CAREER LOW Losing as a comic on Star Search in 1987. "After you lose, they take you into a room with the other losers--they don't even want you to mingle with the winners. I was sitting next to the junior-division dance losers, and I ask one guy, 'So, what are you gonna do now?' And he says, 'Oh, I'm just going back to school.' And I thought, God, I wish it were that simple."
ULTIMATE GOAL "To get out of this business without embarrassing myself."
NEXT Cocreating a pilot with and for The Daily Show's Lewis Black, and a second Osbournes season.
IT sci-fi babes
AGES (l. to r.) Rebecca Riggs, 33; Raelee Hill, 29; Claudia Black, 29; Tammy Macintosh, 32; Gigi Edgley, 24
WHY THEM? TV's smartest sci-fi series is also the sexiest thanks to this pack of otherworldly beauties. "It's like an active Disneyland," laughs Macintosh of the Sci Fi Channel's Farscape. "You die, you come back, you lose your head, it grows back. You just get away with everything."
ON SHOOTING IN AUSTRALIA Black: "There's a liberation involved in shooting on the other side of the world with other people's money. We just keep pushing the envelope."
ADVENTURES IN WARDROBE "I'm in platform boots because I'm a bit of a short-ass and the other girls tower over me," says Hill. "So I'm in the platform boots I can barely run in. I feel like I run like a duck."
ROLE MODELS Macintosh: "Jodie Foster, because I believe the illusion she presents me of every character she's ever played." Hill: "Audrey Hepburn. She was an extraordinary actress and had grace beyond belief, but was also an incredible humanitarian." Riggs: "I'd love to work with Judi Dench. She's incredibly brave, intuitive, and quirky. She's somebody who commits to her own idiosyncrasies, and that's very important." For Edgley, who works alongside a puppet named Rygel, the choice is obvious: "Miss Piggy! Because she has fun no matter what, even with a hand shoved up her bottom."
BEST ADVICE Hill: "The two best moments of your life are the minute you find out you've got the gig and the minute you find out you've lost the gig. Because both those things open up doors if you look at them in the right light."
CAREER LOW The one time Black wishes she could've been worlds away was while performing as Portia in Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice. "At the beginning of the very famous 'quality of mercy' speech, I completely blanked, and the theater was so quiet that I could actually hear someone in the back row go, 'Tsk, tsk, tsk.'"
CREATIVE CRUTCHES Macintosh: "If I don't have coffee, watch out, you're not getting anything from me." Black: "I try to eat as much chocolate as is humanly possible. It's very important in my craft."
IT ready-for-prime-time playa
TRACY MORGAN
AGE 33
WHY HIM? Because he's positioned to be SNL's alpha male when the show returns (sans Will Ferrell) in the fall. Because of his oddly intense company of characters: lunatic talk-show host Brian Fellow, homeless romantic Woodrow, and sci-fi skirt chaser Astronaut Jones. Because you don't know whether to hug the guy or back away slowly.
