On The Tube

eisha Grows Up

Detroit's Pearlman family tunes in every week to follow
the blossoming career of young actress Neisha Trout.

T

JILL DAVIDSON SKLAR •
Special to the Jewish News

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11/5
999

98 Detroit Jewish News

•

here is a wild gene that
meanders through the
Pearlman family.
First, there is Maxine
who met her husband, Joseph
Pearlman, while she was singing with
the USO. Then there is her daughter,
Jody, who met her first husband
when he was an audience member for
the production of Hair in which she
performed, and then met her second
husband when she was singing in a
club in which he was a waiter. Her
third and current husband performed
with her in a Top 40 band.
Jody's daughter, Niesha Trout,
must have the gene as well. But she is
way too busy right now to find out.
"I just don't have the time to think
about boys right now,” she said.
"When I am working, I am totally
focused."
Too bad for the guys. The blonde,
blue-eyed, beautiful Trout, 21, is cur-
rently co-starring in ABC-TV's new
hit Wednesday night comedy, Oh.
Grow Up!
Set in New York, the show revolves
around three grown men who, for
different reasons, decide to live
together. Trout plays Chloe, the long-
lost 18-year-old daughter of one of
the men, Hunter, whom she has only
recently decided to live with. The sit-
corn was created by executive produc-
er Alan Ball, currently the subject of
much -Oscar buzz for scripting the
film American Beauty.
Though practically a newcomer to
acting, Trout has received high praise
for her work on Oh Grow Up!.
Entertainment Weekly credits Trout's
"wizened teen angst," along with fel-
low Jewish cast mate Rena Sofer's
"acid tongue," for the show's watcha-
biliry-.
Trout says that in some ways it is a
stretch for her to play Chloe Ann
Sheffield, although Chloe does pos-
sess traits that Trout admires.
"There are a lot of ways I wish I

Jill Davidson Sklar is a Huntington
Woods-based freelance writer.

was like her and other ways I feel
more experienced than her," Trout
said. "She is into the arts and funky.
She is a risk taker and she is witty.
"I really love her," she said. "I am
so happy to play a person who is so
intelligent and so perceptive for her
years. I think she is a really smart girl
who has some down-to-earth sense as
well. I want to emulate her."

I feel 40 and sometimes I feel like I
am 5," Trout said. "It is probably bet-
ter that you are an actor when you
feel like this, or other people [might]
think you are nuts."
Trout formally began her acting
career at the age of 17 after she
whipped through high school drama
classes and realized she wanted more.
But her mother, Jody (Pearlman)

Neisha Rout:
"ks been like

I
want to pinch
myself because I
must be dreaming."

On the other hand, Chloe is a lot
like Trout at times. Like Chloe, Trout
feels trapped between the world of
adulthood and childhood. Chloe, for
example, enjoys Cap'n Crunch cereal
and espresso — the breakfast food for
the child inside and the espresso for
the woman she appears to be on the
surface.
"Even though I am 21, sometimes

;

t

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'

P.t.

Berger, a Mumford High School
graduate, said the signs of a career in
show biz were apparent long before
that.
Berger recalled a 3-year-old Trout
requesting that a wedding band play
"Ring around the Rosy" for her to sing.
In first grade, Trout listed her aspira-
tions for a school project as "actress,
movie star and waitress," in that order.