Wendie Malick plays the woman at the table who has heard it all before, and she has a voice that makes the put-down sound like good manners. It has kept her in work for forty years, mostly on television, and mostly as the same woman.
Fi1m perspective
In The Emperor's New Groove (2000), Chicha is heavily pregnant and unimpressed by everything, her husband Pacha included. Malick does not play her as a nag or as a saint. The lines come out level and a beat late, as if she had weighed the man in front of her and found him about average. The scenes in that house are the quietest in a film built on jokes, and they were better than we expected; we had come for David Spade and John Goodman and found ourselves waiting for her to come back.
She came to comedy late and sideways. Through the 1980s she was cast as murderesses, judges and ex-wives, tall and dark and not to be crossed. Dream On (1990–1996) changed that. She began as the straight woman and the writers, once they knew her, made Judith Tupper Stone steadily more neurotic. Just Shoot Me (1997–2003) gave her Nina Van Horn, a former supermodel turned fashion editor with a drink in her hand, and the type was set. Hot in Cleveland (2010–2015) gave it another run as Victoria Chase, a soap actress five times divorced, alongside Betty White and Jane Leeves.
The voice is the instrument, and it carries without a face. On BoJack Horseman (2014) she is Beatrice Horseman; on The Owl House (2020) she is Eda Clawthorne, sharp on top and decent underneath, which is the Malick part reduced to sound alone. The reservation is the obvious one. The glamorous, snarky woman is a sitcom fixture, and Hot in Cleveland was faulted for leaning on it; a performer who does one thing this well will be asked to do it until it looks easy, and then be told that it is. In Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel (2009) she is Dr. Rubin, a principal who is a fan of the band and says so, and it is the film's one joke at its own expense. It is also a small part in a film we did not care for, and we cannot pretend it tells you much.
She has said of her own career: "Funny and snarky’s been very good to me, as I often tell people." We would add that the best of what we have seen, the household in The Emperor's New Groove, is not snarky at all. It is a tired woman being reasonable in a film where nobody else is. Someone should give her more of that, preferably with her face in shot.
Biography
Wendie Malick is an American actress and former fashion model. Born on 13 December 1950 in Buffalo, New York, she graduated from Ohio Wesleyan University in 1972. She began her career as a model with the Wilhelmina agency before working for US Congressman Jack Kemp and later pursuing acting in theatre and film.
Malick is known for her television roles as Judith Tupper Stone in the HBO series Dream On (1990–1996), for which she received four CableACE Awards, and as Nina Van Horn in the NBC sitcom Just Shoot Me! (1997–2003), earning two Primetime Emmy Award nominations and a Golden Globe Award nomination. She later starred as Victoria Chase in Hot in Cleveland (2010–2015) and appeared as Ronee Lawrence in the final season of Frasier. Her film credits include Scrooged (1988), The American President (1995) and Confessions of a Shopaholic (2009). She has also provided voice work, including as Chicha in the Disney film The Emperor's New Groove (2000) and Beatrice Horseman in BoJack Horseman.
