Kathy 'Mimi' Kinney hits Raleigh with Improv All-Stars
Kathy Kinney figures her career might have been boring if she had been born a svelte bombshell of an actress.
Instead, she’s taken on roles such as Betty Earwiggins (Al Roach: Private Insectigator), Red Neck Nurse (Lost in the Pershing Point Hotel), and Jenny the Monkey.
“That was voice of, thank you very much,” Ms. Kinney says about playing the monkey in animated TV series Big Guy and Rusty the Boy Robot.
“I could have been born the classically beautiful girl next door,” Ms. Kinney says. “But instead I get to play nurses, nannies, nuns and Nazis.”
The role that people most recognize her for, though, is the bombastic, crude spitfire Mimi Bobeck on The Drew Carey Show.
When she thinks of Mimi, she’s careful not to sound cocky. But she knows she owned that character, and that nobody could have done it better.
“I could have played her until the day I died,” Ms. Kinney says, noting that two other women were cast for the pilot before she came in and defined the role.
Mimi’s popularity even landed Ms. Kinney a guest-starring role on Coach, singing and dancing alongside Jerry Van Dyke in Las Vegas, and a couple of appearances on Norm.
Now, Ms. Kinney is traveling on a 40-city tour with Drew Carey and the Improv All-Stars, promoting the Drew Carey Green Screen Show.
“It’s like a rock tour,” Ms. Kinney says. “Except there are no groupies and only one bus.”
The All-Stars will stop in Raleigh Nov. 10 for two shows at the Memorial Auditorium.
The audience can expect to see a version of Whose Line is it Anyway?, featuring several cast members from the improv show doing interactive skits, from “moving people” (where actors’ only move when physically prodded by audience members) to “sound effects” (where audience members provide sound effects for a skit). The goal, much as it was on the TV show, is to do something so funny that a fellow cast member will lose his composure.
Usually, that’s Mr. Carey.
The live improv show will be racier, though, than what was broadcast on TV, so audience members had better have a good sense of humor about themselves.
During a recent show, Ms. Kinney says, a rather buxom lady was brought on stage, wearing a spaghetti-strap top that revealed flowing cleavage. Ms. Kinney and the rest of the troupe had great fun when the lady said she was really shy, though she did like to drink rum and Coke. She became known as Mrs. Rum Titties during a ballad cast member Jeff Davis sang to her. Later in the show, Ms. Kinney assumed the woman’s persona for a skit.
“She was mortified – in a proud, rum-titty kind of way,” Ms. Kinney said.
What: Drew Carey and the Improv All-Stars, featuring Drew Carey, Kathy Kinney, Greg Proops, Chip Esten, Jonathan Mangum, Sean Masterson and Brad Sherwood When: 7 p.m. and 9:30 p.m. Nov. 10 Where: Raleigh Memorial Auditorium Tickets: $24-$64 Details: (919) 834-4000