Hollywood Exclusive by Marilyn Beck & Stacy Jenel Smith

Jennifer Beals reveals she was "completely" surprised to find out that the final season of her "The L Word" series has been transformed into flashbacks. She admits to this column that she's been thrown "a little off-balance by it. It seemed very different from what we had done prior, but you kind of roll with the flow. We'll see what happens."

Asked whether she likes the way her Bette Porter character's storyline has been handled, she says, "I don't know how the show has been edited. It's completely different from the way we shot it, in a way, since it's all being shown as flashbacks."

The Showtime series, returning Jan. 18, completed its production in October, and "they just recently put the trailers together," she notes. She did not learn of the change from the producers. "Somebody else told me — Rachel," she says, referring to cast mate Rachel Shelley.

It might seem strange, to say the least, that the lead actress of the six-year-old lesbian drama series would be kept in the dark about such a wholesale change in the structure of the entire last season, but the Yale-educated Beals is circumspect about that.

"They didn't have to tell all of us, or any of us," she says. "The only thing is, it would help me with doing press. I really have no attachment. To me, after it's done, I rarely watch it. All those people in the studio that were there when we wrapped — all the crew members, the production team, everybody — they're all responsible for what we accomplished. Ilene Chaiken," she says of the show's creator-exec producer. "It's not me, it's a collective. That's the beauty of film and television."

As for what is next, Beals, who has a 3-year-old daughter with husband Ken Dixon, says she's "taking a little time to relax. I'll find another project, and I hope it will be as satisfying as 'The L Word,' and we'll see. I'm not in a huge hurry. I've been reading scripts with women characters who are not drawn very thoroughly. To be on a woman-centric show and then read scripts where a woman is an ancillary character is a rude awakening."

BRINGING GOOD CHEER: Kellie Pickler, who'll be doing correspondent duty in Times Square on "Dick Clark's New Year's Rockin' Eve with Ryan Seacrest," is getting in a Yuletide USO tour before turning her attention to the year-end fest.

It's the 22-year-old "American Idol" cutie's second USO tour. The first time out, she wound up "in Baghdad. We did about two or three shows a day. We flew helicopters to the different bases and did 30-45 minute shows. It was incredible!" She adds, "I didn't get nervous at all. I was there with my military to protect me. I felt more safe than I do here sometimes," she says.

Pickler says she'll probably film a new video from her self-titled album after the holidays. Her "Best Days of Your Life," written with pal Taylor Swift, single came out last month. As for Christmas itself, "I am actually thinking of going on vacation somewhere. I went to Mexico for Thanksgiving. I've always wanted to be a world traveler."

THE INDUSTRY EYE: Hollywood may be bracing for an actor's strike, but it's readily apparent that in the meantime, work is carrying on. Among the pilots being cast now for shooting sometime after what could be a strike vote by Screen Actors Guild members next month, is the much-talked-about spinoff series of "NCIS," which is due to begin shooting in February. There's also ABC's "Flash Forward" hour-long series pilot — that has to do with everyone on earth experiencing a mass loss of consciousness and other eerie phenomena — has a large cast to fill before its production.

On the feature side, subsidiary roles are being cast in the Will Farrell big-screen comedy "Land of the Lost," which has the movie cutup as an unlucky paleontologist who validates his theories by traveling to an alternate universe — which proves to be even more unlucky for him. Sylvester Stallone's all-action-star "The Expendables" is gearing up for production in Brazil and Louisiana, with Stallone directing and starring as the leader of a group of mercenaries including Jet Li, Jason Statham and Dolph Lundgren. And Mario Van Peebles is getting ready for a February start on his "Kerosene Cowboys" movie that'll shoot in Nevada.

HAMBURGER OF THINGS TO COME: Asked about his favorite childhood Christmas present, Carson Kressley is quick to respond. "I remember when I was 10 years old, I got a little plastic McDonald's franchise. It was shaped like a 1970s McDonald's. Maybe I was supposed to grow up to be an entrepreneur," he tells us. 'Course, he grew up to be a reality show star ("Queer Eye for the Straight Guy," "How to Look Good Naked"), potentially a talk show host for Lifetime, a designer, an actor, an author, a QVC pitchman and more. So he's certainly serving up a lot of dishes, just not the edible kind.

With reports by Emily Feimster.

To find out more about Marilyn Beck and Stacy Jenel Smith and read their past columns, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.

COPYRIGHT 2008 MARILYN BECK AND STACY JENEL SMITH

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