The Client List Season 1 Episode 2 Promo/Preview “Turn the Page”.

Billboards, movie theater ads and the cover of the preview screener sent to critics are all confirming it.

And so is the star herself: This isn’t the Jennifer Love Hewitt that television viewers are used to.

A racier image of the former “Ghost Whisperer” and “Party of Five” star is the big selling point of “The Client List,” a series spinoff of the 2010 cable movie that earned her a Golden Globe Award nomination. Premiering Sunday, April 8, the Lifetime show casts the actress — also one of its executive producers — in the new role of Riley Parks, a Texas wife and mother who finds work as a day spa masseuse, then is left by her husband.

Many of her co-workers “provide other services,” as the network puts it, to customers … but Riley maintains, “I don’t give extras.” However, as her financial situation gets more dire, and the temptation of added profit increases, her internal moral battle grows. Loretta Devine (“Waiting to Exhale”) plays the spa’s pragmatic owner, with Cybill Shepherd and Colin Egglesfield (“Something Borrowed”) as Riley’s mother and brother-in-law.

“I’ve gotten so many text messages from friends, either standing beneath a billboard in L.A. or on a street in New York, standing next to me [on a ‘Client List’ poster] with their thumbs up,’ Hewitt muses of the attention to her newest venture. “It’s been quite fun, and it’s nice to know that we’re all working really hard on something the network is promoting.”

Hewitt recalls that while making the initial movie, “We all joked about the fact that it could be a really interesting series. When you’re filming something, you honestly have no idea how the audience will take it. Then after the movie did so well, it definitely was in the back of my mind: ‘I wonder if there is more of this story to tell.’ We could tell more of the ins and outs of the everyday life of someone who finds herself in this situation, and what that means for her and her family.”

Thus was born the character Riley, but Hewitt believes the series is “enough like the movie that I think people who loved that will be satisfied. At the same time, it’s very different. We have enough time to break down where this woman is, emotionally and psychologically, in the process. Since she’s a single mom, you’ll learn what her marriage was and is, and what the chances are for it to be again.”

Even before its debut, “The Client List” had sparked controversy. The group Licensed Massage Therapists is opposing the telecast of the series, claiming it’s “a huge step backward” in how the profession is depicted. “I feel badly that they feel offended,” Hewitt tells Zap2it, “but I respect that people need to say what they need to say.

“I’m not saying every massage parlor in the world gives ‘happy endings,’ nor do I know which ones do, but it is a part of our society. And even if it wasn’t, it’s just a part of our story. It’s entertainment.”

Also a recurring guest star on TV Land’s “Hot in Cleveland” as Wendie Malick’s daughter, Hewitt is happy to have a major voice on the production side of “The Client List” as well.

“It’s something that I’m sort of used to,” she notes, “but I think that with every new project comes new problems and new excitement. Everything is so different, this comes with its own learning curve, but it’s great. I care about every single second and what the audience thinks. And if we find ourselves with a hit show on our hands, it’ll be that much sweeter.”

Zap2It.com

Jennifer Love Hewitt said she is excited for fans to see the television series adaptation of her hit Lifetime movie, “The Client List,” and that the new show contains “a lot of sexy.”

“It’s been really awesome. I’m super excited for Sunday,” Hewitt told OnTheRedCarpet.com at the premiere of “The Client List.” “I’m a little nervous but I’m excited and I just can’t wait for people to see it and I just hope they love it as much as we do… There’s a lot of sexy in this show, that’s for sure. There is a little something for everyone.”

In the “Client List” film, which aired on the cable network in 2010, Hewitt played a struggling Texas housewife who turns into a prostitute after she starts working at a massage parlor that secretly operates as a brothel and caters to powerful businessmen. The show earned her a Golden Globe nomination.

The 33-year-old actress is hoping that the positive reception for the TV movie continues with the series and spoke highly of the Lifetime network for their encouragement.

“They’re really jumping into very unapologetic, provocative television with this show,” Hewitt said of the network. “I think they’re ready, I think I’m ready and hopefully, America’s ready.”

One of the positive things for Hewitt about the role was that she got to return to her Texas roots and use her real Southern accent.

“I’m from Texas, so I get to use my real accent again, finally, which is really nice,” Hewitt said. “I’m sort of playing an homage to my mom, who is a very feisty, wonderful, single Texas mom. So my part is dedicated to her and it’s great.”

Speaking of her mom, her feisty on-screen mother is portrayed by TV veteran Cybill Shepherd (“Moonlighting,” “Cybill”), who sung her co-star’s praises.

“Jennifer and I are both from Texas. Jennifer has the best essence of a Texas woman,” Shepherd told OnTheRedCarpet.com. “She has incredible strength, she also has incredible beauty and she’s very smart and she’s going to really do what she has to do and do it smart. Her character is a lot like that and my character is a whole lot like that too. I love her and it’s like a key relationship. We’re partners – mother-daughter partners.”

Lifetime announced in August that a new series based on its movie was in the works and sees Hewitt playing a single mother who helps run the business, adding that she would also serve as an executive producer. The actress told OnTheRedCarpet.com that she will also get to direct the season finale.

Hewitt made her directorial debut in 2009, when she helmed several episodes of her previous series, the drama “Ghost Whisperer.”

Hewitt told OnTheRedCarpet.com that she found her role in “the Client Life” movie to be empowering because her character becomes the family’s breadwinner.

Hewitt rose to fame playing Sarah Reeves on the family drama series “Party of Five” in the 1990s. She later starred in a spin-off, “Time of Your Life” and also appeared in movies such as “I Know What You Did Last Summer” and a sequel, Can’t Hardly Wait” and “Heartbreakers.” She played main character Melinda Gordon “Ghost Whisperer,” which ran on CBS between 2005 and 2010.

During an appearance on “The Ellen DeGeneres Show” this week, the actress joked that she would be willing to go on a date with the newly-single “The Voice” judge and Maroon Five front Man Adam Levine, who split up with model Anne Vyalitsyna.

“The Client List” premieres on Lifetime on Sunday, April 8 at 10 p.m. ET.

“I think that it’s sexier not to show everything. I feel that people’s imaginations can do way more.” That’s Jennifer Love Hewitt, talking about her provocative new Lifetime drama, “The Client List.” Well, somebody should’ve told the marketing department that, because the ads for the show — you know, the ones that show Hewitt lounging around in a skimpy bra and panties — seem to show just about everything. So how much is too much?

The show does air on basic cable, after all, so Hewitt won’t have to show everything — and she says she wouldn’t have taken the role if she had to. “I wouldn’t have done nudity, no. That’s not something that I feel particularly comfortable with.” But even keeping (some of) her clothes on, Hewitt still experienced some first-day jitters. “It was a little nerve-wracking the first day, for sure,” she says of shooting scenes at the infamous day spa where her character, struggling Texas mom Riley Parks, turns to prostitution to help support her family. “Even though we’re actors, the guys are strangers to me at the time. I’m sort of there in lingerie and everything, so it does take a couple of takes to sort of feel comfortable with it.”

“List,” you may remember, started out as a TV movie that aired back in 2010, and the experience left Hewitt and the rest of the cast wanting more. “We had sort of joked around when we were doing the movie about how fun it would be to sort of turn this into a series and really get in deeper with the lives of the women in the spa.” And indeed, the series is less about what Hewitt coyly refers to as the “happy endings part” and more of a workplace dramedy about a tight-knit group of women who happen to perform certain acts behind closed doors.

This isn’t Hewitt’s first time at the TV rodeo, of course. She started out as Bailey’s girlfriend Sarah on Fox’s ’90s drama “Party of Five” and is fresh off a five-season run as medium Melinda Gordon on CBS’s “Ghost Whisperer.” And being from Texas herself, the role of Riley feels like something of a homecoming. “I’ve gotten to go back to my original accent, which has been really fun for me,” she explains. “But it’s hard to drop now sometimes when I go home. So I talk goofy, and my friends are like, ‘What are you doing?’”

TV veteran Cybill Shepherd (“Moonlighting,” “Cybill”) co-stars as Riley’s feisty mom, Linette, and Hewitt is clearly thrilled to be working with her. “She lights the set. All the lighting that you see on the series is pretty much just Cybill being in the room. I love her to pieces.” Plus, after Riley’s husband ditches her in the pilot, an illicit romance starts brewing between Riley and her hunky brother-in-law, Evan (Colin Egglesfield, “Rizzoli & Isles”). “Riley’s life is going to be turned upside down, and the brother is there to hold her hand through it, and so that’s going to bring up some complications and some interesting storylines.” (And some pretty steamy make-out scenes, we might add.)

The star is well aware that her new project may raise some eyebrows, but she dismisses any criticism that “List” portrays all massage therapists as being one step removed from prostitution. “I don’t think anybody that’s watching is expecting me to teach the logistics of giving a proper massage. … I played a medium on ‘Ghost Whisperer’ for five years, and the mediums never complained about the fact that I had cleavage while I was crossing people over into the light.” (We don’t think anyone complained about that, actually.)

Hewitt’s not only the star of “The Client List,” she’s an executive producer as well and does poke her head into the writers’ room from time to time. (“Probably more than the writers like,” she admits.) And she’s stepping into the director’s chair, too: Hewitt says she’s slated to helm the “List” season finale. All of which makes for some pretty long hours. So how does a TV star unwind after an exhausting day of shooting? “I watch ‘The Voice’ and ‘American Idol,’ and I sit in my Brookstone foot massager.” Sounds like a pretty happy ending to us.

“The Client List” premieres Sunday, 4/8 at 10 PM on Lifetime.

Yahoo.com

The billboards are impossible to miss. There she is: Olive skin glistening, leg arched seductively, virtually naked save for flesh-colored lingerie that barely contains her ample cleavage.

Jennifer Love Hewitt has towered over fast-food joints and gas stations for months to sell the actress’ new show, “The Client List,” which premieres Sunday on Lifetime. On the program, she plays a Texas single mother who works at a full-service massage parlor to make ends meet.

The series marks a new creative direction for the relatively chaste Lifetime, best known for its ripped-from-the-headlines, made-for-television movies and tacky reality shows like “Dance Moms.” The move signifies no less of a change for the 33-year-old actress who rose to early fame playing a wholesome girl next door on the long-running ’90s family drama “Party of Five.”

But after appearing in a few teen movies — most memorably 1997′s “I Know What You Did Last Summer” — her big-screen turns weren’t as well-received. It wasn’t until the 2005 launch of “Ghost Whisperer”that Hewitt regained her stride. The CBS series, about a woman able to communicate with spirits, earned solid ratings and ran for five seasons.

“I think people were expecting me to go play another network show and play the same girl I’ve been playing for a long time,” she said, sitting at a booth last month at Corky’s diner in Sherman Oaks, where “The Client List” crew members were preparing for a scene in the show’s sixth episode. “But now starting my 24th year in the business, I needed a little bit of a re-creation. I looked at my career and thought, ‘Let’s shake it up a little bit. Let’s have butterflies in our stomach.’”

“The Client List” grew out of a movie of the same name, also starring Hewitt, that ran on Lifetime in 2010. Lifetime executives, who’ve struggled with ratings in recent years, were encouraged by the film’s strong numbers. According to Nielsen, last year the network’s prime-time viewership fell 6%, to 1.1 million, from 2009, while Lifetime’s core audience — women ages 18 to 49 — was down 14%.

“This is a bold series for us, there’s no doubt about it — and we want to bring in new viewers,” acknowledged Rob Sharenow, Lifetime’s executive vice president of programming. “We’re proud of our Lifetime movies, but we are trying to evolve the mother ship and do things that are more accessible to the general public. And with this show’s marketing campaign, I’ve definitely had a lot of anecdotal comments from men who have never noticed Lifetime in quite the same way.”

Hewitt, too, has heard from men intrigued by the risqué advertisements. But by now, she says, she has become accustomed to public commentary about her body. In 2007, a round of unflattering bikini shots made the rounds on the Internet, prompting the actress to appear on the cover of People magazine under the headline “Stop calling me fat!”

“Because my body has certainly been talked about in a negative way, the fact that people are talking positively about it now makes me feel good,” said Hewitt, who is also an executive producer on the new series. “It would be great if there was an equal amount of, ‘Wow, she really gave us a great performance’ as ‘She has big boobs.’ They’re not always equal…. I always try to remember that it’s Hollywood, and part of our job as actors is to be eye candy — so it’s fine.”

Playing up her sexuality hasn’t always come easily to Hewitt. Harry Elfont, who directed the actress in 1998′s “Can’t Hardly Wait,” said the studio initially had reservations about casting her as the “prettiest girl at school” when her image was more the “cute, supporting best friend.”

“She was figuring out the balance of how sexy she should be,” recalled Elfont, who noted, “she was still girlish and innocent, but at the same time — she knew she looked good.”

It’s partly that sexy-but-sweet reputation that has endeared Hewitt to audiences. While she realizes the importance of her sex appeal, she also believes there’s a “best friend vibe” about her: “a dorky, throw my hair in a ponytail and pillow fight with my friends kind of girl,” as she puts it.

Hewitt isn’t shy about using social media and has been exceedingly open on her Twitter account. She shares pictures from “The Client List” set, muses about her desire to become aVictoria’s Secretangel and retweets saccharine love sayings, like “come live in my heart and pay no rent.” She has also been candid about her relationship struggles, most notably in the 2010 self-help book “The Day I Shot Cupid: Hello, My Name Is Jennifer Love Hewitt and I’m a Love-aholic.”

“She’s enormously approachable,” said Cybill Shepherd, who plays Hewitt’s mother on the new show. “I loved the experience of working with her so much that I’d probably do the phone book with her. And she looks gorgeous on those billboards. They’ll get people to tune in, and then they’ll see her wonderful acting.”

Indeed, Hewitt’s TV movie role earned her a Golden Globe nomination — an honor that still leaves her dumbfounded.

“It was like, ‘Wow, somebody noticed something else,’” she said with a laugh.

“I’d like to find some more parts like that that could offer a different side or a different conversation piece. I have not been offered those yet,” she said. After pausing for a moment reflectively, she tried to regain her optimism. “But, hey, I’ve only got a few years left before I’m a character actor, anyway, so might as well work it.”

LATimes.com

Nude underwear, killer curves and a black backdrop.

That’s the stripped down marketing campaign driving eyeballs to Jennifer Love Hewitt’s racy new Lifetime series, The Client List, which launches Sunday (10/9C).

But Hewitt will tell it you you straight. “The scariest part of those billboards was how hungry I was when we were doing the photo shoot,” says Hewitt today in her trailer, laughing. “Because for days I was just like, ‘Let me suck on an ice cube and pretend it’s chicken.’ ”

Sex is on the front burner in the series which revolves around Hewitt as Riley Parks, a Texas mom who turns to giving erotic massages to break even on her mortgage.

The show, says Lifetime president Nancy Dubuc, is helping push the network forward. “It’s clearly not your mother’s Lifetime anymore,” she says. “We want to be a reflection of who women are today.”

Hewitt is ready to shake up her image. “I’m not just going to turn the music up a little bit I’m going to turn the music up really loud,” she says, curling up in an oversized t-shirt and ripped jeans, while sipping on lemon-flavored sparkling water, her extra-long lashes and TV makeup still in place. “That, for me, was those billboards, and for (Lifetime), it’s this show.”

To play Riley, who is often in lingerie, Hewitt has been “working out like crazy,” ruling out junk food and soda and treating herself to desserts once a week. She calls flaunting her new body, years after tabloids gleefully ran photos of her then-curvier self on the covers of magazines, bittersweet. “I didn’t have a body image issue until they plastered me on the cover of things,” she says. “Then I got one.”

But today she says she’s in the best shape of her life – for herself. “Because I’m at the right age, I’m not in that phase of my life, I’m not caught up in (the tabloid) side of things I went, you know what? If I don’t do it at 33, I’m never going to do it.”

The Client List began its life on air as a Lifetime Original Movie that debuted in 2010 to 3.9 million viewers, with Hewitt starring. Hewitt, who is also an executive producer, will reboot Riley’s story on Easter Sunday with a newly empowered protagonist, and a few new characters to boot (Cybill Shepard remains as her mother).

The series will be lighter, and funnier. “The movie had a bit of a dark tone to it and I think it felt a bit heavy and a bit more reminiscent of what the old brand and tone of Lifetime has been,” says Kim Rozenfeld, executive vice president of current programming at Sony Pictures Television, which produces the show. He says the sexual content was handled carefully by the team. “It was very important not for it to be flagrant and not for it to be gratuitous.”

But there’s plenty of steamy content left to satisfy those intrigued by Hewitt’s billboards. In the first episode, Riley’s husband mysteriously leaves her with two children to take care of, and she ends up applying for a job at a massage clinic called The Rub. Lingerie-fueled massage sessions quickly follow.

“I think we might surprise some people with how they feel about what she does,” says Hewitt, whose character often counsels the men she services. “Even though the ad campaigns and a lot of the provocative parts of promoting this show are about the ‘happy endings,’ the show is a really a very normal series about a woman who’s just trying to be a single mom.”

Called “Love” by her friends, in her personal life, Hewitt, who is single, says her view of love has grown up. “I’ve always been a hopeless romantic,” she says. “I’ve always had my head in the rom-com – which I think is a great quality. The problem is, rom-com’s aren’t real.”

Although she still tweets actively about love, “I’m at a place where I could get married, I could not get married,” she says. “Kids is not something I’ll give up on, that’s something I really want in my life but I just sort of started shifting my mindset a little bit.”

Prince Charming, right now, might just turn out to be a netowrk. “Lifetime and I are in such synergy right now because we’re both in exactly the same place,” she says, with a TV movie and another series in the pipeline with them. “We both have been one thing for a long time and loved it and are now ready to say hey, there’s more to me in there than you thought there was and let’s switch it up a little bit.”

USAToday.com

The Lifetime Television drama series The Client List, premiering on April 8th, follows the life of Riley Parks (Jennifer Love Hewitt), a single mother, living in a small Texas town, who leads a shocking double life that would send shockwaves through the community and possibly land her in jail, if it was ever exposed. With an absentee husband, Riley must learn to juggle being a mother to her two children with her job at a seemingly traditional day spa, that offers a little more than just massage therapy.

During this recent interview to promote the risque new show, actress/executive producer Jennifer Love Hewitt talked about what initially drew her to this role, what made her want to do a series version of this story after having done a two-hour film, how she’s been using social media sites to attract interest from viewers, how she mentally prepares to wear lingerie and give the guest stars massages, the research that she did for this role, how exciting she is to be directing the season finale, and that she hopes viewers just have a really good time watching the show.

Question: What made you want to be a part of the television version of this, after starring in the film version?

JENNIFER LOVE HEWITT: We had joked around, when we were doing the movie, about how fun it would be to turn this into a series and really get in deeper with the lives of the women in the spa and everything. So, when the movie did really well, I talked it over with everybody and said, “Let’s pitch it and see what they think,” and here we are.

What originally really drew you to the role of Riley Parks?

HEWITT: I just thought it was really interesting, even with the movie. I think it’s interesting to create empowerment in a woman, who essentially could feel powerless and who could find herself in danger and could look at the situation she’s in, if she wanted to, as not very empowering. This is actually very powerful. She’s making these decisions and she’s making them consciously, and she’s growing sexually, emotionally, physically and mentally, in this job. She’s connecting, in a real, human way, with the human condition and human spirit and hearts of the people on her table. It’s super-powerful. I was really interested in that. I just thought that that was really cool, and a neat message to send out.

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