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Finding Hope & Faith on DVD with Actress Faith Ford
by Troy Rogers
 After earning five Emmy nominations and two Golden Globe nods for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy series for her decade long role as former Miss America, Corky Sherwood, on Murphy Brown, actress Faith Ford returned to TV in 2003 to co-star in the ABC sitcom, Hope & Faith, with fellow daytime alumni Kelly Ripa. Now out on DVD (March 31), Hope & Faith saw Ford play wife, mother and domestic homemaker Hope Shanowski who takes in her sister Faith when her sibling's character is killed off on a daytime soap, leaving her out of work and without a home. Airing from 2003 to 2006, Hope & Faith had a loyal following but couldn't survive in the ratings at a time when sitcoms weren't the hot ticket comedy item on TV like the days of Murphy Brown.
With Hope & Faith: Season 1 finally making its comedy debut on DVD three years after it left the ABC airwaves, we were more than happy to take an exclusive call from Faith Ford to chat it up about sharing sister time on the air with Kelly Ripa, what it was like to work with such guest stars as Tony Curtis, Regis, and Roger Clemens, why Kelly Ripa's chest was two different sizes, and why she loved to smell the smooth fragrances of her former TV dad, Robert Wagner.
THE DEADBOLT: So do you think it was ironic that you played Hope on a show called Hope & Faith?
 FAITH FORD: Well, isn’t life ironic that way? Yeah. I mean that was one of the most talked about little things in my interviews when I was doing the show, ‘You’re Faith and you’re playing Hope and you have a character that’s your sister who’s Faith. Isn’t that confusing?’ It was only confusing if, in fact, we would have a new director on and he would call the character Faith and then he would call me Faith, too. So that was the only time it was ever confusing, otherwise it wasn’t.
THE DEADBOLT: When you first got the script it was pilot season. Did you think it was just another pilot, or did you become interested because you got to play a mom?
FORD: Interestingly enough, there was more pilot activity during that season than there is now, obviously. Not that it was just another pilot, there was a lot of stuff different than what there is now. I mean, now there’s a lot of reality. But the show did interest me in the sense that I have a sister and in real life I have a sister. So there were a lot of interesting parallels. I actually liked the character because she was pent up. It had less to do with being a mother and more to do with that she was very pent up. Although a bonus was that I got to play the mom of these amazing kids, in real life, on the show.
THE DEADBOLT: It was great casting. How did it feel to have Kelly Ripa as your sister? I thought the relationship was really believable.
 FORD: Well, it was believable. We were like sisters from the get-go. I mean, I didn’t know her. I had never met her before and I hadn’t done Live with Regis and Kelly, only with Kathy Lee, so it was just like you never know what that’s going to be like. I had talked to her from L.A., sort of helpful in talking to her, saying this is not the hardest work in the world. She just had her baby, but only phone conversations. She was adorable, obviously.
I always thought she was cute on the show, but you just never know how your chemistry is going to be. She’s such a pro. I mean, Kelly started in the world of soaps, as I did, so it teaches you to be - hardly a prima donna. You do the work and you do it full-out, and you don’t care if you fall on your face because you have to do it fully. So she just approached comedy that way and so she was made for doing sitcoms, I believe.
THE DEADBOLT: I heard that you sort of saved the show by agreeing to relocate to New York. How did all of that go down?
FORD: Well, it’s interesting, because I didn’t feel one way or the other about it. Basically, for me, it was just important that I play Hope. I didn’t see myself as Faith anyway. When I went in and read, I didn’t have any idea about Kelly, or anything. As far as I knew, it was only possibly talked about. They certainly didn’t discuss it with me. I think it was just one of those things where you’re given decisions in life to make. And I felt like because of the way it happened - if they had asked me before, I don’t know what I might’ve said, because I’m so cozy and comfy in my own home - but the way it went down was that I read and they liked me and wanted me to do the part.
 So they offered it to me and then I made that happen for me. Then I found out about Kelly. So then not only would I have to back out on the show, I would’ve had to back out on Kelly and Joanna [Johnson] and Emile [Levisetti] and al of these people. Obviously it was a great opportunity for Joanna, because she was a first-time writer and executive producer. So I was given those choices to make, and I said, ‘You know what? Unselfishly, I should do this.’ Also, ABC was making it very nice for me to be able to do it. So on all of those levels I would’ve had to have been an idiot not to have done it.
The fact of the matter, it was amazing to do a show in New York. People there were extremely grateful to be working, their attitudes were so [upbeat], because, at the time, L.A. was sort of at the pinnacle of another sitcom and most crews would work two sitcoms at the same time. That’s just unheard of now. In New York they were happy to be working any show. It was just a very different environment. So you felt like you were in the midst of something that was a good thing to do.
THE DEADBOLT: You know, I've always thought Ted McGinley is a really funny and underappreciated actor. What was it like having him as your on-air husband?
 FORD: Oh, well, Ted was the best. I mean, Ted has children in real life. He has two adorable, gorgeous sons and his wife is amazing, she’s also an actress. So it was great to have that kind of support going into it, and Ted’s a big boy. I mean, he’s been in the business a long time and he knows that shows come and go and they’re hard to come by, even harder now. But even though it was a big, jolting thing for him to have to do, he literally flew home every week. But he was great, he’s a trooper. I mean, Ted’s a pro. He’s been in the business for a long time for a reason.
THE DEADBOLT: I’ve always been told that it’s hard to work with kids. Did it make the process easier that there were a few kids so they had each other to relate to?
FORD: Yeah. They became really close and their moms became close. I’m talking about the two younger kids; the older daughter didn’t have her mom there, obviously. So first it was Nicole, and she’d been to New York before, so she was totally loving it. And then when Megan got there, she was just much more of a free spirit anyway, so she’d fly home a lot. But they all got along really well and they were such pros, all of them. I forgot that they were children.
THE DEADBOLT: I was surprised that you shot the pilot without rehearsing. How did that go over with the network? Did they even know?
FORD: Well, we rehearsed. We just didn’t rehearse the food fight. We couldn’t really rehearse it, we basically got our moves down. But there was no way to show what that would be like because we’d be covered in food every time. So we’d say, ‘Okay, this is the part where the batter comes in and this is the condiments section. Whatever we end up doing here, here’s the whipped cream flying.’ We kind of walked through it, pace it, and when it came to show night we all knew that that was going to be our take, and we knew we were going to try and get it in one take. In fact, we did.
THE DEADBOLT: What was the story behind Kelly’s breasts being different sizes during the first season?
 FORD: [laughs] Well, she was breast feeding during the pilot, so it was like ginormous boobs. And then when we came back and had to shoot with some new cast members - we didn’t reshoot everything, just the part where the kids and Ted were in the background - so Kelly had less boobs and it was all about making her boobs match, which was next to impossible. Kelly and I are both naturally very athletic, which translates to flat chested. You know? They’re small, dense boobies, so therefore she went from these vivacious gazongas down to ... Well, we know nothing needs to be said beyond that. But that was what it was, a matching problem.
THE DEADBOLT: I read somewhere that you mentioned Robert Wagner smells really good. So what does he smell like?
FORD: Let me just tell you, he has different fragrances that are just [lovely]. I mean, he would surprise us daily. He’s just so clean; he’s a clean person. He wore these cashmere socks, cashmere sweaters, and Kelly would lay on one side and I would lay on the other while we were on the sofa, and we thought, ‘This is Robert Wagner.’ And we would look at each other and we would think back to Hart to Hart, which was our favorite show, and we would say, ‘Can you believe this? We’re laying on the chest of [Robert Wagner].’ And he loved it so much. He’s a total man’s man, but he’s a ladies man. Not in the sense of a flirter, he’s just a great lover of the female woman species in all that she embraces. He’s not intimidated. I mean, that’s why he’s been around such amazing powerful women in his life and he can totally hold his own. But he makes them feel so special, every one. He’s just a total gentleman.
THE DEADBOLT: Yeah, he's always seemed like such a smooth guy.
FORD: Oh, he should teach a class called, ‘How to be Smooth.’ It would totally work now. I mean, he’s timeless. That’s why he can still work.
THE DEADBOLT: You guys had a lot of incredible guest stars, like Tony Curtis, Clint Black, Roger Clemens, Regis, and more. How flattering was it to have these big names want to come and play with you guys?
FORD: Well, for me, I just tried to stay involved in the episodes so that I don’t get too star crazy. I would just come home and sort of say to my husband, ‘Oh, by the way, Roger Clemens is going to be on the show.’ I made sure to get the autographed baseball before we finished and stuff like that. So, for me - I mean we had all kinds of famous people on the show for Murphy Brown and I just tried to say, ‘You know what? They’re just like us. They’re all the same and don’t make a big deal out of it,’ because you don’t want them to think you’re "single white female," you know? It was really incredible, though. Tony Curtis? Gimme a break! But when I’m in the moment, I can’t, because I wouldn’t be able to speak. I would just be staring at them, wanting to hear all of their stories.
THE DEADBOLT: Since Hope & Faith seemed like it was doing well, why do you think it only lasted three seasons?
 FORD: I don’t know. We ask ourselves that all of the time. I think it was a time when sitcoms were not in fashion. They’re now trying to bring them back because they’re realizing, ‘What were we thinking?’ But we just hit at the end of the curve on that. We were certainly successful at the time, being that nothing else has done as well as we had in that time slot. But it’s like when the industry makes a decision that the sitcom is sort of dead, they make that decision, and it’s an overall thing, although Steve Macpherson has always kept one on.
But CBS is the best example of a network that would not give up on the sitcom, the four camera. They’re actually relatively cheap to shoot, compared to others. I don’t think it had especially anything to do with our show, it was just the sign of the times. It was just that the wave of reality was coming on-board. Then single camera comedies and everything shot Hi-Def - and it’s actually more expensive to shoot it that way - but they had to get it out of their system. They probably will still have some, but I think it will probably wave back towards [four camera], because it is economical, ultimately, for them to shoot them this way.
THE DEADBOLT: I’ve been watching a lot of British shows lately that don’t use laughs tracks. How do you feel about that? FORD: I agree with you completely. I think people got sick of the laugh tracks because they don’t want to be told when to laugh, and I don’t care if they ever exist again. I don’t think you have to have rolling laughter every time, because there are some things that just aren’t as funny. Just let it be real, that’s the way it used to be. And if they’re not really laughing, maybe they don’t need to laugh. Earn your laugh.
THE DEADBOLT: Aside from Carpoolers, what else do you have on the go?
FORD: I have an MSN web series called "Mind. Body. Balance." It’s really cool. It’s sponsored by Kraft and I’m hosting it, which is kind of fun. It’s my other life, the part of me that did the cookbook and wants to do a gardening book and stuff like that. It’s all easy tips for the home and stuff. Check it out.
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