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September
/ october 2006:
Fall
TV: Marla Sokoloff
by Gerri Miller
Series Premiere: Big Day on ABC, Oct. 5 @ 8:00 pm
Marla Sokoloff, the sassy office receptionist from The Practice and seductive babysitter from Desperate Housewives is grown up and getting married as Alice, the bride-to-be of Big Day, an ABC comedy that will follow a couple’s wedding day over an entire season. “She’s very romantic and wants the big wedding and everything to be perfect,” says Sokoloff, who off screen has been observing closely as she prepares to be maid of honor for a friend. “I feel like I am a personal assistant. There’s a lot of pressure, a lot of work,” she says, relieved that at least she’ll be wearing a tasteful black strapless instead of a hideous bridesmaid dress.
That real-life role and her TV one have made her less inclined to marry, especially amid over-the-top hoopla. “A lot of my friends who have been married and had the huge wedding are divorced,” Sokoloff points out, and as a result she envisions “something really mellow, not a big production. I think it should be more about the marriage.” The 25-year-old actress, who has been dating composer and drummer Alec Puro for two years, would rather have a small Jewish wedding on a beach.
She never had a bat mitzvah. “I was working so much as an actress that it never happened. I was so happy to be out of Hebrew school. But now I feel differently,” she says with some regret, noting that her mother belatedly became bat mitzvah at 40. “When I have children I want to raise them Jewish. My boyfriend is Jewish. And it helps not to make my mom mad. It’s the first question she asks. ‘Is he Jewish?’ Not how we met, or do I like him.”
Also a musician, Sokoloff, who describes her singing style as “Aimee Mann-esque,” doesn’t plan to sing on Big Day. But you never know. “Maybe,” she says, “If Alice gets really wasted at the wedding.”

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