Loretta Devine in the new Lifetime Original Series, The Client List, airing Sundays at 10 pm
It can never be said enough – Loretta Devine is THE hardest working woman in show business.
Who else can say they have acted in major roles on three different television shows in the past three weeks? She guest starred as Tasha’s mother on the April 3 episode of BET’s “The Game,” on April 8 she began her regular role as the owner of a “health spa” on Lifetime’s new series “The Client List,” and on Thursday, she’ll appear in her recurring role as Adele on ABC’s “Grey’s Anatomy.”
(L to R) Jennifer Love Hewitt and Loretta Devine in the new Lifetime Original Series, The Client List
The Lifetime gig is her first casting as a series regular since the demise of ABC Family’s “State of Georgia.” Ironically, Devine’s name is Georgia in this drama, which stars Jennifer Love Hewitt as the newest employee in her spa — which is known to give “happy endings” to male customers who request such treatment during massages. [Scroll down to watch a clip.]
“I rarely get a chance to play roles like this,” Devine told us during a recent press event for the series. “I’ve played a lot of mothers – moms to just about everybody in the business – and this has a different flavor to it. I’ve played secretaries and judges and things like that, but to play a woman who owns her own business and the overseer for 20 or more women in a business that’s thriving, and the way she’s doing it, it just seemed like it was a good chance to engage a different level of acting; a different part of myself that people haven’t seen.”
Grey's Anatomy - Loretta Devine and James Pickens Jr. in "The Girl with No Name," premiering Thursday, April 19 (9:00-10:01 p.m., ET) on ABC
Devine gets to exercise an entirely different acting muscle as a woman under the fog of Alzheimer’s Disease in “Grey’s Anatomy.” In Thursday’s episode, not only does Adele’s husband Richard Webber (James Pickens, Jr.) have to adjust to her living in a nursing home, she has apparently fallen in love with another resident of the facility. [Scroll down to watch the clip.]
Below, Devine explains why she’s been able to secure so many quality roles.
Loretta is my favorite.