"Go Ask Alex"
By: Matthew Gwyther, "TV Guide", 29 May 1999


A candid Alex Kingston talks about why Eriq La Salle ended their ER affair, Anthony Edwards's hunk factor and her thoughts on becoming a mum.

Stardom has yet to get to Alex Kingston. When she thinks she might show up five minutes late for an interview at a modest London cafe, she calls from a cell phone. Then she spends the first half hour discussing the wat in the Balkans. As British surgeon Elizabeth Corday on ER, Kingston is one of the leads in the top-rated drama (NBC, Thursdays, 10 P.M./ET), but in real life she is as straight-talking as the chatacter she plays.

Kingston is willing to discuss any subject, even personal ones: the end to her interracial on-screen relationship with Dr. Peter Benton (Eriq La Salle); whether she ought to have children; even her split with Ralph Fiennes ("The English Patient") after 12 years (her eyes fill with tears when her ex-husband comes up, despite the fact that the breakup happened more than three years ago and she married German journamlist Florian Haertel last year).

So, first, the burning issue: La Salle's demand that Elizabeth and Peter split because, as La Salle told TV critics in February, "If the only time you show a balanced relationship is an interracial relationship, whether it's conscious or subconscious, it sends a message I'm not comfortable with." (See "A Question of Black and White," page 34.)

Kingston, 36, disagrees but notes the pressure La Salle is under. "He is the only black male regular" on a predominantly white show, she says. "He has to do all these interviews with the balck media who constantly question him about having an adult relationship with a white woman. Why not a black woman?

"We love working together; it's really sad," Kingston says. "I just hope it's the right decision. We've had a lot of mail from viewers [of all races] who are very upset the relationship is over. That's ironic, because when it started I was warnedof the possiblilty of hate mail. In fact, the opposite occurred." Neither La Salle, nor ER producers returned calls fo comment.

Kingson is in London during her break to make a movie, "Essex Boys," in which she plays a gangster's moll. It's fitting, since her most famous pre-ER role was in Masterpiece Theatre's Moll Flanders. She was filming the spicy miniseries when Fiennes announced he was leaving her for Francesca Annis, 18 years his senior, who played his mother in "Hamlet." "Whith five husbands, 17 sex scenes and a script that hammers home the heroine's desirablity, Moll Flanders was the best palliative for a broken heart anyone could have prescribed," one English critic noted.

Actually, says Kingston, "The ultimate thing that helped me recover was doing ER"--that and getting her navel pierced. Luckily for her, the show's producers called to set up a meeting on the strength of Moll; by the end of it they had made up their minds to create a role for her. Of her decision to make the move, Kingston says: "I feel part of Los Angeles now. I have my husband, our dog Daisy, our new house in the Hollywood Hills. I may well give up the U.K."

Not that Kingston has adopted all things Hollywood. Last fall a magazine named her one of the year's 10 worst-dressed actors. "At first that really pissed me off," she says. "I've tried the L.A. way, and I can't be like that." She loves thrift shops, a passion that began during her lean, early years. (The oldest of three daughters, she grew up on the edge of London, where her father was a butcher and her mother a housewife.) She has also become close friends with several crew members. Don't her costars think she's a bit odd, hanging out with the carpenter? "I don't know," she says with a lusty laugh. "Maybe they do."

No, they don't, says Laura Innes (Dr. Kerry Weaver), who says of Kingston, "She a wonderful person--a great balance of talent, charm, intelligence, and a bit of goofiness you can't beat."

Now, a new romance is beginning between Lizzie and Dr. Mark Greene (Anthony Edwards), and Kingston can see why: "Thy're both slightly adrift. Listen! A lot of my English girlfriends find Greene the sexy heartthrob, not Ross [George Clooney]. Those glasses, that hair . . . . He looks almost English and willowy."

Back to reality and her willowy German spouse--what about kids? "It would be nice, but I get concerned I'd thrown a [wrench] in the works" of the show, she says. "I suppose I could just wear scrubs all the time. You look pregnant in them, anyway!"