‘Living the Dream’s Brit Star Philip Glenister Explains Florida To TV Critics – TCA

Britbox’s Living the Dream comedy came to TCA; it’s about a British family named Pemberton who relocate from England to Florida to take ownership of an RV park, and discov it’s not the American Dream they thought. Kim Fields, who plays one of the locals, got asked if she is channeling “her southern self” in the series.

“I’m from New York, from Harlem,” she shot back. “I don’t necessarily have an inner southern belle, I’m just a really great actress.”

Why Florida, asked another critic, who thought it might just as well have been set in the American Midwest.

Brit actor Philip Glenister had to explain to the American journalist that 1.4 million Brits visit Florida every year and about 700K live there.

“Brits wouldn’t know too much about the Midwest,” he said as nicely as possible, calling it “too much of a move into the unknown.”

Fields also explained that the Midwest gets cold so that “might not be the dream.”

American actor Kevin Nash, who says he grew up in Detroit and now lives in Florida, explained that, if you listen to the news, hardly a day goes by but what there isn’t a story of the week or of the day, about some nutty thing that happened in Florida “that happen no place else.” As a for instance, he mentioned the guy who ate another person’s face outside of Miami. “It’s a very unique state,” he chuckled.

Facts of Life, in which Fields played Dorothy Tootie Ramsey, being an answer to the day’s New York Times crossword puzzle, one critic asked the actress if Tootie walks into every room with her. “No, because I’m a brilliant actor,” she repeated. But, she acknowledged, she has gone into meetings where some male executive will “truly think it’s such a tremendous compliment to tell me he wanted to ‘do Tootie’ when he was in puberty.”

She noted that American TV programming is mired in a nostalgia craze these days, and that she also fields lots of references to having played Regine Hunter character in Living Single.

But shes said she’s happy her Living the Dream character is “very different and thrust me into uncharted waters” because “as a good actor that’s what you want to do.”

Even so, one TV critic to ask if she had brought any of her Real Housewives of Atlanta self to the new series.

“No,” she interjected,explaining that was “that world.”