More single-mother roles showing up in Hollywood

Hollywood’s newest heroes are far from the kings and cowboys and conquerors of old.

From left, Mason Gamble, Mary Stuart Masterson and Gregory Smith are in the cast of the "Kate Brasher" television series on CBS. Gannett News Service

They are single moms. Mostly, they’re surviving from paycheck to paycheck.

They are played by Julia Roberts, Juliet Binoche, Elisabeth Shue, Mary Stuart Masterson and more. They may be attractive, but their lives aren’t glamorous.

Variety, the show-business trade paper, had already dubbed this "the year of the single mother" for movies. That’s led by two Oscar nominees, Roberts in "Erin Brockovich" and Binoche in "Chocolat."

Now the TV side joins in. A season that started with praise for "Gilmore Girls" (Thursdays on WB, seen on KFVE here) has added:

"Kate Brasher," getting a trial run Saturdays on CBS. Masterson plays a young woman, barely able to support her teen sons.

"Amy and Isabelle," a TV movie produced by Oprah Winfrey, last night on ABC. Shue played a single mom in a small town, encasing her life in secrets.

This is deep turf, the actresses say.

"There’s a vulnerability on the side of the mother," says Shue, 37. "Having to provide all the love can be such a responsibility."

Indeed, that can almost be overdone. "The challenge is not to make her seem martyred or saintly," says Masterson, 34.

That isn’t easy, when some strong examples exist.

The real Erin Brockovich juggled worlds. On one level, she could barely support her children; on another, she organized a massive suit against a utility company.

And the real Kate Brasher? The character is fictional, but the inspiration was the mother-in-law of writer-producer Stephen Tolkin.

"By the time she was in her early 30s, she had (two) teenagers," Tolkin says. "She never had a dime, never earned a penny over minimum wage, (but) raised them with a great spirit."

That became Brasher, after lots of fictionalizing. One key change was to make her children boys.

"I think the bond between her and her sons is refreshing," Masterson says. "It’s not good to raise a boy without a male influence, but she didn’t have much choice."

Others — "Gilmore Girls" and "Amy and Isabelle" — have a mom and a teenage daughter. "When they’re close together in age, that can create so many complications," Shue says.

Shue has had some serious roles, including her Oscar-nominated work in "Leaving Las Vegas." She has also been around the edges of "Hollow Man," "Cocktail" and more.

For Shue, playing Isabelle was a big change from roles such as the one she had in 1987’s "Adventures in Babysitting," in which she played a teenager. "When you’re young, you look at playing a mother and think, ‘That’s so boring!’ " says Shue, 37. "But it’s not at all."

In "Amy and Isabelle," there were extra complications: The film is set in the past and in a small town, where a sharp stigma is attached to having an illegitimate child. Isabelle is still covering up her sexual past, when her daughter (superbly played by Hanna Hall) begins heading in the same direction.

"It’s a beautiful, beautiful story," Shue says. "Isabelle is one of the great characters."

By comparison, "Kate Brasher" is set in modern California, without any stigma.

There’s little mention of the boys’ dad; the story is in Kate’s struggle to balance her life with her sons’ needs. By the end of the opener (Feb. 24), she was a caseworker at a community center.

The series went through the usual TV maze. Tolkin’s script was ordered by Fox, which then rejected it; CBS got the next shot.

By then, Masterson — who has drawn raves, from "Heaven Help Us" to "Fried Green Tomatoes" -had a deal with CBS. She and the script were linked, with changes ahead. "There was no community center at that point," she says.

Now that center is a key part of the series, with Hector Elizondo and Rhea Perlman working there. Like Erin Brockovich, Brasher spends some of her time trying to help people in the unglamorous parts of California.

"The way Los Angeles has been portrayed (by Hollywood) is not the way it is in real life," says Masterson. "We’ll be seeing a lot of neighborhoods that haven’t been on TV before." Neighborhoods beyond 90210, for example.

And, not unlike the period when shows like "Roseanne" began bringing attention to the real lives of lower middle-class families, we’ll be seeing a lot more of the unglamorous lives of mothers who must make their husbandless way through the thickets of modern life, doing the best they can for their children.

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