Ledger Pop Journal - Celebrity News & Sports

Mark-Paul Gosselaar got a real-life dose of the public defender's world before assuming the role on TV, in Steven Bochco's TNT "Raising the Bar" series that debuts Sept. 1. Due to the show's cocreator David Feige's ties with his former colleagues in the The Bronx Defenders office in the South Bronx, he relates, "They allowed me to become an intern for a week."

Mark-Paul Gosselaar on Steven Bochco's "Raising the Bar" (Image: Wenn)

Gosselaar says he got a badge, that he was able to sit in on arraignments, even to interview some clients. "I'm blowing my cover now. I'd never be able to go back," notes the actor of "NYPD Blue" and "Saved by the Bell" fame. But he was there long enough to gain a new perspective.

"Television has had an obsessive focus on prosecutors and high end defense attorneys," he points out. "I thought of public defenders as being schleppy attorneys who only became public defenders because they weren't good enough to go elsewhere. But that's not David's world with The Bronx Defenders. You find Ivy Leaguers, people who want to make a difference, to use the power of their law degrees to help the powerless. Their clients need protection from the system. Usually they have about 100 cases going on all at once. Obviously they're not doing this for money. They have such a connection with their clients."

DOING FOR OTHERS: Songstress Bettina is back to work with Pussycat Dolls producer Automatic on the studio album ("Emerald City") she has scheduled for release in January. However, she admits, "I keep getting called to do stuff, and I'm going to continue to do stuff, to get the word out there."

She's referring to her "Cradle to the Grave (a Song About Family)" song, each sale of which is earmarked to raise money for the March of Dimes for premature babies -- 10 cents a single. "The response to the song has been wonderful, and I've talked to a lot of people and heard their stories, and met some miracle babies, too," says the 29-year-old lovely, who's just come off the road after appearances with Smash Mouth and Gretchen Wilson. For instance, "One family drove eight hours from Colorado to New Mexico for a concert. They had twin boys who were born 9-10 weeks premature and now are the happiest, healthiest kids."

The song just shipped to radio. It was inspired by her manager and best friend's experience with her preemie triplets, two boys and a girl "who is my goddaughter. They were born a whole trimester premature. We almost lost them and my best friend as well. But by the grace of God and help from the March of Dimes, they all made it. They just turned 4." The "Cradle to the Grave" fundraising drive "is just our way of saying 'Thank you,'" says Bettina. "I think that especially in this economy right now, it's good to remember that you can make a difference in little ways. A million dimes adds up. That's the whole principle the March of Dimes was founded on."

THE BIG SCREEN SCENE: Casting of subsidiary parts is underway for Mike Judge's third feature -- following "Office Space" and "Idiocracy -- "Extract," in which Jason Bateman is to play a flower extract plant owner. Judge (creator of "Beavis and Butthead" and "King of the Hill,") has a tale here that's beyond quirky, with Bateman's character besieged by bad luck including his wife, who doesn't want to have sex with him, taking up with a gigolo, and one of his employees losing a testicle in an onsite accident. In a flower extraction plant? The mind reels.

With reports by Emily Feimster.