With her career on New York’s stages taking off, Calista Flockhart traveled to Los Angeles in 1997 to audition for an upcoming television show. “I was jet lagged and tired, so I just went in there and thought, ‘Well, whatever happens, happens,’” she told People. The show happened to be “Ally McBeal,” and she was offered the part the afternoon of her audition. Creator David E. Kelley explained that they’d seen hundreds of auditions before Flockhart’s. “[W]hen she walked in on a cold reading,” he recalled, “she just was Ally.”
On the legal comedy, Flockhart played the title character, a lawyer who works at a firm with an infamously unisex bathroom. The show was controversial, igniting debates about gender on television, which Flockhart quickly tried to sidestep. According to The Baltimore Sun, she denied any implication that Ally was meant to be any new sort of feminist icon. “She’s a character who is just simply that: an individual, independent of any kind of role model or some sort of symbolic woman of the ’90s who embraces womanhood,” she insisted. “No, not at all.”
Nevertheless, the role changed Flockhart’s life. At first, Flockhart lived in the Hotel Bel-Air while working on the show; soon, she was able to buy a home in Los Angeles. Moreover, she told People, “Though I may not feel like a role model, I recognize the responsibility. I feel like I’m up to the responsibility.”
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