Actress and Broadway darling, Kristin Chenoweth, stars on the new ABC show GCB, which premiered Sunday night. The Tony-award winner plays Carlene Cockburn, a larger-than-life belle living in Dallas.
In an interview with Reuters, Chenoweth said her character is “based on an amalgam of women. Some I grew up with, some I went to church with, and some who I might be related to. She has a big heart and wants everyone to get along, but she fights it within herself. That is a demon that a lot of people can understand.”
Chenoweth’s character used to be unpopular, and she said, “It was really important for me to portray someone who had been bullied and who had been hurt. Now that she’s redone herself, and I mean ‘redone’ herself, she’s been the queen for awhile, and now that same bully is back in town and has changed. And like so many of us, we don’t believe that people can change and forgiveness is very difficult.”
Chenoweth has appeared alone in the ads that have become pretty ubiquitous the past several weeks. But GCB, which originally stood for Good Christian Bitches and has been renamed Good Christian Belles, has an extraordinary cast of actresses, including Annie Potts, Leslie Bibb, and Marisol Nichols.
But even though Chenoweth is enjoying her fame, she hasn’t forgotten about giving back. She founded her own charity called Maddie’s Corner, which is a non-profit organization dedicated to helping animals. She said, “In our business it’s so easy to get caught up in the whole ‘me me me me me,’ even if you’re not necessarily a selfish type of person. I needed something to take care of and I wasn’t getting married and I wasn’t having a child, so I got my baby, Madeline Kahn Chenoweth, my dog, and she changed my life. I wanted to see other people experience this same happiness through pet adoption.”
