'Rita' rocks on Lifetime

STUDIO CITY, Calif. -- Sometimes life pushes us along a path we didn't intend to take. That happened to actress Nicole Sullivan twice. The first time was when she was a newcomer on "MadTV" and had to mimic Britney Spears.

Though she was good at sketch comedy, mimicry was something she hadn't tried. "There was never a part of me that was a mimic, EVER. I was never that kid," she says.

"On 'MadTV' when they first started doing it, I would sit and watch tapes of the person for hours, like studying for the bar. None of it came naturally to me. In fact Phil LaMarr, who was on the original 'MadTV,' was such a good mimic that I would have him do the voice and then I would imitate his version of the voice.

"It was easier to do that because he would break it down to imitable things. Then over the years it was a learned skill, and it got better and better. Toward the end, I could watch Meg Ryan and go, 'OK, I see what I can do here.' "

The other time was a year and a half ago when she was starring in her current Lifetime comedy, "Rita Rocks."

"I got pregnant before the end of last season and was so sick at work. And one day I had to come in and lie down for 15 minutes. And they brought in the doctor because they thought I was sick. They'd have to shut down if I was really sick. I had to say I had the flu. 'I'm fine, I'm fine, I'm fine.' The doctor said, 'I should give you a pregnancy test.' I said, 'I'm a grown woman! I don't need to take a pregnancy test.' Three weeks later, once I hit the 12-week mark, I called them and said, 'Well, I didn't really have the flu, I'm pregnant.' They couldn't have been nicer."

Sullivan's pregnancy was written into the script and life's little nudge, 6-week-old Beckett, lies cradled in her arms in her dressing room on the set here.

"Last time I got pregnant and was on another network, they said, 'Oh, we'll TRY to make this work.' When I told Lifetime, they screamed with happiness for me."

Sullivan's older son, Dashel, is in the throes of potty training, she says, shaking her head. "You can imagine how that is. I have to take my 2 1/2-year-old to the toilet every 20 minutes," she laughs, adjusting the pacifier in Beckett's mouth.

Temporarily, she has someone to watch the baby while she's working on the soundstage in "Rita Rocks," which just began its new season. But Sullivan's mom is going to take over that duty. "The little ones," she says, squeezing her baby slightly, "they gotta be close to you."

Marriage and motherhood happened faster than expected for the actress, who first startled classmates with her performance in "Present Laughter" when she was a senior at Northwestern.

"I always wanted to be married and have kids, and I put it off and wanted to make sure I'd grown up and got to do and see everything I wanted to see. And then it all happened whirlwind. My husband, we were engaged after a year, married after another year, pregnant three months after we were married, and then baby No. 2 came two years after that. It's been a crazy five years."

Sullivan is married to Jason Packham, a former actor and now television producer ("Hawthorne," "My Boys"). "In this day and age, you wait a long time to get married," sighs Sullivan.

"And I was in my late 30s and I knew I needed to get crackin' if I wanted to have a couple of kids. You can't take things for granted with this female system. Women can get a little flippant about it, the next thing you know they're 43, 44 and don't know why they can't have kids, and the body is built a different way. It's not meant to do it at that age, it's not that easy. So we got on it right away. And it was good."

Balancing a demanding career with a home life can be intimidating, admits Sullivan, who's wearing gray knit pants, a black top and a blue sweater. Her hair is still wet from her morning shower.

"If I look at the big picture, I start to panic, so I just do it day-by-day. I just do one foot in front of the other. If I start thinking, 'I want to cook Thanksgiving dinner. I have my in-laws in town and want to cook dinner, I won't have anyone here to help.' ... I had four weeks off after the baby. And when I was home, I thought, 'OK, I go back to work, how's it going to work feeding the baby? I'm in every scene, only have a half-hour lunch every day. Well, let's just show up and see how it works.'

"The first day I took one little break, did the feeding during lunchtime and we figured it out. We're two weeks in, and it's been going OK."