TV PREVIEW
“Ice & Coco,” 1 p.m. weekdays (starting Aug. 3), Fox (WAGA-TV)
If a test run of a new talk show needed an extra dose of publicity, rapper and actor Ice-T and his model wife, Coco Austin, pulled it off with a baby announcement.
“Honestly, there is no way I could have timed this,” Ice-T, 57, said in a phone interview July 27 just a couple of days after the news leaked. “I’m not that good. But we’ve known for quite a while. When we started shooting the show, the staff didn’t even know. When we told them, they decided it would be great to announce it on the first show.”
That premiere pregnancy announcement episode of “Ice & Coco” was taped July 24 and will air Monday in eight markets, including L.A., Washington, D.C., and Atlanta. Fox 5 in Atlanta has scheduled the show for a three-week test run at the 1 p.m. slot following a monthlong test run by former Atlantans and fellow married couple Boris Kodjoe and Nicole Ari Parker.
If “Ice & Coco” pulls in enough ratings, Warner Brothers will be able to syndicate it to a nationwide audience starting in the fall of 2016.
The couple, married 13 years, only began trying to have a baby earlier this year with Coco getting off birth control. She was pregnant almost immediately.
“It was instant,” said Coco, who is 35. “I didn’t know you could get pregnant that fast!”
She said her pregnancy has been super easy so far. “If I hadn’t taken a test, I probably wouldn’t even know I was pregnant,” she said.
They decided to keep the pregnancy under wraps for a while. “I’m excited it’s finally out,” Coco said. “It’s hard to keep a secret, especially when people know my body so well.”
The talk show was a possibility even before their E! reality show “Ice Loves Coco,” which aired for three seasons from 2011 to 2013.
“I was so adamantly against doing a reality show,” Ice-T said. “But it turned out to be a great thing. We decided to stop after three seasons before it started to get fake.”
Fans missed the show, he said, so he felt this was another way for the couple to entertain people. “This wasn’t our idea,” Ice-T said. “It was people around us.”
The first episode will feature Tamar Braxton, who is part of another talk show airing on Fox, “The Real,” and Snooki of “Jersey Shore” fame.
Besides celebrities, Ice-T said there will be fashion shows for women and for dogs (they have two English bulldogs) and experts showing off cool gadgets.
“We really didn’t know what the hell we were doing as talk show hosts,” Coco said. “We just decided to have fun. And it turned out to be super fun. We’ve had a great time so far. We laugh a lot. Ice is full of jokes all the time.”
Ice-T said he is not trying to raise expectations for the show’s success: “I’ve been in this business a long time. I tell Coco we’ll remain humble and see what happens. We hope people enjoy it as much as we’re having fun making it.”
He has been a longtime cast member of NBC’s “Law & Order: SVU” and is signed through 2017. He isn’t sure how he would juggle the two shows, but he said they’ll work it out if need be.
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