My little black dress flapping in the breeze and turquoise mother-of-pearl earrings jangling seductively, I stood there on the red carpet and gave Delroy Lindo a chance to soak up my infectious personality. “We’ll keep this light,” I said, thinking,”Surely, he’s tired of talking about his new show.” He responded with an unimpressed “We’ll see how far that goes.”

It seems that Delroy and gonzo journalism don’t mix. When I attended the New York Television Festival opening gala premiere of NBC’s Kidnapped, thinking I would rock the zany questions Ryan Pinkston-on-Punk’d-style and give the stars a refreshing break from the serious reportage of Us Weekly and Access Hollywood, boy, was I wrong.

Perhaps my number one mistake was to joke about abduction, but seriously, folks, I’m a journalist. If I can’t kid about the ’napping, who can? After accosting Mykelti “Bubba Gump” Williamson and the aforementioned Lindo with my carefully crafted “Who would you kidnap, how much would you ask for ransom and what would you do with the body?” query, I decided to take another tack with the rest of the glittering procession lest I be shunned by the PR titans at Rubenstein for the rest of the six-day festival.

I bantered with Timothy Hutton, various tertiary cast members and even the show’s dreamy creator Jason Smilovic, trying to sound thoughtful, eloquent and downright marvelous. That is no easy task in 60-90 seconds, I’ll tell ya. I did learn that Milena Govich, a new addition to Law & Order, who plays the series’ first female detective, likes to eat at Raffaela in Chelsea, Williamson would be a benevolent abductor and that basically anyone who has ever become famous has graced the New York stage.

After clacking my Manolos against the pavement for an hour and a half, I retired into the New World Stages auditorium to check out the show. One of many extended single-event shows falling in line behind 24 and Lost this season, the series, which premieres next Wednesday at 10 p.m., centers on a powerful New York businessman whose son is, you guessed it, kidnapped. Instead of calling the FBI—though they get involved too—he hires a renegade former Bureau agent, played by the deliciously disheveled Jeremy Sisto of Six Feet Under and Clueless fame, who requires payment only if he recovers the kidnappee “intact.” Very comforting. Overall, the show was compelling and well constructed. The stellar cast and thoughtfully interwoven plotlines suggest a movement in the right direction for network TV in an era of programming that has been characterized by procedural franchises and reality TV saturation.

The after-party was hosted by “Made in NY,” a New York City Mayor’s Office of Film, Theatre & Broadcasting program and a partner in this event, that offers prime incentives for productions like Kidnapped that choose NYC as the place to be while filming. I strutted out to the lobby to The Doors’ “Break on Through” and sampled Absolut cocktails with cute names like Absolutely Missing and Pilot Maker’s Potion. After a few Absolut Ruby Red drinks, I made my way out of the crowd and back up to the real world on Eighth Avenue, keeping a watchful eye for any foolish scoundrels who might try make off with me.

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This entry was posted on Thursday, September 14th, 2006 at 6:26 am and is filed under Events, Celebrities, Cocktails, Glamour, New York City, Red Carpet, TV. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.