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acters have a more complex Jewish identity.
They're Northern Jews who've moved south. They
observe some ritual, but they're not Orthodox. It's
something I've never seen on TV."
The Rayburns' Jewish experience reflects Rich's
childhood. While she never lived in the South, her
family — including an uncle and a bubbie —
moved from a Jewish neighborhood in Evanston to
a then-rural, non-Jewish area of Northridge, Calif.
Dairy farms were everywhere. The next-door
neighbors were anti-Semites. And the people
across the street "were ... like hillbillies," Rich says.
"They had a goat."
Lilly, too, felt like a bit of an outsider in her
hometown, not unlike Grace in the TV show. Her
friends' fathers were doctors and lawyers, but her
dad was a charming professional gambler and
amusement park owner who had previously
worked as a bootlegger. By the time Lilly was 12,
she was performing as a can-can dancer at her
dad's Western theme park.
After college, she fled Asheville to avoid becom-
ing "an aging debutante," she says. In Hollywood,
she switched from acting to writing because of the
nefarious casting couch.
"People told me the way you get roles is to make
the person sitting across from you want to have sex
with you," she recalls. "Ick."
The idea for State of Grace came when Rich and
Lilly were experiencing a career slump two years
ago.
"I was ready to go back to school to study psy-
chology," Rich says. Then Lilly remembered the
childhood photo of Rich she'd seen at the shivah
for Rich's father in the mid-1990s. She said Rich
looked just like her best friend from The Pines, a
Jewish girl named Connie.
Rich, for her part, couldn't believe a Jewish girl
had attended Lilly's Catholic school and thought
Lilly "was telling one of her tall tales of the
South," she says.
Lilly's faux _pas at her Jewish friend's house
inspired gags for the show. At dinner one evening,
young Lilly asked Connie's dad if his concentra-
tion camp tattoo was a telephone number. Then
she asked for a glass of milk to go with her chick-
en
"There was an ominous silence," she recalls.
Alia Shawkat as Hannah Rayburn and Mae Williams
In future episodes of State of Grace, Hannah will
as Grace McKee star in "State of Grace," a show about
grapple with anti-Semitism, and Bubbie, with
embracing differences.
whether to date the local butcher (the dilemma:
He's named Bloomberg, but he's not Jewish).
Rich and Lilly say that despite the humor, the
show has a serious edge.
adds Rich, who, like Hannah, is cautious and wry.
"It's not just a rosy, nostalgic view of child-
But when the women pitched the pilot last year,
hood," Rich insists. "It's rawer than The Wonder
they found they had two strikes against them: girls
Years."
and Jews.
Lilly adds, "Tattie is always smoking and drink-
"Everyone kept saying, 'Can't you just change
ing. And Hannah's parents are too preoccupied
the characters to boys?"' Rich recalls. "We relt,
with the family business to pay her much atten-
`Let's do whatever we want, because no one's going
tion. Yet the two girls do find a state of grace —
to buy it anyway.'"
through their friendship with each other.
The creators were shocked when Fox Family
Channel did buy the series, practically on the spot.
Since then, the show has elicited good buzz
State of Grace airs 9 p.m. Mondays on the Fox
around Hollywood. But Rich still feels nervous.
Family Channel. Check your local listings.
"Usually, when Jews are on TV, they're ultra-
assimilated, like Seinfeld," she says. But our char-

Amazing `Grace'

A fresh new TV show pairs a Jewish 12-year-old girl with
a Catholic one in an amicable culture clash.

NAOMI PFEFFERIVIAN
Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles

I

n the pilot episode of State of Grace, 12 year-
old Grace McKee sashays out of her limou-
sine and plucks the mezuzah off her friend
Hannah Rayburn's front door.
"It was crooked," she insists. Hannah's appalled
parents nail it back on with a shoe.
It's one of the best gags in State of Grace, a kind of
Jewish Wonder Years that premiered Monday, June
25, on the Fox Family Channel.
The series, set in 1965, follows Hannah (Alia
Shawkat), a shy Jewish girl who moves from
Evanston, Ill., to a small town in North Carolina,
where she enrolls in a Catholic school and meets
her free-spirited new best friend, Grace (Mae
Whitman).
The off-screen narrator, Oscar-winner Frances
McDormand, plays an adult version of Hannah
who wryly comments on the action.
At her elite new school, The Pines, Hannah is the
only brunette in a sea of blondes. At home, she's
forced to mind the family furniture store with her
Holocaust-survivor father, anxious mother, bubbie
and quirky Uncle Heschie.
When she visits Grace's mansion, she loves the
glamorous decor but is disconcerted by what she
calls "the Dead Animal Room"; it is filled with
moose heads.
McKee's alcoholic mother, Tattie, is equally shocked
when she learns the Jewish Rayburns don't drink.
For State of Grace, co-creators Hollis Rich and
Brenda Lilly, the amicable culture clash is the point.
They say the show is about embracing differences
through friendship, a phenomenon they know a lot
about. They've done it themselves.
Rich grew up Jewish in the -Midwest and L.A., the
daughter of a Polish Holocaust survivor who (sur-
prise!) owned a furniture store. Lilly grew up
Catholic in Asheville, N.C., where she attended an
exclusive Catholic school called The Pines.
The 40-something co-executive producers have
been good friends since they were the only women
writers on a short-lived ABC drama in 1995.
"We brought our own chemistry to the characters
in State of Grace," says Lilly, who, like Grace, is
brash and playful. "They're younger manifestations
of ourselves."
"We wanted to create a girls' coming-of-age
story, not the boy-stories you always see on TV,"

6/29

2001

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