Star Hopes ‘Naked Truth’ Prevails Tea Leoni Remains In Torturous Uncertainty Despite Full-Season Plan

Tabloid photographer Nora Wilde has stolen Anna Nicole Smith’s urine sample, climbed atop a table for a good look at Tom Hanks’ open fly, and found Bob Saget attending the porno film “Das Booty.”

She has stuffed her bra with M&Ms, crawled into a morgue drawer to photograph a dead celebrity, and fended off an amorous Siamese twin.

So, it is hardly surprising to find Tea Leoni, who plays Nora on ABC’s “The Naked Truth,” sprawled across the couch in her dressing room between rehearsals. It’s not the slapstick comedy take after take, week after week, that’s exacting its toll, however.

“For a while there, I kept thinking that the physical flopping around was causing this, and that was what was so exhausting,” said Leoni, who pronounces her first name “TAY-uh.” “But I am now crystal clear that it is the mental stress, the responsibility, like if I’m not funny enough, the fat lady is going to sing a jingle for me on yet another series.”

“Truth,” which stars Leoni as a former trophy wife and Pulitzer Prize-nominated photojournalist now reduced to slogging away for a laughably low-rent supermarket rag, has been cited by critics as one of the best new shows of a generally tepid fall television season.

But its ratings have been a tad lackluster.

While “Grace Under Fire,” which precedes “Truth” on ABC each Wednesday, finished 18th in the Nielsen ratings last week, “Truth” ranked 30th, a 13 percent drop in the audience. Her show has received a full-season pickup from ABC, but Leoni is concerned about what happens after that.

Part of the problem is that “Grace” and “Truth” are not necessarily compatible shows. They approach comedy in distinctly different ways.

“Grace” at 9 p.m. is more of a standard family sitcom. The 9:30 p.m. “Truth” is a farce and, like anything different, needs time to build its following.

“According to our numbers, people are shutting off their TVs at 9:30,” Leoni joked. “They’re emptying their bladders and refilling their beer cups.”

And Leoni takes her program’s uncertain future personally, even though she ought to know better.

“Extremely misplaced arrogance,” she concedes.

It has happened before. Her Fox comedy, “Flying Blind,” in which she played an aggressive seductress who made life worth living for a somewhat nebbishy young executive, was yanked after one season in 1993 and, she recalled, she could barely get out of bed for a couple of months.

“I was really depressed,” said Leoni, whose grandmother helped found UNICEF. “I went back and thought: ‘Arghh, I could have done that in that scene’ or ‘If I had just put this spin on it’ or ‘Maybe I wasn’t likable enough.’ It’s this horrible, vicious, hellacious hindsight that sort of creeps up and slaps you in the (behind) every time you get canceled.”

Sometimes it slaps you sooner.

Leoni’s first big break in Hollywood was to be cast in Aaron Spelling’s update of “Charlie’s Angels,” Fox’s “Angels ‘88.” Her second break, even bigger, was that the series never made it on the air.

“What I’m most impressed with about Tea is her gameness, what she’s willing to attempt,” said “Truth” executive producer Chris Thompson, who has become both Leoni’s off-screen love interest and golf partner. “She walks out there with almost no vanity, and vanity is an enemy of comedy.

“To truly have the courage to be really funny, you have to be willing to look like a dip. And there’s a thin line there, because if you don’t pull it off, if it ain’t funny, you do just look like an idiot.

“She’s extremely willing to take the chances to do that, and I think it pays off. That’s rare in a beautiful woman.”

Leoni has the help of a strong ensemble cast, yet her anxiety before each performance is infamous. An air-sickness bag reportedly is never far off stage when she’s filming an episode.

“I would like to not be so nervous about it,” she said.