TIME OF YOUR LIFE
FOX, 8-9 PM - Debuts Oct. 25
Jennifer Love Hewitt was about to get fired. She just knew it. She'd been dreading the day Party of Five producers Chris Keyser and Amy Lippman would call her into their office to tell her that her character — cuddly-soft Sarah Reeves — was being written off the show, and last summer, that time was upon her.
''I was really upset and dealing with it internally,'' shares Hewitt on a warm August evening, just before shooting one of her final PO5 scenes at an L.A. high school. ''I thought, 'What am I going to do when they say I'm fired? Do I let myself cry?' My mom was like, 'Try not to think about it, my little sweetheart.'
''So I got there, my heart pounding, I sat down, like, 'This is it — I've done something bad,' and Chris and Amy were like, 'We need to talk to you.' And I was like, 'Oh, my God ... ' And they're like, 'We don't want Sarah to be on Party of Five anymore.' I was like, 'Okay, fine. I'll just pack up and leave.' And they were like, 'No, we want her to go to New York on her own show!'
''And I was like, 'I'm sorry — could you repeat that 40 more times so I can make sure I heard you correctly?'''
Jeez, Love, whaddaya need, a team of U.N. interpreters? Look at the shrieking teen fans. The burgeoning movie career. The Neutrogena commercials. You're a star now. We're talking first name in the opening credits. The biggest dressing room on the set. And come Oct. 25 — when Sarah ditches the Salingers for New York in search of her birth father and herself in Fox's PO5 spin-off, Time of Your Life — it's all you, babe.
''Jennifer ... Love ... Hewitt ... '' savors Fox Entertainment president Doug Herzog. ''Those are three words I love to say.''
''I still don't understand — why me? Why am I getting my own show?'' says Hewitt, sounding as perplexed as she did that fateful day. ''I'm not fighting it, but I don't understand it at all. And if I had the chance, I'd sit down with the executives and go, 'What are you doing? Are you sure? Have you really thought this through?'''
Now that you mention it, Keyser and Lippman weren't initially kicking up their heels at the concept — a suggestion from their agents — either. A spin-off? For Party of Five? Thanks, but no angst. Not only were they worried about damaging the franchise by removing one of the key Salinger family members ... but for godsakes, how much more self-examination and terminal diagnoses can one group of orphans go through?!? ''When you think about the next thing you want to put your name on, you don't say, 'Let's do a version of something we've already done,''' says Keyser. ''Our immediate reaction was, 'This sounds tacky, like we're just capitalizing on PO5.''' Yet right after waving off the idea, the two producers suddenly turned to each other and uttered the same word: ''Love?''
No question, a Hewitt-helmed series looked like a can't-hardly-lose proposition. Her popularity was soaring (case in point: the I Know What You Did Last Summer franchise). Her departure would open up the storytelling on PO5 without disrupting the family unit. (Besides, did anyone really want to see Bailey and Sarah happy together for 44 more episodes?) Better still, the groundwork for a spin-off had already been laid in the second season, when Sarah discovered that she'd been adopted. Indeed, all the pieces were falling into place except one: Hewitt. Would she be willing to sidetrack her film career to sign on for another half-dozen years? ''If it had been any other producers, I probably wouldn't have been interested,'' says Hewitt. ''I love Chris and Amy, and being on something else with them — I knew that it was going to be fun and great.''
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