The entertainment world lost an iconic actor this week.
Loni Anderson refused to play a stereotypical “dumb blonde” on “WKRP in Cincinnati,” a hit television show about a fictional easy-listening radio station abruptly switching to rock and roll, which aired from 1978 to 1982.
Instead, she reinvented the character of receptionist Jennifer Marlowe as “the smartest person in the room,” one who much of the show revolved around.
Anderson earned two Emmy nominations for the role.
She died Sunday after a prolonged illness, just a few days short of her 80th birthday.
But despite having more than 60 acting credits spread over decades, Anderson always celebrated her time on WKRP.
That included an appearance in 2012 at the Motor City Comic Con.
At that time, Anderson told WDET’s Quinn Klinefelter that coming to Metro Detroit felt like a return to very familiar surroundings.
Loni Anderson: (Interview edited for clarity.) I am from Minnesota, so I am a Midwest girl and spent some time in Detroit. I drive American. I’ve driven a Cadillac, not the same Cadillac, since 1979. I’m an American car driver and a Midwest Sunday school teacher. So it seems just like home to me.
Quinn Klinefelter, WDET News: You’re going to a comics convention and you’re renowned for movies and shows like WKRP. That’s all TV and film. Why be at a comics con?
LA: I think we may be the token actor-comedy people. There are other similar people there like Dawn Wells, who did “Gilligan’s Island.” More cartoony, granted, than our show. But I think it’s just a celebrity gathering and everybody comes and chats and has a good time. I get to sit with Howard Hesseman, who played WKRP disc jockey Dr. Johnny Fever, and reminisce. We just had lunch last week with our whole WKRP cast and it was really fun.
QK: You all still stay in touch?
LA: Yeah, we are like a family. We get together a couple times a year. And everybody emails one another or texts one another. I think we started together, we were all new together and it makes a bond.
QK: Those kinds of bonds aren’t always there in the entertainment business.
LA: No. And we were so lucky because all of us went on to do other things, other series. There was something special about WKRP. It was interesting because women on television in that era were either sexy detectives or sexy something else. But nobody was sexy-funny. And nobody blonde on TV then was very smart.
QK: But your character, Jennifer Marlowe, was really smart and really tough.
LA: Hugh Wilson, who created the show, we talked about it. I wasn’t really blonde before WKRP. And we said, “Okay, who is this woman? What is she about?” And Hugh said, “Let’s make her like movie star Lana Turner and the smartest person in the room.” And that’s kind of where we went. That was the taking-off place for her. And in 1978, that was changing the face of glamorous women in television.
QK: So you started off from that premise, you didn’t have to really push or fight to get her that way?
LA: In the pilot, she wasn’t that way. She was just kind of a one note. And after the pilot, we talked about that. We thought she should be something more, so let’s be really innovative. And at the time it got a lot of attention.
QK: How close are you to Jennifer Marlowe, to the character in WKRP?
LA: Kind of close. I’m not as, let’s say, as facile with a quip, because when you have writers, of course, you can be brilliant immediately. The things that Jennifer said I would maybe think of on the way home in the car, way after the fact. But otherwise, I think I’m pretty close. I don’t date just old guys and have their wheelchairs in the closet. So that’s not the same. And unexplained wealth, God only knows where it comes from. So, there were some mysterious things about Jennifer.
QK: If you look yourself up online, you actually have a bit of mystery too. We all know not everything online is always accurate. But a lot of posts refer to you as being in what they call a “self-imposed exile” the past few years. Is that a fair description?
LA: You know, I don’t think of it that way. I am a reluctant celebrity who always wanted to be an actress. I think today’s generation is more celebrity-driven. And I don’t really want people to know that I’m going to the drugstore or when I go to the market or if I’m going to be at a restaurant. I think it’s just a different era. And when I’m private, I’m private. If I’m a working actress, I’m a working actress. And I don’t want to work unless I think it’s fabulous, because I’m spoiled. I’ve had wonderful scripts to do. And to me, a lot of stuff isn’t worth going out the door for. I have a family, I have grandchildren even. And everybody keeps me pretty busy. If a good acting role would come along or something I said, “I really want to go and do this, it would be fun,” than maybe. But those are harder to come by, especially as actresses get older, too. So I guess I got picky. When you have that kind of show that you start off with, WKRP, and a nice career with other great, well-written series, you do get spoiled.
QK: When they’re advertising this Motor City Comics Con now, they’ll hype not only just the comics, but they’ll put WKRP right at the top of ads and say, “This is why you should come.”
LA: Because I think it’s iconic. Just within the last week I got a bunch of calls from people saying we were on a list as one of the best 50 television shows of all time. And when you’re in something iconic, no matter how much work you do, you’re always connected with it. Like Henry Winkler is always the Fonz from the TV show “Happy Days.” Sometimes you just have that breakout thing. You either embrace it or you hate it.
QK: Some actors think it’s like a millstone around their neck after a while.
LA: Some people feel that way, I embrace it. It was a fabulous experience. I made great friends. I’m still all their fans. And when it comes on television, I still appreciate it. I like that It’s still rerunning yet to this day, that’s very cool.
QK: Anything you would change about it now, when you look back with 30 years of hindsight?
LA: Oh, no. I never like that. I always think that everything that happened to you makes you who you are. It all went into the mix. And if you like who you are today, which I do, then if you changed one thing you wouldn’t be the person you are today. So I would change nothing.
QK: Well, now I have to find the one thing to do that will make this interview really stand out.
LA: Oh dear. What is it?
QK: What’s the one thing that you’ve never told anyone that you could say right now?
LA: Ha! The things that people don’t know about me? Well, I’m kind of a closet jock. And I love to fish. Of course, I grew up in Minnesota with all those lakes. If I want to get my blood pressure to go down, I just remember those mornings when the sun was rising on the lake and it was like glass. And I was fishing with my dad.
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