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The conventional wisdom is that movie stars descend to do TV when they can't get other work--which Midler admits, refreshingly, was at least partly true for her. After numerous successes (The Rose, which earned her an Oscar nomination, Down and Out in Beverly Hills, The First Wives' Club), Midler, 54, made the bad career moves of being a woman and aging. The offers dwindled, and recent efforts (Drowning Mona) fizzled. "They don't make movies with people my age anymore," she says. "That is the hard economic truth." She and longtime producing partner Bonnie Bruckheimer had a deal, however, to develop a TV series. Midler had attempted a couple of series that never aired--one was called The Harlettes, the name of her old backup group--but Moonves was eager to sign her up.
To do what? As development season dragged on, Midler rejected five scripts that placed her in sitcom situations--selling real estate, running a nightclub--that came off as insufficient for her outsize talent. Finally, as pilot-shooting season loomed, Mad About You producer Jeffrey Lane brought her a simple premise: let Bette be Bette.
Or rather, "Bette." The diva-ish drama queen Midler plays fuses the real woman's resume--a famous singer- actress who started out singing in New York City's gay bathhouses, starred in Beaches and so on--with the persona of the Divine Miss M, the blowsy, flighty, attention-craving alter ego Midler created in her stage shows. "Bette" blitzes her way through the series, to the bemusement and exhaustion of her family and support group: her professor husband (Kevin Dunn), her teenage daughter (Marina Malota), her manager (Joanna Gleason) and her fussy British accompanist (James Dreyfus). "You can't have Bette Midler on television playing a housewife," says Lane. "It would have been hard to separate the character from the entertainer we all know. It would also have been tough to find an excuse for the character to sing."
The TV character, Bruckheimer says, is far removed from the real Midler, a "shy" woman who prefers cardigans and jeans to mermaid outfits and plunging bustlines. "One of her favorite expressions is 'That's unseemly,'" Bruckheimer says. "She's well mannered, a real lady." Where "Bette" frets about preserving her cheekbones--she seeks out plastic surgery in a mid-life crisis--Midler has made a crusade of preserving New York City parks. "The character is much broader and sappier," she says. "She's harebrained and sexier, and I like those things." But there are similarities. Midler too has a husband and a teen daughter, and both Bettes have a survivor's stamina. Says Midler: "[The character] has a certain amount of drive and doesn't want to let go. She likes her little place in the sun and won't be booted out."