On a stage in Hollywood, Michael Urie, dressed in silver pants, a silver shirt, a brown wig and mutton chops gruffly emotes the cheesy Barbra Streisand-Neil Diamond ballad “You Don’t Bring Me Flowers” to his partner in television crime, Becki Newton. Sporting a prosthetic schnozz, Newton belts out the bathetic lyrics before an adoring audience.
It sounds like a scene of “Ugly Betty,” but the send-up of the duet was actually part of an AIDS benefit produced this summer by Jaime Pressly of “My Name Is Earl” and currently available on YouTube.
“We turned into an all-out brawl,” says Newton, 29. “We made it like Barbra and Neil hated each other.”
Urie and Newton are as hilarious and charismatic on this stage as they are as Amanda and Marc on “Betty.” Off camera, they are best friends and their chemistry comes through in vivid, campy Techicolor. Put these two in a room together and they will just takeover, entertaining themselves and you in the process.
On the set of “Betty,” they are “besties,” as Dallas-native Urie puts it. They were sort of thrown together when they both came to New York City to film the pilot in 2006. Neither actor had done a series and only had a few lines in the pilot, but Juilliard-educated Urie improvised a way to make a mark for himself and Newton as a duo.
“I said, ‘What if I just link arms with you and we’ll walk out of the scene that way?'” remembers Urie, 27.
After the pilot wrapped, Urie didn’t expect anything to come from it. When the show was picked up and went into production, he says he was surprised he was still on board. “I had to come in for a costume fitting. I was really nervous and didn’t know what to expect and then I ran in to Becki,” he says. “We were so happy and relieved to see each other. I don’t know if we remembered each other’s names. We said [to each other[, ‘Hopefully we won’t get fired.'”
Hardly. Soon, the little bits of stage business that Urie and Newton kept coming up with became part of the show. “In one scene, I called her a slut and she called me a bitch,” Urie says. “I said, ‘This would be funny if we did it three times with three different words.” So they added “trollop” and so on. “That’s when we became a little team,” he says proudly.
The writers took advantage of their rapport. When Amanda called Marc “Nellie Ripa,” he fired back, “Nicole Bichie.”
Urie, who is single, and Newton, who is married to actor Chris Diamantopoulos, began to attend network events together, riding in the same car. And hanging out in each other’s trailers, talking agents and publicists and generally getting the hang of the TV business that was all so new to them.
“I walk on the set and hear his voice and it just makes me happy,” says Newton, a native of Guilford, Connecticut.
Their friendship was forever cemented when they rehearsed last season’s Thanksgiving episode. Marc and Amanda have decided not to go their respective homes for turkey and they’re hanging out at the Mode offices, trying on evening gowns and acting out songs from “Dreamgirls.” Newton noticed that Michael’s dress had a very high slit and she wondered what he was wearing underneath.
“Michael said they gave him little shorts to wear. I said, ‘Let’s see.’ So he lifted the dress and I got a glimpse of one of his testicles. I shrieked in horror,” Newton recalls. “Thank God the cameras weren’t rolling because it would be on YouTube. I could not keep it together for the rest of the day.”
This season Marc and Amanda will be up to their old tricks, with one important change. Amanda has discovered that she is the daughter of the later Fey Sommers and possibly the illegitimate child of Mode magazine publisher Bradford Meade. “They are thick as thieves,” says Newton. “They have to find the will.”
Urie reveals that Marc’s boss, Wilhelmina Slater (Vanessa Williams) will be marrying the Meade patriarch. Victoria Beckham is a bridesmaid. “I have a scene with Vanessa, Vera Wang and Posh Spice. Can you guess who’s not getting attention that day?” quips Urie.
He also says that Betty’s dad, Ignazio (Tony Plana), will be stuck in Mexico due to immigration problems.” And little Justin (Mark Indelicato) will appear as a Mode magazine intern in the second episode.
And down the line, probably next spring, “Ugly Betty” will do an all-musical episode. “I think the songs are going to be by Marc Shaiman,” he says.
If that’s so, the composer would be smart to write a duet for Urie and Newton. Of his co-star, Urie says, “She’s the funniest hot girl on TV.”
UGLY BETTY
Thursday, 8 p.m., ABC