LOS ANGELES (TNA) – Molly Sims, one of the main lovelies on NBC’s “Las Vegas,” had no way of knowing in the beginning how trippy her gig as Delinda Deline could be.

But she quickly got a clue. Her first day on the job was literally one wild ride. For her introductory scene, Sims mounted leading man Josh Duhamel in a bedroom scene that was about as explicit as it gets on broadcast network TV.

“That scene will go down in history as one of the most shocking, surprising and fun things I’ve ever done,” Sims devilishly declares.

If you saw this episode of “Las Vegas” back in September 2003, Delinda’s “grand opening” is most likely cemented in your memory: Casino security boss Big Ed (a menacing James Caan) burst into a hotel suite, catching Delinda and Danny (Duhamel) in flagrante delicto.

That’s when Delinda turned and coyly purred, “Hi, Daddy!”

The scene gave viewers all the insight they needed, Sims says, into “this little manipulative, sexy girl.” Now, in season five, Delinda – pregnant with Danny’s child, yet still a hottie – has toned down the defiant wild-child act. But she’s just as much of a hoot and just as dynamic onscreen as ever.

“I always like to do things that aren’t expected of the character,” the 5-foot-9, green-eyed blonde says. “You don’t want to play too nice, too sweet. So when she’s mean – or PMS-ing – I really like doing that.”

It’s worth noting that Molly Sims, the Sports Illustrated swimsuit model-turned-actress, is actually a very nice girl trapped in a very naughty body.

She played that “Hi, Daddy” sequence – filmed after midnight in the Presidential Suite of the Las Vegas Mandalay Bay Hotel & Casino – with all the gusto she had. But all the while she was “so nervous” doing it.

Sims and Duhamel, who now have a sibling-like friendship, had just met – and unless you’re a porn star, performing a bedroom scene with a stranger can be a nerve-wracking experience.

And unlike the character she plays, Sims says she would never dream of pulling that kind of stunt just to piss off her father in real life. In fact, she’s the type who calls her dad in advance to warn him when a magazine photo shoot gets a little too risqué. She’s also the type to take the sexual awkwardness out of a TV love scene by writing “Hi, Josh” on her pasties.

“I’ve lived all over – New York, Europe, L.A. – and I like to think of myself as a modern woman,” she says. “But I’m also still that girl who grew up in Murray, Kentucky.”

Modeling was a career that Sims got into by accident.

“I stumbled into it,” she says. “I had no idea what I was getting into. I was at Vanderbilt University. I thought I would be a lawyer or maybe play some kind of a role behind the scenes in politics. I had done two years at Vanderbilt and I had gone to New York for the summer and someone asked me to model. I thought it would be fun to try. Next thing I knew, I was living in Europe and working more and more and more. There were fashion magazines, MTV’s ‘House of Style,’ Cover Girl cosmetics – and soon there was no turning back.”

The leap to acting, however, was more carefully considered. She studied the craft for two years, then started to test the waters with TV guest roles in 2002. The idea was to take it slow. Her gig in “Las Vegas,” for example, was initially meant to be a recurring role, she notes. But the powers that be, seeing what they had in her, quickly upped her to series regular status.

As “Las Vegas” creator/executive producer Gary Scott Thompson puts it, “When the show started, she was always identified as ‘supermodel Molly Sims.’ Then it was ‘star of “Las Vegas” Molly Sims.’ And now it’s ‘actress Molly Sims.’ And a lot of the people [in the business] who call to ask about her for feature films, because they always call me first, they don’t even know that she was a model.”

“It’s difficult to learn in front of an audience of 15 million people how to act,” Sims admits, “but I’ve stayed strong, I’ve had great coaches, I’ve asked a lot of questions and I feel I’ve earned some respect as an actress.”

And whenever Sims visits Las Vegas – which isn’t as often as you might think, given that the series is filmed in a fake casino in California – she’s treated like Sin City royalty, which is a mind-boggling experience for someone who still sees herself as a small-town Kentucky girl.

“It’s crazy,” she says of how the fans mob her when she’s in town. “And they all call me by my character’s name. They don’t call me Molly. They scream Delinda. It’s strange. And I think a lot of these people, the ones who aren’t from Vegas, think the Montecito actually exists. It’s amazing, the power of TV!”

Granted. But what’s also amazing is the power of a radiant smile on a tall, beautiful blonde.

Name:

Email:

 

Notify me of follow-up comments?

Please enter the word you see in the image below: