By Bill Slocum
Contributing Editor
Over a decade since reporting for work at a television studio set, Tina Arning found herself emotional as she walked onto the Los Angeles soundstage to play a scene of “Modern Family.”
“It was totally amazing, but also surreal,” Arning recalled. “I love ‘Modern Family.’ It’s the only thing I really watch. I had to pull it together.”
Arning, a Greenwich High graduate, spent a decade doing guest spots on television comedies like “Ned And Stacey” and “NewsRadio.” She had a recurring role on “Everyone Loves Raymond.” She knows a set can be a touchy place, especially when you get ideas.
Back in 1994 when working on her first TV movie, she watched another actor and a director trying to figure out a prop. Arning thought she knew, and got a curt “thank you” for her troubles. Oh, wow, I wasn’t supposed to talk, she remembered thinking after. On “Frasier,” she didn’t even bother the director with her idea. She just mentioned it to another actor in passing.
“Why don’t you worry about your own scene?” the actor replied.
Sometimes, though, a set can be welcoming to ideas. “Everyone Loves Raymond” was like that, she said. So, it turned out, is “Modern Family.”
“My character and her friends were posing for a selfie with Phil [a lead character on “Modern Family” played by Ty Burrell], and there was this blank air,” Arning remembered. “We cut, and I said ‘Can we do a fake laugh?’ They said ‘What?’ I told them it’s this thing they do right before a selfie. Someone says ‘fake laugh!’ and everybody pretends to laugh. It’s just a thing.”
And so, just like that, she watched the cast and crew of her favorite sitcom work her “fake laugh” into the scene.
“It was great,” Arning said. “It is so much fun to feel like you are a part of the process. Maybe it works, and maybe it doesn’t. But when they are open to hearing it, it’s thrilling. You feel like you are part of a collaboration, and it’s superfun. It brings out your best work.”
Arning’s return to television happened Wednesday evening. The episode, entitled “Thunk In The Trunk,” featured Arning in the role of one of three women who befriend Phil as he copes with his wife’s burgeoning business career. They are “trophy wives” in the script, thus ironic comrades for Phil after years of his being the breadwinner.
Taking time away from television in the last decade is something Arning described as a natural progression. She was starting a family with her husband, internet entrepreneur Jason Brazell (they now have three children, ages 12 to 6, and live near Los Angeles.) At the same time, scripted television shows were fading fast as reality television took over.
Arning kept working in theater, which she described as a major passion. She appeared in West Coast productions of “Gods Of Carnage” and “Cat On A Hot Tin Roof.” She also worked on one of her children’s school productions of “Grease.”
Ironically, Arning’s closest brush with acting growing up in Greenwich came in a production of “Grease” with the St. Catherine’s Players.
“I turned down Rizzo, which was insane,” she said. Arning, then very active at Allegra Dance Greenwich, preferred to stay in the show’s dance chorus. “It never occurred to me to act.”
Arning was almost out of Boston University before she decided to make a serious stab at acting. She was 21, late for the profession.
“It’s a challenging career path,” she said. “It fits my personality type to follow my heart, my passion, my dreams. But needless to say, there were a lot of people saying no, a lot of doors closing. It goes back and forth from being gratifying and thrilling, and really, really hard.”
Now Arning sees herself in a good place again, after some years away. She hopes to use her “Modern Family” appearance as a launching pad for more work. She hopes to get more guest shot opportunities, and ideally, a recurring or regular spot on a show.
“At the same time, I’m working on a book,” she said. “The great news is there is no limit where you can work, contribute, write, or create content. The opportunities to spearhead content are infinitely more broad than they ever were before.”
If nothing else, her “Modern Family” gig has impressed the gang at the Arning-Brazell household. It has also impressed people back home in Greenwich, with whom she stays connected via Facebook.
“I love Greenwich, and I miss it all the time,” she said. “Mom still lives there, in the house I grew up in. I don’t think there’s anyone I knew from Greenwich that I’m not connected with on Facebook. I’ll see people where it says we have 114 Friends in common.
“People tell me Facebook is a great professional tool. I don’t know if it’s made a lot of professional difference, but it’s been exciting seeing people you’ve grown up with telling you they are keeping up with what I’m doing.”
