From: New York Magazine 9/14/98
by: Ariel Levy

I DON'T CONSIDER MYSELF AN ACTOR," SAYS THE STAR OF Felicity, 22-year-old Ken Russell. "They like the challenge of playing drug addicts and maniacs and what-not; I'm into this show because I love the story." The story follows Felicity Porter of Palo Alto, California, as she defies both her parents and her own usually cautious nature by ditching (at the very last minute) her plans to go premed to Stanford in order to follow a boy she's smitten with to an NYU-like school in the city. "Felicity is simultaneously reckless and fearful," says Russell. "But she's also really intelligent, and that saves her ass a lot of the time."

Nostalgia for the days of dorms and midterms, when there were no such things as broker's fees and a career was just another fantasy, may prove strong enough to hook the Ally McBeal set on a show about their recently expended youth. That's certainly what the nascent powerhouse WB network is banking on. Having snared teenage viewers with character-driven shows like Dawson's Creek and Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the WB is now setting its sights on a slightly older but no less enticeable group: viewers who grew up with My So-Called Life, and who consider thirtysomething a touchstone of high pop culture.

Felicity is the brainchild of J. J. Abrams and Matt Reeves, who have been collaborating since they were 13. Abrams's credits include the screenplay tor Armageddon, and Reeves is the man behind Under Siege II: Dark Territory, so clearly they've had to tone down the testosterone level a little to bring us this drama of late-adolescent personal angst and romantic agonies. While a show with a brainy, marginally uptight character in the title role may seem an unlikely candidate for success. Felicity is already winning acclaim on Madison Avenue as the season's best new prospect.

For her part, Russell is happy to be in the rare position of portraying a complicated young woman with her own story, rather than the usual girlfriend. "I love that I'm playing someone who actually resembles a real girl. I'm doing something here that doesn't compromise anything I believe in—this is the first time that's happened."

While television has pretty much stayed off the quad in recent years, it's the perfect setting for Ally-esque snafus involving unrequited crushes and chick rivalries. Russell, who never went to college herself, notes that "really what Felicity is struggling with is being cast out of her comfort zone, which obviously happens to all of us."

Russell got her start as a dancer on the Disney Channel's All New Mickey Mouse Club. She moved on to acting roles in such lofty film projects as Honey I Blew Up the Kid and The Babysitter's Seduction and appeared on pulp king Aaron Spelling's serial drama Malibu Shores.

"Spelling's audience wants to see girls in bikinis on the beach," she says. "That show was really about visual escapism, whereas ours is about emotional escapism." Whether adult viewers will respond to Felicity's undergraduate world remains to be seen. "We're just making a show we want to watch," says Abrams, echoing the sentiment of colleagues—kids, really—who've been programming TV for more than a decade.

"They always say that the audience for a show will be younger than its characters," Russell adds, "but the best response I've gotten has been from my girlfriends in their thirties." Besides, she says, "we make it look so romantic that by the time they're finished watching this show, everyone's going to wish they could go back to college whether they liked it or not."