Kathleen Rose Perkins is so career-driven, she has auditioned seven times in one day.
"Throwing anything against the wall to see what stuck," she says, while in New York recently to promote the fourth season of her BBC 2-Showtime series, Episodes.
In the decade before landing the comedy, she appeared in dozens of TV shows, including TNT's Trust Me and CBS's NCIS: Los Angeles. Mostly she served as a guest actress for one episode only. "It was like being a substitute teacher," she cracks.
The small-town Michigan-born actress was even featured in six pilots. "Four never got on the air," she says. And the other two? "I was fired," she says, laughing ruefully, since one of them, CBS's Rules of Engagement, ran for seven seasons.
She persevered with a smile, though. And with Episodes, a satire on Hollywood, Perkins finally locked down a fitting main character. She plays Carol Ranee, an insecure, overly perky TV executive who will stoop to anything to please her self-centered network bosses, including consoling one as he sat on the toilet.
"I hate it when she does stupid things," she says, with affection for her character, once dubbed "the show's secret weapon" by The New Yorker.
Ironically, for a series that stars Matt LeBlanc in a parody of himself, the two rarely act together. Perkins says that when she passes him on the set, LeBlanc teases her: "You're in this?"
Change occurred this season as her character suddenly found herself with a new boss, a woman who actually seems (gasp!) good at her job. "She's going to teach Carol a lot."
Following her success on Episodes, Perkins has received further acting offers (she appeared in the features Gone Girl and Six Dance Lessons in Six Weeks) and had a guest appearance on CBS's The Millers, which, between rehearsals and the live audience shoot, was canceled.
"It was like being at a funeral," Perkins says. "But I'm still getting paid, right?"
