Class war: Mingling with rich in ‘Privileged’ - Military TV, Television - Military Times

Class war: Mingling with rich in ‘Privileged’

At the heart of “Privileged” are two women who find themselves out of place.

Megan Smith (Joanna Garcia) is a tutor; Laurel Limoges (Anne Archer) is a grandmother. Neither was ready for this.

“It’s kind of a love-hate relationship with Megan,” Archer says.

They’re at the core of a show that’s sort of “the other one” on the CW line-up.

The big attention goes to “Gossip Girl,” “90210” and “One Tree Hill,” filled with young people who have wealth and beauty. “Privileged” covers the same turf lightly.

“It’s very much, ‘Wouldn’t it be interesting if the ‘Gilmore Girls’ would teach the ‘Gossip Girls?’ ” says Rina Mimoun, one of the show’s producers.

Laurel is a cosmetics mogul, raising her orphaned granddaughters, now teens. Megan is their new tutor.

“The characters are not stereotypes,” Garcia says. Her character, Megan, is fresh from Yale, with the debts to prove it. She needed a job.

That happens to many people her age, says Garcia, 29. “I have friends who are waiting tables.”

So she becomes a tutor for Rose and Sage Baker, Laurel’s twin teen granddaughters who are rich and headstrong.

That’s believable, too, says Archer, 61. “When you have so much money, you lose touch ... When things are given to you, you might not work as hard.”

In real life, both stars have had a glimpse of growing up amid privilege:

• Archer was in California, where her mother, Marjorie Lord, co-starred in “The Danny Thomas Show.”

• Garcia was in Florida, a gynecologist’s daughter. She was a homecoming queen and a classic blond beauty; this is her first non-blond role.

Both would seem to be daughters of privilege. Both say it wasn’t that easy.

“My mother was always struggling to make ends meet,” Archer says.

Divorced from actor John Archer in 1955 — when Anne was 8 — Lord raised their two children. “We both went to private school, but she had to work at it,” Anne says.

In 1957, Lord joined “The Danny Thomas Show” as Thomas’ new wife. The show shot up to No. 2 in the Nielsen ratings for the season; it had five more years in the top 10.

Those weren’t days when TV shows were golden, Archer says. “They didn’t pay that much money then.”

Her mother, now 90 and twice widowed, continued to find some roles. And Archer has been a busy actress, peaking with an Oscar nomination as the cheated-upon wife in “Fatal Attraction.”

She’s played a mom often, including with Jennifer Love Hewitt in “Ghost Whisperer.” Then came this notion of being a grandmother to teens. “At first, I thought ‘whaaat?’ ”

The character is, at least, an interesting grandmother. “It isn’t just that one-note, stereotypical, nasty matriarch,” Mimoun says.

That suits Garcia. She grew up comfortably, she agrees, but her Cuban-born father had an immigrant’s work ethic.

At 10, she was acting in local plays. At 16, she was spending part of two years in Canada, filming the series “Are You Afraid of the Dark?”

Steady work has followed, including five seasons as Cheyenne, the ditzy blond daughter in “Reba.”

Now she’s no longer ditzy and not even blond. She’s just your underemployed Yalie, living among the overprivileged.