Wendie Malick Can Only Stand Tall

NBC’s long-running hit sitcom Night Court revolved around the idiosyncratic cases argued in its titular location, and the lovable weirdos who worked there — none weirder than youthful judge Harry Stone (Harry Anderson), who never let his work on the bench interfere with his true passion: close-up magic. 

The sequel series, which premiered last year, doesn’t stray too far from the original. Once again, the presiding Night Court judge is young, quirky and optimistic about most people she meets. She’s also a Judge Stone — Judge Abby Stone (Melissa Rauch), Harry’s daughter. She’s exactly the kind of judge who would eagerly sign up for a program called Operation Second Chance, which hires formerly incarcerated people. And since original prosecutor Olivia Moore (India de Beaufort) has departed since the Season Two finale, Abby’s decided to fill the vacancy with Julianne, whose record for (among other crimes) arson has recently been expunged. So what if Julianne is fatally attracted to her counterpart, public defender Dan Fielding (John Larroquette), who originally convicted Julianne when he was the night court prosecutor?

Originally appearing just once in each of the first two seasons, Julianne is played by Wendie Malick, whose dozens of roles include stints on Just Shoot Me (as model-turned-magazine editor Nina), Frasier (as Ronee, a final-season love interest and eventual wife for Frasier’s father Martin, played by the late John Mahoney) and Hot in Cleveland (playing on-and-off daytime soap star Victoria). Night Court has Malick back in front of a live-studio audience, where we know she thrives, but it’s not the only comedy she’s starring in this fall: She also plays Julie Baram, neurologist-turned-girlfriend to Harrison Ford’s Paul in Shrinking on AppleTV+; and Augusta “Gus” Moore, a cantankerous restaurateur in the Hallmark+ series The Chicken Sisters.

I spoke with Malick late last month about which co-stars don’t mind her raising her 5-foot-10 height with heels, glamming down to play the most “bohemian” Chicken Sister and why we probably won’t see her on the Frasier revival.

A lot of the coverage that I’ve read about Julianne’s return to Night Court in Season Three has focused on the unlikelihood of a formerly incarcerated person getting a job as a prosecutor. But wouldn’t someone who’s been in prison be the perfect person to do it?

Well, yeah! I mean, she probably understands the defendants more than most attorneys do, having lived that life. And she’s very good at what she does. She’s super-smart. It’s established that Abby decided to put in an application for Project Second Chance and thought, “I’m going to give this woman a chance. She deserves another shot at life. She did her time, so now let’s forgive her and let’s see what she can do.”

Is it improbable? Completely. Does it make sense on Night Court? Absolutely. So yay for me. They wanted me back as a series regular, and it’s been really fun.

I have to imagine that when you guest on a show, you’re often told that they’ll try to get you back. Did you foresee getting a series-regular promotion this time?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Julianne and Dan have a very strange kind of chemistry that’s not just attraction, but fear and loathing. It’s a very odd mix, but something’s going on there, and I guess we’ll figure out whether anything comes to pass in the future. For right now, I think they both decided, “Let’s just go after each other in the courtroom, because this is way too hot and fiery and possibly violent.”

Literally fiery, as was established.

Well, I’m an arsonist too, so there’s that. Yeah, if I take my medication, then I’m pretty stable, but I just forget sometimes.

You’re famously tall. I have to think John Larroquette is one of the taller love interests that you’ve had in your career. How much of a consideration is that when you’re thinking about taking a role?

I’ve had short ones, medium ones, tall ones. I mean, John and Ed Begley Jr. (whom she’s worked with in The Ed Begley Jr. Show and Raising Genius, among others) are probably the two tallest ones that I’ve been around. But oftentimes, I have to ask, “Do I wear heels? Do I not?” Because I’m the same height as my leading man. Harrison Ford is an inch taller than me, I think.

Brian Benben was on Dream On. I remember going in for a meeting, and John Landis said, “Dress exactly as you are.” And I came back to meet Brian, who was already cast, and he’s like 5-foot-8 or something. In heels, I’m six-feet-something, and I walked in and thought, “Uh-oh.” And he looked at me and said, “Oh, it’s so great that you’re tall.” So we were like a Popeye and Olive Oyl. It takes a very confident actor to work with a taller woman. It says a lot about the actor when they agree to that.

There have been times when they haven’t?

Oh, yeah. I remember early on, walking out of a really, really great audition, thinking, “I got it,” and as I’m leaving, they’d say, “Miss Malick, how tall are you?” And I’d think, “Damn, it’s a short guy. Not going to work.”

You got to dress up as Catwoman in your second episode of Night Court last season. I have to think that costume was made for you. Did you try to keep it for future Halloweens?

No, oh no, once was enough. That thing, it was lycra-something, so it was just like wearing nothing at all.

Preparing to talk to you and seeing you go from that costume to the sack dress that your character wears to the wedding in the Chicken Sisters premiere, I had to appreciate the range!

That was fun because it was completely unglamorous, and so different from most of the roles I get offered. I just thought, “Wow, to be an old witch who’s a hoarder, and in the South, who runs a chicken restaurant.” I haven’t eaten chicken for 40 years, so the whole thing was a leap for me, but I thought, “This could be really fun. This is just a scrubbed-down and dirty, tough old Bohemian witch.” And I thought, “Well, that might be nice for a change.”

Like Just Shoot Me and Hot in Cleveland, Night Court shoots in front of a live audience. This isn’t the norm for TV comedies the way it used to be, so when you know you have a shoot like this coming up, what do you look forward to the most?

It’s definitely the goose that you get when the audience comes in. I hadn’t done a multi-cam for many years. And I spent 13 years of my life, between Just Shoot Me and Hot in Cleveland and then worked on Frasier and guested on Seinfeld and a bunch of other ones. 

But it’s been quite a while since I did these, and I’ve really loved doing single-camera comedy, just because, as we know, some shows you call comedies aren’t that funny; they’re very dramatic. When they work well, they just cover the whole gamut of emotions, and you’re able to do more nuanced work. 

The singular beauty of sitcoms is the energy that you get doing something in front of an audience, and that really is like doing a little play every week. And when you’re acting with great people who just make you look better and who hit the ball back, that’s one of the sweetest experiences you can hope for as an actor.

Dating is part of the story for both Julie in Shrinking and Julianne in Night Court. I gather it’s important to you to portray characters over 30 still being open to romance, even when it doesn’t look exactly the way it did when they might have been younger.

Absolutely. There’s no expiration date for this stuff, and oftentimes, writers have sort of blinders on and don’t realize that sexuality doesn’t go away just because you’re a certain age. I knew people at my parents’ senior living place, before they passed on, who were falling in love in their 90s, and who still got excited around each other. It’s really shortsighted to think that people curl up and just go hide under rocks just because they’re over 50 or 60 or 70 or 80.

Betty White was a great example for me of someone who just had spunk and spice and was still sexy and fabulous and funny and smart right up to the end. She was just a really excellent role model for me.

You were recurring in the last season of Frasier, which in its revival is bringing back a lot of its former stars. Has there been any talk of Ronee coming to Boston?

Yeah, there has. I don’t know if that’s going to happen. I had such a wonderful time on that show with John Mahoney, and it’s the way I feel about revisiting Just Shoot Me. I love that cast so much, and we still all get together, but without George (Segal, an original cast member who died in 2021), it would be impossible to imagine that show. And for me, John was the linchpin of Frasier. It was a fabulous cast, but sometimes those memories are ones that you treasure so much, you don’t want to mess with them.

I’m from Niagara on the Canadian side, so when I see someone is from Buffalo, I have to ask: At this time of year, do you get homesick for lake-effect snow, or are you glad to have escaped it?

I’m just so busy cheering for the Buffalo Bills. I love that team so much. I’m still hoping that, before I die, we make it to the Super Bowl. I don’t know how many years they have left, but they’ve got to get on it. It’s time.