Ellen Gray: USA's 'Fairly Legal': It's Shahi's show

FAIRLY LEGAL. 10 tonight, USA.

PASADENA, Calif. - Sarah Shahi hasn't just discovered there's life after "Life" - the brilliant-but-canceled NBC show in which she played a cop and recovering addict - she's discovered that there are clothes, too.

"When I was on 'Life,' my wardrobe was so masculine that on the weekends, or even just showing up to work at 5:30 in the morning, I would put on the frilliest, girliest lace dresses with heels that I could. Because I missed that side, I missed that feminine, girlie side," the star of USA Network's new series "Fairly Legal" said earlier this month.

Wearing a short white dress - and very high heels - for a round of press interviews, Shahi, a former Dallas Cowboys cheerleader who plays a lawyer-turned-mediator in her new show, recalled a day when she wasn't so sleekly attired.

That would be the day she auditioned for "Legal." Having read enough of the pilot script to know that she liked the character - "I enjoyed her vitality" - she asked to audition.

"I didn't even know if I wanted the show, but I like to audition," said Shahi, whose pre-"Life" credits include a memorable guest role in "The Sopranos" (as the dancer Tony spends time with in Las Vegas in Season 6) and as a regular on Showtime's "The L Word."

"I treat every audition like it's a job, for me, and I'm one of those few actors that actually likes to audition," she said. "Most actors hate it. I love it. Because to me, I feel like I have a job for 10 minutes."

In this case, though, the job opportunity presented itself only weeks after Shahi had given birth, in July 2009, to her son with actor husband Steve Howey ("Shameless," "Reba").

"I had planned to be a stay-at-home mom, and I just couldn't," Shahi said. "My mom was a career woman, she worked, she had three kids on her own and I love to work.

"So I went in. Nothing fit. I was wearing Nike running pants, like spandex shorts with my husband's white T-shirt and a blazer over it, because I was five weeks postpartum. I actually started lactating by the end of the scene. I ran out of there. And then they called my manager and they said, 'You know, we really like her, but she came in wearing the strangest thing and she ran out of the room.' They're like, 'Can you have her come back in and this time ask her to stay?'

"They said, 'Have her come down this time, wear a button-down [shirt],' and the only thing that fit me was kind of this country-western [shirt], my husband's button-down. It was a country-westernlike Halloween costume. That was the only thing that could fit over my boobs. So I was, if they want a button-down, fine. You know, at five weeks postpartum, your hormones are all over the place,

you're still sort of in that cloudy, hazy place. I was like, button-down? Great. I'll put this on. Now what do you think of me?"

Clearly, they thought a lot, because they not only ended up offering her the role, they apparently agreed to Shahi's terms.

"I said, if I'm going to do another TV series, I've done this before, and I want to be a lot more than another actor for hire," Shahi said. "'Cause on 'Life,' I didn't have any sort of creative input. I wasn't allowed to do anything, I wasn't allowed to improv, I had to say exactly what was on the script verbatim. And I wanted more than that. I wanted to be able to explore my character and help develop the character. And I wanted a say in the other characters. So I said, if I'm going to be away from my baby, I want something that's basically life-changing for us as a family."

Her "Fairly Legal" character, Kate Reed, a one-time lawyer who now works as a mediator for the law firm founded by her late father, "leads with her heart," Shahi said.

"That's the base of this character. It's not that she's a mediator. It's not any of those things. It's the fact that her heart is as big as the world. She's incredibly passionate, and sometimes her mind follows, and sometimes it doesn't. And a lot of times her heart gets her in trouble."

Like Dani Reese, Shahi's character in "Life," Kate also has a complicated relationship with her father, one that hasn't been simplified by his death.

Coincidence?

"You know, I have personal issues with my dad," said Shahi, who grew up in Texas and is of Iranian descent. "I haven't seen him in about seven years. He's an addict. So I don't know - maybe that's something I'm drawn to in a way . . . to make peace with the situation with my father."

Kate, she said, "has regrets" about her father, on whose boat she now lives.

"There are things she wishes she would have told him when he was alive and she didn't. So, yeah, Kate has a lot of unresolved issues with Dad. And there's not a lot she can do about it, because he's gone."

As for the boat itself, "it's a little moldy," and she's asked for it to be cleaned up a bit.

Filming aboard is cramped, "but I like it. I like anything that makes me a bit uncomfortable. . . . It's always a challenge in there." *

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