WHO’S NEXT

Will ’Wonderfalls’ be windfall for her?

New comedy could catapult Canadian actress to fame

By Suzanne C. Ryan, Globe Staff, 3/14/2004

Friday night on Fox, a quirky young woman — neurotic about her boss and her love life — confided to a therapist that she was confused and unable to express love.

That’s "perfectly normal," a bronze monkey statuette on the therapist’s desk assured her, before adding, "I love you!"

Classic "Ally McBeal"?

No, this is life for Jaye Tyler, the focus of the new drama/comedy "Wonderfalls." Locally, it’s on WFXT, Channel 25, as a midseason replacement for "Boston Public," now on hiatus.

Canadian actress Caroline Dhavernas stars as Tyler, a 24-year-old Brown University graduate who is working in a Niagara Falls souvenir shop and living in a trailer park.

Under pressure from her upper-class family to turn her slacker life around, Tyler thinks she’s going insane when toy animals and statuettes begin giving her advice and cryptic messages that lead her on amusing adventures helping others.

The show, which is produced by longtime "Star Trek: Voyager" writer Bryan Fuller and "Malcolm in the Middle" director Todd Holland, has already been compared to CBS’s "Joan of Arcadia" (in which God talks to Joan) and Fox’s "Tru Calling" (in which dead people talk to Tru).

But Fuller said his program is a romantic comedy that will stand out for some of its mean-spirited humor. (On Friday, Tyler got punched in the face after she returned a customer’s stolen purse, sans wallet).

"We are sort of like a mischievous feel-good show," Fuller said. The producer hopes to connect to the legions of working stiffs whose careers are "just paying the bills. Their heart is not really in it. That’s very much the case for Jaye, who wants to do as little as possible to get by in the world, until the universe grabs her by the collar and says, `No.’ "

Dhavernas instantly connected with the character after reading the script. "I don’t think she’s lazy, she’s just scared," she said during an interview in Boston recently. "I have a lot of friends like that. They don’t have a track or a passion they want to follow.

"I fell in love with Jaye. She’s so different from who I am that it’s a blast playing her."

Indeed, in real life Dhavernas is an overachiever. The 25-year-old has been acting since she was 11. After appearing in several French-speaking Canadian television series throughout her teen years, she moved to New York three years ago in search of an agent.

Dhavernas stands to gain huge recognition if "Wonderfalls" is a hit. Calista Flockhart, who portrayed Ally McBeal from 1997 to 2002, became a star and a symbol of the contemporary American young woman, even landing on the cover of Time magazine.

A slender brunette who grew up in Quebec but never visited Niagara Falls, Dhavernas says she has more modest expectations: "I’ve been in this business a long time. You never know what will happen."

Dhavernas was literally raised at television studios. Her parents, Sebastien Dhavernas and Michele Deslauriers, are actors who have starred in French-speaking television series and feature films over the last few decades.

Her father started her in the business at age 8, when she began dubbing American films such as "Babar" into French, she said: "I was a very shy kid. My dad thought this would get me talking to people."

It worked. In 1999, the once-timid girl made her US television debut in her first English-speaking lead role, starring in the CBS movie "Heart: The Marilyn Bell Story," about the Canadian teenager who in 1954 became the first person to swim across Lake Ontario.

Portraying Tyler has its own challenges. In Friday night’s episode, the actress conversed with a talking lion figurine, an eagle on a coin, and a stuffed bear. With the special effects not yet in place, she had to improvise on the set. "Sometimes I wanted to laugh," Dhavernas acknowledged. "Someone off camera would be reading the lines, and I’d suddenly be aware of the entire cast staring at me." And don’t catch Dhavernas late at night when her English can get a little sloppy. "I learned it when I was 7, but it is my second language. Sometimes the words don’t come out right," she said, laughing.

Because the show’s special effects required the producers to take extra time, the first season of 13 episodes was completed in July. Since then, Dhavernas has been casting about for work in feature films. Most recently, she appeared in "The Tulse Luper Suitcases: The Moab Story," a film by Peter Greenaway that was released in Europe last fall.

Now the Canadian is looking north. "I want to work back home again in French," she said.

If "Wonderfalls" is a success, she might get a partial wish come true. The series is shot on the Canadian side of the falls.

"That," she said, "would be destiny."