Gail O'Grady on Playing a Sympathetic "Smother" in Lifetime's "Identity Theft of a Cheerleader"

In a career that’s seen her portray the loving mother more often than not, actor Gail O’Grady (pictured above) takes a decidedly different approach to parenting with her latest character in the Lifetime movie Identity Theft of a Cheerleader.  For O’Grady, the chance of taking on over-achieving, demonstrative smother Angie Patterson was simply too good an opportunity to refuse.  “I think I read two pages of this,” O’Grady laughed during a recent exclusive chat with MediaVillage.  “As soon as I read the title and it had the word ‘cheerleader’, and ‘identity theft’, I was in.  Actually, during the first few pages I started dialing my manager and said, ‘Take it!’”

In the film, telecast Saturday night as part of the network’s ongoing cheerleader-themed programming event, Angie Patterson is a stern but loving mother who’s disappointed by some of the life choices her now 30-year-old daughter Vicky (Maiara Walsh, pictured below) has made.  Vicky’s decisions to drop out of high school in her senior year, work a dead-end retail job and have a relationship with an unmotivated boyfriend don’t sit well with Angie, who simply wants the best for her daughter.  So, when the opportunity to have a high school do-over and impress her mother presents itself, Vicky leaps at it -- albeit with someone else’s identity.  As Vicky re-enrolls in high school and begins to ace her final year re-do, suspicions as to whom she might be arise, driving the unbalanced student to protect herself and her newly acquired identity at any cost.

Steve Gidlow

Steve Gidlow, a long-time columnist for MediaVillage ("Behind the Scenes in Hollywood"), has written about television and pop culture since 1994, beginning in Australia.  Since moving to Hollywood in 1997, Steve has focused on celebrity interv… read more