East Norriton-native Kellee Stewart hits one out of the park with the beers-and-baseball comedy My Boys.

 

By Jeff Bell

Philly EDGE Correspondent

 

Each episode of the TBS sitcom My Boys features a running baseball metaphor that illustrates the plot. Delivered via voice-over, this narrative device can be a bit labored, but it’s also fitting.

After all, the series, which returns Monday, July 30 at 10 p.m. (EST) centers on P.J. (Jordana Spiro), a Chicago sports reporter who covers the Cubs when she’s not downing beers and playing poker with her male buddies.

You could use the same sort of wince-and-bear-it metaphors to describe the career of Boys co-star Kellee Stewart, who plays Stephanie, P.J.’s fashion-plate pal. The 32-year-old East Norriton native had been swinging at television and movie projects for nearly a decade. Often, she managed only foul tips on strikeout shows (that guest shot on Living with Fran, for instance).

She finally connected with a supporting role in the 2005 film Guess Who alongside Ashton Kutcher and Bernie Mac. But that box-office whiffer barely got her to first base.

Then last year, Stewart was cast in My Boys. These days, the woman who wrote in her high school yearbook “Remember this face—you’ll see it in lights one day” is rounding third and headed for home plate. Since the show premiered to stadium-sized crowds last November, she’s been hearing deafening cheers from fans in the stands.

“They love it!!” gushes Stewart, speaking from Los Angeles, where she’s lived for the past three years.

“I knew it would be relatable to women because we finally had a real woman who liked to do real things. P.J. drinks beer, plays poker, hangs with the guys. She still gets advice from the only girlfriend she has, but she’s very relatable. [Viewers] need to see a girl in jeans and t-shirts [who’s] not worried about curling hair or having extensions down her back.”

Stewart’s character supplies that frilly stuff. Like the magazine journalist she plays, the actress knows nada about baseball and kicks back with cocktails, not Coronas. And the 1993 graduate of Norristown Area High School shares Stephanie’s flair for the dramatic (“You’re on my age now,” she coos sweetly when her graduation year is mentioned). Heck, even her name—pronounced Kell-AY—sounds theatrical.

“There’s an accent on the second ‘e.’ I get teased about it all the time! In the ‘70s, my mom was going through a flower child stage, and she wanted to change it up a bit.”

One of two children of non-actors, Stewart was encouraged early on to seek the stage.

“I remember in elementary school my mom saying, ‘We’re going to play hooky.’ She got me dressed, put me in the car and took me to New York City to see Cats for the first time.”

Not even the excesses of Andrew Lloyd Webber could stifle Stewart’s urge to emote. She later joined her high school drama club and was voted class actress (she returns to her alma mater periodically to talk shop with students).

After graduating from SUNY Purchase, she moved to Brooklyn. While auditioning, she served as a waitress, and later spent four years as a modeling agent.

“I learned what it required to have the ‘It’ factor. I started to learn how quickly decisions are made in the minds of those who are casting and producing—because time is money, and this is about what the audience is going to want. I learned that rejection is not the end.”

She’s also learned that success has its downside, too—in the form of Internet gossips cracking on the size of her ankles and suggesting that she may be cross-eyed.

“People can be cruel; people can be nice,” says Stewart. “If you take the good stuff and let that affect you, you gotta take the bad stuff in and let that affect you, as well. So I try to stay away from reading any of it and just concentrate on the work and staying grateful and open-minded.”

If she sounds like a talking self-help book, it may be because she’s writing a memoir. “My mom is very inspirational, and I feel like I need to pass along some of the things that she’s taught me,” she says.

Aspirations as noble as that make you feel downright dirty for posing one particular My Boys query. But since this IS a show with two hot young women as best gal pals, you wonder: Have the writers ever considered having P.J. and Stephanie reflect on a college-era, girl-on-girl kiss?

Stewart laughs quickly before spitting out a steely, “No.” Then the laugh returns. “That’s not come up. I don’t think they’d even propose it, and I don’t think it would be right at all.

 “But you’re brave to ask,” she adds. “I like that.”

After all, Stewart knows that you can’t be afraid to take a swing now and again.

 

My Boys

Monday, July 30 at 10 p.m.

TBS