Marcophiles: Fox 4 anchor plays reporter in TV drama

Submitted Trey Radel snapped the photo off the TV during the "Army Wives" show on Lifetime.

Have you ever been watching a TV show when the plot called for a TV reporter to appear and do a show biz version of a news report?

Did you say to yourself, “Wait a minute, isn’t that Joe Cool or Jane Amazing, the local new person?” Chances are, it is.

And last month, it was a real reporter/anchor whom viewers here in Southwest Florida saw if they were watching the popular show, “Army Wives” on the Lifetime Network.

The reporter character, named Michelle Wheaton, was played by Amy Wegmann, very much a real news anchor, the prime time voice and face of Fox 4 News here.

So what’s it like for a real journalist to play one on a TV drama?

“I sent in a video reading lines they sent to me and got the part,” Amy says. “Near Charleston, SC, they created a set like an army base in Afghanistan. Watching the show it really looks like they’re in the war zone and fighting.

“It was very intimidating. I was playing a reporter so I wasn’t nervous about the lines because for me it was just like breaking news. But I didn’t know what to expect. I’m used to two or three people in the studio or one camera guy out with me on a news scene.

“But there were about a hundred people for this one scene. The camera guy was right in front of me, people all around, including the extras, other pretend news reporters and photographers, just so many people; I didn’t expect that at all.

“I did one take and then it was like something out of a movie; they all run up to you and one person is touching up your makeup and the other one is fixing your collar, they are measuring from your toes to the camera guy to make sure it’s the right distance.

“We did three takes. I was on set for all of 10 minutes. The director thought I was an actor but when he realized I was a real reporter, he said, ‘Just do what you normally do.’ I told him I normally do this, a standup report. He said to walk with the camera. So I suggested something to him, walking kind of sideways.

Strangest moment: The TV director making Amy walk backwards

“He still said he wanted me to walk with the camera. And I said, ‘You mean walk forward with the camera?’ And he said, ‘No, do what you usually do, walk backwards with the camera.’ I wasn’t catching what he was saying. I said, ‘You want me to walk backwards with the camera?’ And he said ‘Yes, how you would normally do it.” I thought, we don’t normally do it that way, but of course I just did it.

“So in the scene, I’m having to walk backwards and talk at the same time. And they gave me brand new high heels from wardrobe with no scuff on the bottom for traction, so walking backwards was tricky.

“My lines were, ‘More police units are arriving all the time. We understand SWAT is on the way in what has become a highly volatile situation with gunfire coming from inside this home. Details are still very sketchy but we have been told this house is a suspected drug hangout.’”

We’ll wager she lit up the screen as she does on the local news.

“They treated me very well. They flew me up there, put me up in a hotel; I had my own trailer while I was waiting.”

We asked Amy whether her name was on the door.

“Nope. There was just a little piece of paper stuck on the trailer that read, ‘Reporter.’ ”

Amy says the director told her he might phone her next time he has a role for a reporter in a TV drama. It could be set in the Everglades, or on a fake Everglades set in South Carolina.

To us, the most amazing part is that, as an actor, she was able to look at a TV camera and do a live, ad-libbed report the odd way the director directed Amy to do. In decades of doing TV news, we’ve never had a director or producer tell us, while doing a live on-camera report, to walk backwards.

Chris Curle is a former news anchor for CNN and for ABC-TV stations in Washington, D.C., Atlanta and Houston. E-mail chris@chriscurle.com.

Don is a former ABC News correspondent and bureau chief and a former news anchor for CNN and ABC-TV, in Atlanta. His Farmer File column appears Fridays in the Naples Daily News. E-mail: don@donfarmer.com.