KTTV's Wacky Jillian Barbarie Gets Her Shot at the Big Time
The applause sign lights up, and the studio audience goes crazy as the hosts of the hit talk show "Live With Regis & . . . Jillian B." come on stage and settle into their high stools.
"Well, good morning, everyone, and welcome," says Regis Philbin before turning to his co-host. "Jillian, how you doing? Feel good?"
"Waaaassssuuup, Reege!" says Jillian Barbarie, tugging her skin-clinging purple sweater over the top of her leopard-skin tights. "I went running around with some friends last night who LOOOOOVE you, and they told me I'm doing pretty good in this hot seat. That's great, 'cause I was checkin' myself out in the mirror this morning, and lemme tell ya, I've got grill marks!!!"
Philbin spits out the sip of coffee he was drinking and bursts out laughing. "Gelman, Gelman," he pleads to the off-camera executive producer Michael Gelman. "She's too much!"
That's how the fantasy plays out. The reality version will unfold Thursday as KTTV-TV's "Good Day L.A." weathercaster Jillian Barbarie sits down beside Regis. This week she's just replacing the vacationing Kathie Lee Gifford on the syndicated "Live With Regis & Kathie Lee," but she's also one of several local and nationally known "candidates" getting a tryout for the soon-to-be vacant seat next to Philbin as the producers continue their wide-reaching search to replace Gifford, who is leaving the show at the end of July to pursue other interests.
Other fill-ins this week have included Philbin's wife Joy Philbin, New York-based broadcasters Kathleen Murphy and Mercedes Woods, and comic Caroline Rhea.
Barbarie's off-the-cuff and sometimes crass comments--like those delivered by her Goat Girl character, which also require stretching her face and sprinkling her sentences with "baaaa"--as well as her curvy figure, form-fitting outfits and overpowering vivaciousness have become a staple of the Channel 11 morning news.
And of all the women sitting in the hot seat, it's Barbarie--relatively unknown outside Los Angeles--who is drawing the most heat. A New York tabloid has already tagged her "the shapely Barbarie." "Entertainment Tonight" did a segment on her, and she said that "ET" will be following her around New York this week. And Christina Ferrare, one of numerous personalities who has co-hosted with Philbin, called in to "Good Day L.A." to give her Philbin do's and don'ts. Gifford has even mentioned her on the air.
