Allyce Beasley’s gift is to make an eccentric supporting character funny without treating her as a fool. We rate the sincerity and comic timing of her Moonlighting performance; the casting that followed too often asked her to repeat it.
Fi1m perspective
Agnes DiPesto answers the telephone in rhyme, and Allyce Beasley gives no sign that this is an odd way to run a reception desk. In Moonlighting (1985), the greeting is a little routine of its own, delivered by someone who means to be helpful. We laughed at those greetings because Beasley’s sincerity makes the absurdity funnier. Her high, childlike voice announces an eccentric, but her timing keeps the joke from resting on the sound alone. There is a person doing a job here, and Beasley lets us like her.
We rate Glenn Gordon Caron’s detective comedy highly, with a reservation about its fondness for congratulating itself. Cybill Shepherd and Bruce Willis give the quarrels their bite; Beasley provides a welcome change of pace through Agnes’s wide-eyed loyalty. She does not need to compete with their flirtation to make an impression. The pleasure is in watching her take a supporting character seriously without asking the programme to stop for her. Across her run from 1985 to 1989, Agnes established the qualities that later casting would find difficult to see past.
The problem after Moonlighting was how often Beasley was offered another version of Agnes, a restriction she found frustrating. Eccentricity can become predictable when a performer is repeatedly employed to supply it, and that is the caveat to this part of her career. The Tommyknockers (1993), with Beasley as Becka Paulson, offered a rarer part against type. Her move towards voice work gave that distinctive sound another use, notably as the teacher Miss Alordayne Grotke in Recess (1997). The warmth suits the role, though we would not mistake a change of medium for a complete escape from familiar casting.
Her later work has largely meant guest appearances and voices rather than leading parts, so there is a limit to how much those credits tell us about what she might have done with more room. We would welcome casting that used her sincerity without requiring another collection of quirks. For the clearest account of what she can do, begin with Moonlighting and pay attention when the telephone rings.
Biography
Allyce Beasley is an American actress. She is best known for her role as the rhyming receptionist Agnes DiPesto in the television series Moonlighting (1985–1989), for which she received two Primetime Emmy Award nominations for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Drama Series.
She attended the State University of New York at Brockport and trained with Lee Strasberg and Wynn Handman. Beasley has appeared in films such as Stuart Little (1999) and Legally Blonde (2001), and in television series including Cheers (1982) as Lisa Pantusso, ALF (1986) and Recess (1997–2001) voicing Miss Alordayne Grotke. From 2001 to 2007 she served as the announcer for Playhouse Disney.
