Nikki Cox: Beauty with the beasts on 'Unhappily After Ever'

By FRAZIER MOORE

AP Television Writer

NEW YORK (AP) - To look at her, you might easily conclude there is nothing wrong with Nikki Cox. Certainly nothing worth mentioning. Yet here she is, that dishy young woman from the WB sitcom "Unhappily Ever After," cheerfully reeling off her faults.

"I'm a McDonald's girl," she admits, "several times a week. Usually the two-cheeseburger combo meal." Noted.

"And I'm a nail-biter. If I didn't have fake nails, my fingers would be bloody stumps."

Anything else? "I am the most accident-prone kid you've ever met. I fell flat the other day, just walking from my house to the car. And a week ago at the studio, I spilled hot coffee on myself."

Nikki laughs. So does her mother, Terry, who is sitting in on the interview.

"Then, of course, everybody got real concerned," Terry quips. "Because Nikki had burned her chest, and that's where the money is."

The primary focus, for sure. On "Unhappily," 19-year-old Cox plays Tiffany Malloy, a voluptuous college student who majors in Spandex with a minor in restraint.

Home life means cohabitating with her divorced father and two brothers, an overheated trio that shares quality time salivating over "Baywatch." Meanwhile, Tiffany's mother looms as a mischief-making ghost who doesn't let the tanning-bed accident that killed her cramp her style. And don't forget Mr. Floppy, a talking stuffed rabbit who counsels Dad on staying connected with his inner lout.

Airing Sunday at 9 p.m. EST, "Unhappily Ever After" makes critics gag, some of whom may have even watched it. So what? It scores lusty whoops from the Marines recruited for the studio audience.

"It's just silly," Cox says in her series' defense. "There's nothing serious or real or important about any of it. There's no message. We often break the fourth wall, speaking right to the viewer and saying, 'We are doing a TV show! We're not trying to be role models! And now back to our show!"'

And now back to Nikki! Who, pure and simple, is a knockout. Who, besides her fresh-faced good looks and long, auburn hair, boasts the fantasy proportions of a comic-book heroine or a pre-downsized Barbie. Who, for this interview, has presented herself in a second skin of stretch pants and a top low-cut with wondrous consequences.

"I'm probably the most introverted extrovert you'll ever meet," Cox replies when asked if she's shy. Which, remarkably enough, she seems to be. And unaffected, too, as if she's never seen herself as others do, or never had her head turned by that sight.

"I was skeptical about Nikki being involved in show business," says Terry, who serves as her daughter's manager. "I tried to channel her creativity in another direction, which turned out to be dancing. Then, when she was 4, an agent came to the dance studio and asked to represent her."

She danced professionally for 10 years, "which kind of stunts your growth," Nikki offers primly, not meaning height. "Then I quit at 14, and between then and 16 I finally grew. I thought, 'Fi-nal-ly!"'

Soon the New Nikki was snapped up for "Unhappily," which premiered in January 1995. She says it's been a lot of fun, if sometimes a puzzling experience.

"Up until I got this show I was constantly told, 'She was really good, but she's just not cute enough.' I was really, really, really skinny. Great big mouth on a little face. Just goofy-looking. More goofy than I am now. Really goofy."

Those memories prompt a smile in no way goofy.

"When all of a sudden, people say, 'Wow, you look nice,' and carry on, it's shocking. Really awkward. But I'm not going to lie, there's a gross part of my ego that was terrifically flattered - a 16-year-old kid who all her life had been made fun of, when people say, 'You look nice,' of course you're going to feel good.

"But then it reached the point where it became kind of odd. 'Thank you very much, but now would you listen to my jokes?"'

As she talks, Nikki tries to laugh off "that little cutesie-chick thing I've got going right now." But she has done more than laugh. She has said "No" to cutesie-chick film roles or other body-baring offers (the bedroom walls of adolescent boys are unlikely to be brightened by a Nikki Cox poster).

"This is not what I want to do with my life, and I don't think it's the right way to a long-lasting career," Cox says. But what is? Careful to apologize for any unbecoming grievances, she replies with the lament of a woman who has everything, or certainly appears to: "I still don't know quite what I'm supposed to do or be."