People in the News for April 13, 1998

Monday, April 13, 1998 | 8:40 a.m.

Cast and crew members on the "Mad About You" set ambushed Helen Hunt the day after she received an Academy Award. "There was a mariachi band -- five guys, beautiful costumes, gorgeous instruments -- and when Helen walked in, everybody stands and starts cheering," actor John Pankow, Hunt's co-star in the sitcom, told the April 18 issue of TV Guide. Pankow plays Cousin Ira. "She just started bawling," he said. "I don't think there was a dry eye in the house." Hunt has announced she will return to the NBC sitcom for a seventh season and an estimated $1 million an episode. Her co-star and show co-creator, Paul Reiser, will also earn a cool $1 million per episode. The actress, who has also dabbled in directing on "Mad About You," snagged the best actress Oscar in March for her work in "As Good As It Gets."

Sein-ing off

"Seinfeld" co-creator Larry David says one fan of the hit sitcom won't leave him alone -- his mother. "She's afraid I'm going to kill the characters," says David, who returned to produce and write the much-awaited final episode. The character of George Costanza, played by Jason Alexander, is loosely based on David. "Every time I talk to her on the phone, she says, 'Don't kill them.' " An estimated 75 million people are expected to tune in on May 14 to see the end of the celebrated show about nothing, and what, if anything, happens to Jerry Seinfeld and co-stars Alexander, Julia Louis-Dreyfus and Michael Richards. David, who wrote the majority of "Seinfeld" episodes during its first seven years, also wrote and directed the forthcoming feature film "Sour Grapes," which opens on Friday. How the No. 1 comedy on TV will exit the stage remains a well-guarded mystery -- all actors and others were asked to sign confidentiality agreements. So what does David tell his worried mother? "I don't tell her anything," David tells The New York Times. "I say. 'That's up to me, not you.' "

Norman the Liberator

Norman Mailer probably won't be getting any awards from the National Organization of Women anytime soon. The crusty author of 29 volumes and winner of two Pulitzer Prizes admits he only grudgingly accepts women's liberation. "You get on the shuttle from Boston to New York, and what do you see?" the author tells The New Yorker in its April 20 edition. "You see a group of women wearing tailored suits, carrying their laptop computers, and they look like female versions of the men." Mailer, 75, says that in the old days men rushing to work "used to feel a small sense of shame -- they felt this was not the way to live, this was an empty life and it was destroying something in them that they couldn't quite name -- the women rush to it. They have become the gilt-edged peons of the corporation." Asked how he felt when the women's liberation movement first began to gather steam, Mailer responded: "Like the British when they lost India." The author, who has been married five times, is poised for the release of his forthcoming book, "The Time of Our Time," an anthology spanning his 50-year career.

Compiled by SUN staff