziest part of Tinseltown.
She's stuck at home, having left job and friends behind in the Midwest, and must spend most Thursday night shows (8 p.m., Ch. 13) shepherding her two kids through the minefields of adjusting to a life of glitz.But her life has been sheer joy and simplicity compared to what befell Carol Potter after her own move to L.A. Maybe that's why Potter is utterly convincing in the Cindy Walsh role. If anyone should know how her TV character could cope, it's Potter.
A Radcliffe graduate who grew up in Tenafly, N.J., Potter moved west in 1981 to take a steady role in "Today's FBI."
For awhile, things were fine. "While the show was going, there was no problem," she says. "I was busy. But then it ended."
That's when she discovered that "L.A.'s a very hard town to make friends in. I didn't have a corps of friends here, just like Cindy doesn't."
Potter started solving her problems by getting involved with a shelter for battered women and singing in her church choir.
"But I got very depressed for about two years when I wasn't working steadily. I don't know how Cindy would take real life," she says. "The network hasn't given her any reason to leave the house. I tell the producers she'll become an alcoholic or be suicidally depressed if she can't do something. I have a fantasy that the kids come home from school one day and find her still in bed, drinking."
Potter's own life took a turn for the better in 1985, when she met screenwriter Spencer Eastman and got engaged within five weeks. Their son Christopher was born in 1987.
Then came disaster. Doctors suddenly discovered Eastman, a chain smoker before his marriage, had lung cancer. He was dead within six months.
"Chris was just 3 months old when we found out," remembers Potter. "For a while, there was a flurry of activity. I was doing a play, there was a memorial service to write, I took Chris to visit relatives in Seattle, Berona and New Jersey.
"But then we had to move. Spencer's house was too big and expensive. I didn't mind selling it, but finding a new house was torture because the market was crazy then. You had to make an offer practically before you'd even seen a house. And there were all the decisions to make. I had to dispose of all my husband's books and furniture and I agonized over a lot of it."
Meanwhile, her career hit low ebb. Over two years, she worked exactly two days, surviving partly on residual payments from video rentals of Eastman's movie "Kansas" and a few long-running commercials she had made.
"I'd go on auditions, but I just didn't have the bright and cheerful energy you need to be a lady in commercials," Potter says. "Plus I was getting too old. When I made my last commercial, I was 39 and I was supposed to be the mother of a 23-year-old."
Her life turned around again, though, when she went to buy a set of tires. In the store she met actor Jeffrey Josephson and one year later they were married.
Then came the audition for "Beverly Hills 90210."
"This show is just wonderful for me," says Potter. "It's giving me a chance to make a name and that's something I've absolutely got to do before the show ends, which it will someday (not soon - Fox has ordered 30 more episodes, which began running July 11). I'm at the age where there are few roles for women and I'll be competing for them with women who already have big names.
"It's amazing how few women's roles there are, almost none for anyone between 35 and 55. That age is like a blank slate - there's no one there. And look at how many TV shows have no mothers at all. The mother is off on a trip or she's just died or there's some other reason for her not being on the show."
Her age-appropriate part is only one reason Potter loves working on "Beverly Hills 90210."
"It's the first one-hour serious drama dealing with teenage issues," she says. "Kids take themselves seriously and we do, too. I know from letters and phone calls we get that this show really does spark conversations and discussions between kids and their parents."
And then there are the working conditions. Since the kids (Jason Priestly and Shannen Doherty) are the show's central characters, Potter isn't in every scene and doesn't have to work every day.
"It's a perfect part, since Chris will only be 4 once," she says. "I work two or three or four days a week, rarely five. And they pay us by the episode, whether we work two hours or five days."
So Carol Potter has turned her life around and hopes it stays that way. She also hopes Fox producers allow her TV character to do the same.
"They painted Cindy as an active person back when she lived in Minneapolis," Potter says. "Now they've even changed the way she dresses. They want her in silk all the time. But she's got to do something or it's totally unrealistic."