Playing no-nonsense single mom nnd local sheriff "Sam Parker," Kari Wuhrer brings a tough-woman sensibility to EIGHT LEGGED FREAKS. She's no Gilmore Girl as she lays down the law with her teen-aged daughter and young son and blasts spiders to gooey oblivion, sometimes in the same moment . In person, the actress is a lot more fun. "The itsy-bitsy spider," she sings, then laughs. "That's okay, I'm just fine with it! I was a little nervous about playing a mom. I think that was my biggest challenge. I don't have kids - let alone teenaged kids - and I was worried that I wouldn't be convincing. Thank God they got Scarlett Johansson to play my daughter because she's amazing. I saw so much of myself in that sassy sixteen-year-old that it was a little frustrating and daunting. "The courage to battle the.spiders didn't come from Sam Parker being a sheriff. It came from Sam Parker having kids, and having raised them by herself, and having to protect them. It made it easier once I got that relationship down. "But I kept saying to [producer] Dean Deviin, 'Can't I please just have one funny line! I want to be funny! Can't I have one little part that's funny!?' He was like. 'No!' And [director] Ellory Elkayern said.'No, you're the Dean Martin.' I was frustrated. It was hard. To get the tone right [required] a delicate balance between humor and horror. If we had too much humor in the wrong places, it would be campy. We had to maintain the fear-factor of the spiders. I was really impressed with the final result." Definitely Wuhrer has acting talent, but it comes in a beautiful package. "When I got to L.A., I got sucked into that whole perfect body thing," she recalled. "It's a suit of armor you can hide behind. I didn't realize it at the time, but it wasn't allowing me to be fully honest as a person, as a woman, and certainly not in my work. I don't think my body is my greatest asset. In my private life, I think it's my heart, and in my work, it's my truth. It's made me much more emotionally available." Wuhrer handles a shotgun well, too. "My dad is a hunter and I always get on him about it!" she says. "I can't go to [his] house because of the deer heads in the den! My father was a police officer, so we always [saw] shot guns...different kinds of guns. I've also wielded a rifle in the occasional film and TV series. You get the hang of it pretty quick when you've got effects guys breathing down your neck, telling you that the shot-gun does have a kick. "I think that was the most physically difficult challenge for me in this movie. We had to do a scene in a mall where all these spiders were coming after us and I had to shoot up and down and over and get all these areas covered. because they were coming from all sides!" They gave Wuhrer a pump-action. They couldn't use a semi-automatic? "No! They gave me the real thing! My arms were aching! I had to dot he kickback and rapid fire multiple times and I was running.   I was thinking, 'Boy, I can't get out of this anymore!   If I wasn't working out at the gym. I'd be dead!'   I said, 'Please. guys. if it doesn't look real, or I look like a dark, let's do it again,' and so we did! Again, and again, and again!   But I saw the film, and it looks okay." Of course, all the time she's shooting at nothing - the spiders are all CG.'   'We got to see what the effects team was doing with the spiders before we started shooting," she quips. "It was amazing! The effects team was studying the movement of real spiders. We [also] had real spiders with a wrangler on the set for a couple of days. 1 let the tarantulas walk on me! I took inventory of how afraid of them I was. The rest is stored memory and imagination and playing the game! It was like playing kick the can and running from whoever was it. "I have a normal, healthy, primal-screaming fear of spiders! No phobia or anything. If I ran into a tarantuta in the wild I'd run the other way. In a controlled environment with a wrangler, it {was) a piece of cake." This isn't Ms. Wuhrer's first brush with creepy-crawlies -she was in ANACON&A as well, which netted an unexpected $65 million at the U.S. box office alone in 1997. Several of those involved.commented prior to that film's release about the creep real-life jungle action, "You know. those actors on ANACONDA were PUSSIES" she exclaims. "Let me tetl you right now! We had this big yacht on the river. It was air conditioned and everything else. So we're all hanging out on the yacht in the air conditioning on the Rio Negro -there's no bugs because it's too alkaline. 'Oh it's too hot, it's hot!' So we're staying in this hotel...'Ooooh, it's humid! I'm net working with any snakes) Ooooh, snakes!" "There were spiders the size of dinner plates, and the hotel we stayed at was on stilts in the middle of the jungle. There were monkeys jumping out of trees and going through your purse, and Ice T was like, I'm not touching those damn monkeys!' I was so into the experience of it. That's always how I choose the projects that I do. You're going to tell me I'm going to Prague. I'm going, baby! Or you tell me I'm going to the Amazon! Yeah! The script could suck -and it usually does- but I'm going! At the same time, I get the experience. I'm honing my [acting] skills. "As luck would have it, most of those films haven't been seen by the public, but I loved doing them. But on this movie...Dean Deviin and Roland Emmerich!? They're the most incredible team -INDEPENDENCE DAY and THE PATRIOT. Action, humor and drama! Dean called me and said, 'So, are you doing our movie?' I was like, 'Wait, who is this!?' Unbelievable! I thought, 'My God, I would bring him coffee! I would light Roland Emmerich's cigarettes by rubbing two sticks together!' "I'd like to do more movies! I hope I get to do studio pictures, I've got a mortgage to pay! It's great to have the films you do reach a wide audience. To me, it's a dream come true! I'm a total ham, are you kidding?!"