Where I Investigate and Discover That Constance Zimmer and Pamela Adlon Are Not the Same Person

As I was catching up on this week’s tv (another “thing to do
when you’re snowed in”), I noticed this actress on Grey’s Anatomy (she’s the
doctor/ efficiency expert, in case you’re curious).   Because of my awesome new ability to
screen-shot (another result of being snowed in—see how much I love this
blizzard?), I will show her to you now:

All I know is, every time I see this actress, she reminds me
of another actress, and it finally bugged me so much that I decided to unravel
this mystery.

This person’s name is  
Constance Zimmer, and in case she looks familiar to you, that’s because
she was also Dana on “Entourage,” Colleen on “Love Bites” (a show I thought was
funny but that no one really watched), Claire on “Boston Legal,” and a bunch of
other shows.  Here’s her IMDB listing, in
case you think you know her from another show and want to see which one that
might be.  

OK, mystery solved, right?  
Partially, but actually not, because that  is actually  not who I thought it was, so I had to go and
find the other actress who reminds me so much of Constance Zimmer, I can never
tell the two of them apart.

That other person, in case you’re wondering, is Pamela Adlon, who
you might remember as the mean Luncheonette neighbor Marleise
on the most recent season of Parenthood. 
She looks like this:

You might also know her as Marcy Runkle on Californication
(she’s actually really funny on that show), and you’ll definitely know her
voice, because she has actually played the character of Bobby on King of the
Hill since 1997 (!).   Here is Pamela Adlon's IMDB listing, for your reference.

Apparently I am not the only person to confuse the two,
because get this—Pamela Adlon played the role of Constance in  both the unaired pilot plus one other episode
of “Love Bites,” and then she was replaced by Constance Zimmer for the other
eight episodes.    Here’s the Wikipedia page about that show, in
case it interests you.

If you read that Wikipedia piece about "Love Bites,"  sure to read all the way down, past the bazillion guests
stars, down to the development history. 
Apparently it got jammed up in production and took so long to get picked
up that they ended up replacing most of the people in the pilot.  Weird, and totally sucky for all the people who worked on that project.   I do not wish the pain of Development Hell on anyone.

Anyhow, in case you ever were wondering (which you were
probably not), Constance Zimmer and Pamela Adlon are not the same person, as
far as I can tell, although I could not find any evidence of them ever having
been in the same place at the same time.  They do seem fairly similar (small frames,
dark hair, scratchy-ish voices), so I can’t be the only one thinking this.  Perhaps a clever casting director could cast
them as sisters in the same show so we could clear this up once and for all.  

I know I feel better, just knowing both of their names so I
can look both of them up on IMDB every time I see either one of them. 

• Category: Television
• Tag: constance zimmer, greys anatomy, marcy from californication, mean neighbor on parenthood, pamela adlon