As one of the co-stars of NBC’s Just Shoot Me, (Thursdays at 9:30 pm) you know Wendie Malick as Nina Van Horn, the alcoholic, ex-model turned fashion editor who “delivers deadpan putdowns with killer timing.”  Or perhaps you remember her as Judith, the ex-wife of Brian Benben’s neurotic book editor from the HBO comedy series Dream On.  Neither role resembles the real Wendie Malick, who is a thoughtful, articulate and spiritual contradiction to her on-screen personas.

Raised in Buffalo, New York, the oldest of three children, Wendie remembers her first pet.  “My parents got a collie named Bonnie the year they were married and had me two years later, so she was my older sister. They used to leave me in my playpen and take quick walks down the street, knowing I would be totally taken care of. She was truly a member of our family, and when we lost her at 14, it was like losing a sibling. After Bonnie died we got Heidi who was the runt of her litter.  She was a white german shepherd with half a tail and one eye. We always had just one dog in the house.”

After a brief stint in the early 70’s working for family friend Jack Kemp while sporting a McGovern button, Wendie was discovered in New York by the Wilhelmina Agency. As a model enjoying more than just a big paycheck, she got to travel all around the world while appearing in magazines such as Elle and Vogue.  “I thoroughly enjoyed myself,” she says, “but if it hadn’t been for a passion for acting, my life might not have been so different from Nina’s.” 

In 1980 she quit modeling and started getting bit parts on TV.  “I didn’t have pets in New York because I didn’t feel it was fair to have a dog in the city.  I was so used to my dogs having this great freedom.  But I had a boyfriend who raised black labs, so I still spent all my weekends with dogs when I was living in New York.”

These days Wendie and husband Richard share their home in the Santa Monica mountains with black labs Ned and Cheetah, a german shepherd mix named Louie, Woody the cat, and two horses- Butch, a retired thoroughbred who can’t be ridden anymore and Mikey Rose, who was due to give birth in late February.  At the time of our meeting Wendie was hoping the rain would stop “because I’ll be sleeping in the stable waiting for the blessed event.”

Living in the mountains with animals presents a unique set of challenges. About nine years ago their city cat, Henrietta, got out one night in Beverly Glen and was most likely eaten by a coyote.  Woody was found as a kitten by a friend who instinctively felt he’d be able to survive in the wild.  “You really need a wily cat to survive between the owls and the coyotes,” says Wendie.  “It’s pretty challenging.”

All of her dogs have been through rattlesnake training because “we lost one of our dogs to a rattlesnake five years ago.  You take them to this clinic, although I’m not really sure how effective it is.  We’ve had four rattlesnake bites on our dogs in the last eight years living in the mountains. Three of them recovered, but one didn’t. I think he may have run over a rattlesnake nest.  The babies don’t rattle. Their rattles aren’t developed yet and they’re the most dangerous because they let all their venom out at once. There isn’t always a warning. Our dogs are pretty lucky and nature smart at this point.  They run pretty free, although we’ve noticed a real surge in the coyote population this last year, so we’ve starting putting them on leashes when we take them out after dark.”

“We saw one rattlesnake in one of the horse stalls once over all these years,” Wendie continues.  “I think normally the vibrations of the horses’ movements keep them out. It’s when they’re in the field and you bring them back in that you have to check to make sure there’s nothing in there.”

With all these animals is she more a dog person or a horse person?  “I’m becoming everything,” Wendie answers.  “I came to cats late in life. That’s a whole other lesson you learn from cats. I am very intrigued with cats at this point, but I’d have to say that my first love is dogs, just because I relate to them.  I feel like they’re my soul mates. And horses are again, this whole other thing.  They’re flight animals, and what you realize more and more is that if you maintain a relatively calm aura the horses feel comfortable with you, even in dangerous situations.”

She had little to do with horses as a child but explains, in a Nina Van Horn-like manner, how she first got involved with them.  “It wasn’t until we moved to the country and I bid on some English riding lessons because I loved the clothes… and then I just got hooked.  I just loved them.  I started leasing a horse and ended up buying him and then we got a second one a few years ago.”

Wendie’s animals play an integral role in her busy schedule. Although her horses are at a stable shared by neighbors who also share the workload, Wendie most certainly does her part.  “I usually get up around 7:00 and the dogs and I go down to the stable.  I muck the stalls and give the horses their grain and feed and groom them and try to ride as often as I can, before I go to work. It’s a pretty fabulous way to start the day, before you get on the freeway and start to lose your mind again.  It sort of keeps me sane. And even the mucking part, which I have to say is very therapeutic… there’s a Zen aspect to it that I love.”

One of her favorite days occurred just recently when it was raining.  “There’s something about living in California… you feel really guilty sitting home and reading a book or the Sunday NY Times.  I always feel like I should be out, walking the dogs, riding my horse, or doing some gardening.  But on this rainy day we just all hung out by the fire.  I read the paper, with a dog at my foot and another one under my hand.  They are my dearest companions.”

Another of her dearest companions is her husband Richard, a builder, whom she met over a vegetarian dinner in Tijuana ten years ago.  (A friend had invited her to build houses with a church group in Mexico.) They met that first night, and “during the course of that weekend we built four very crude, primitive little homes, but they were a lot better than what the people had to begin with.  During that weekend Richard asked if I was interested in learning how to ride a motorcycle, and if I’d like to go to Africa the next summer…  to take some bikes to a medical center he had built in the Congo.  I jumped at the chance and my life has never been the same.”

Every year since, for Thanksgiving weekend, they go to Tijuana with a group of 30-40 people.  “We were building houses until a few years ago, when we started supporting an orphanage called City of Angels, so that’s pretty much the thrust of our work now.”

“I always had a wanderlust since I was a kid,” Wendie continues.  “Part of the reason I wanted to model professionally was I knew it was my passport to seeing the world.  It’s a no lose situation. Through my work we get to have lovely trips, but the work that Richard and I do outside of my profession has a whole other meaning.  Fortunately we have some really good friends who have taken on this cause with us, so we combine these and make them wonderful adventures where we can see some beautiful, fabulous parts of the world, while at the same time trying to bring something to some of these causes.”

On becoming a vegetarian Wendie explains, “I had been leaning toward vegetarianism for a long time.  I had given up beef and veal when I was about 25, because it just didn’t feel good to me anymore and something in me told me it wasn’t a good idea. And I gave up eating poultry when I learned about the conditions under which so many chickens are raised.  It seemed so inhumane to me.  It’s the whole idea of eating fear that I don’t think is a healthy idea.”

But it was during her modeling days when a photo shoot on a beach in Senegal became a  startling moment in her life. “There was a lot of hub-bub on one of the sand dunes near our location,” she remembers. “A whale had beached itself. Hundreds of people were surrounding it with machetes and knives and anything they could use to get a piece of it. It still was alive and they were attacking it and cutting it up as it was lying there.  It was so horrific to me. I kept wanting to call some agency, and of course there’s nobody to call. These people were trying to get some food out of it.  It was their way of survival.  But it was just so violent and visual that it will always stay with me. This was a mammal that I had feelings about,” she continues, “and I’m sure it led to the fact that I ate less and less living things.  But I’m no saint, and I still eat fish.  If I was going to be absolutely pure about it I probably would have taken it further.”

Does she see any correlation between her Senegal experience and the episode of Survivor in which a pig was slaughtered? “I have to say I find that whole thing repulsive on so many levels, only because it is so not a real situation of people trying to survive.  The whole thing is so completely orchestrated.  Nobody is going to starve to death there and I’m sure that little pig was probably conveniently set up to be cornered.  It’s a sensational kind of gore that really disturbs me on a profound level. What I watched (in Senegal) was something that happened in nature with people who were hungry.  Whatever they can get their hands on to survive… it was a completely different situation.”

Wendie Malick isn’t just a good talker.  She’s a doer who supports many different causes:  Planned Parenthood, Adopt-A-Family, Domestic-Violence Prevention, Environmental Issues, and of course, building housing for the poor. “I think if you were to ask me to prioritize the things that mean the most to me, animals would be right up there. I include animal rights causes with environmental causes.  Everything is so intertwined, and you realize how interdependent all of these things are.”

I first met Wendie when she co-hosted an event for Actors and Others for Animals last October, but became aware of her love for animals before that when she co-hosted last year’s Genesis Awards.  Because the 15th Annual Genesis Awards was imminent, I asked her about that experience.

“It is really a powerful evening,” she says.  “It’s no-holds barred.  Their idea is to get out and shock people and make them realize that change has to be made.  It’s a really profound evening to go through.  I had heard of Gretchen Wyler and the work she was doing, but I had never been to any of their events.  I think it’s a wonderful thing they do – to acknowledge people who are out there in the front trying to document some of the abuses that go on and bring some light to it.  And help people become conscious of these things.  That’s all we can do is help shine the light on those things that we believe are not entirely understood and help people see that there are wrongs being done that we can, in fact, do something about.”

After talking to Wendie Malick in person, it became so obvious what a great actress she is.  So I asked what she thinks is the biggest misconception people have about her. “Probably that I am a complete party animal, slut, alcoholic, OR that I’m some kind of Mother Teresa. In this town they love to paint you as a saint or a sinner and lately they’ve been trying to paint me as a saint, which makes me very uncomfortable.”

“I’m just trying to do my little bit here in the world,” she continues.  “I feel very lucky that I’m working in the area that I love to work in. I love to go to work every day.  And for some reason that does give you a voice and people are interested in your opinions on things.  I do have opinions on things, but I’m certainly no expert.  We’re trying to do our little part to help make the world a better place, but it’s a very tiny part. I’m humbled by the amount of work people do who are in the trenches every day.”

As to what readers of The Pet Press can do to help Wendie says, “don’t buy animals from pet stores.  Adopt them. There are SO many wonderful, fabulous little creatures.  I have never bought an animal from a pet store.  We have no purebreds, and they are just the most wonderful companions I’ve ever had… all of the mutts in our lives. There are so many fabulous little creatures out there who will love you to death if you just give them a good home!”

An activist and an actress.  But how does Wendie describe herself?  “I am a woman of extreme opposites, and what works for me is having these completely diverse parts of my life that balance the other side.  I think I’d go nuts if I wasn’t working at all and if I worked all the time I’d lose my sense of balance.  I need this extreme radical shift-- from the country morning shoveling shit to getting all dressed up in the afternoon. That works for me.  It makes some people schizophrenic and I’m sure I’m one of them sometimes, but for the most part it seems to work.  Life is pretty good!”

(In addition to Just Shoot Me, NBC-TV, Thursdays at 9:30 pm, Wendie will be doing a 3-week stint in The Vagina Monologues this April or May at The Canon Theater in Beverly Hills. For schedule and tickets call 310-859-2830 or visit their website- www.vmlosangeles.com.)  

Published March, 2001