Turkey episode garners Emmy nomination

BURBANK, Calif. -- "ER" star Laura Innes has an Emmy nomination -- for directing a couple of turkeys.

The joke is corny but true, and the actress laughs softly as she discusses her burgeoning directing career over lunch at the Warner Bros. studio commissary.

A pair of turkeys vying for the annual presidential Thanksgiving pardon provided one of the plot lines in last season's "Shibboleth" episode of "The West Wing." Innes received an Emmy nomination for directing the episode. The Emmys will be presented Sept. 16 at the Shrine Auditorium.

Innes plays no-nonsense supervisor Dr. Kerry Weaver on "ER," which begins its eighth season Sept. 20. She began her directing career on the hit NBC medical series.

Her first assignment was the "Power" episode when Chicago's County General Hospital was plunged into darkness by a blackout. When she saw the schedule for the technically complex show, she asked for a meeting with the show's producers.

"I said, 'You are aware that I've never directed anything, right? You are aware of that?' They had this amazing easy attitude about it all. ... I don't know why they had the confidence they had in me, but they did. So that made me have the courage to do it because I thought, 'Well, they think I can do it, so maybe I can."'

There's no cockiness about Innes, but there is a surety of spirit. She's attracted to the understated, but her point of view is clear, straightforward, quietly confident.

Her pretty face -- usually presented to viewers in its plainest form, hunched and closed off as the ultra-private Weaver -- has a natural charm, free of guile or vanity.

"I tend to be somebody who is more drawn to restraint, to what is unexpressed than to sort of laying my cards on the table," the 42-year-old actress says.

No time to second-guess

When confronted by the complexity of the "Power" episode, Innes said she had "no time to second-guess myself and to worry too much about what people thought of what I was doing because it was a such a very large undertaking."

More directing assignments for "ER" -- and NBC's "The West Wing" -- followed.

The Michigan-born actress had worked extensively in Chicago and New York theater before moving to Hollywood.

Television presented new challenges.

"I just got more curious about why the directors were doing the things they were doing," says Innes, who had a recurring role as Weaver in the second season of "ER" and became a regular the following year.

Noticing how stars like Anthony Edwards benefited from being so "camera savvy," she decided to pay attention to the broader picture "to sort of aid me in my acting."