April 05, 2009
By Jessica Farrish
Beckley native Lorna Scott plays Bob Saget’s persistently social neighbor, Monica, in the new ABC series which airs Monday nights at 9:30, right after “Dancing with the Stars.”
The sitcom follows Saget as he tries to adjust to life in the suburbs, along with his wife and kids.
“Bob’s character is curmudgeonly,” Scott said. “He doesn’t really like a lot of people, especially if they’re not related to him.
“Monica doesn’t take any of his guff,” she added. “I’m kind of Margaret Dumont to his Groucho Marx.”
Scott may look familiar to viewers who saw the 2008 blockbuster summer film “Wanted,” starring Morgan Freeman and Angelina Jolie.
In “Wanted,” Scott played Janice, the foul-mouthed, spiteful, staple-wielding boss of James McAvoy’s emotionally and financially bereft character.
Scott’s own boss, Saget, is nothing like Janice, according to Scott.
“Bob is a terrifically generous, friendly, supportive person,” she said. “He’s also got a very good sense of humor about himself.”
Scott credits her former dance instructor, Jerry Rose of Beckley, with giving her a love for acting when she was a teenager.
While attending Woodrow Wilson High School, Scott performed in “Hatfields and McCoys” and “Honey in the Rock” for Theatre West Virginia, gathering some wonderful memories of the arts in Raleigh County.
“We did a side production of ‘Macbeth,’ and it’s a great stage to do ‘Macbeth,’” Scott recalled. “We did a midnight staging of ‘Macbeth’ out there, and the fog rolled in on the stage.”
In one scene, the dancers were corpses as the king looked out over the battlefield.
“You could see our arms coming out of the mist on the stage,” Scott said. “It was the coolest thing.”
After graduating from WWHS, Scott briefly attended Concord College before heading for School of the Arts in North Carolina, then on to New York City.
In New York, Scott was part of Tweed Ensemble, a theater group that produced shows in New York and on the upper East Coast.
It wasn’t too long before film and television began to beckon, so in 1988, Scott moved to L.A.
She quickly garnered roles in episodes of well-known TV shows like “Who’s the Boss?,” “Family Matters,” “Designing Women,” “Coach,” “Sordid Lives,” “Little Britain, USA,” “True Blood” and a Christmas movie of
the week, “A Kiss at Midnight.”
Over the years, Scott has appeared in a number of films and on TV.
Viewers of the 2003 Disney remake of “Freaky Friday,” starring Jamie Lee Curtis and Lindsay Lohan, saw Scott perform as the “Butcher Woman.” Scott also had a small role in “Anger Management,” which starred Adam Sandler and Jack Nicholson.
Two casting directors who saw her performance in “Wanted” cast her in the role of Monica.
Scott said she visits Beckley, usually around Christmastime. She said her late father and mother, James and Callie Scott, founded The Shepherd’s Center at First Christian Church in Beckley.
Scott added that the pizza at King Tut’s Drive-In on Eisenhower was “the best pizza in the world.”