April 27, 2004, 10:58AM

'Sesame Street' regular gives 'The Sopranos' a try
By DAVID BAUDER
Associated Press

NEW YORK -- After filming an intimate scene with his girlfriend in The Sopranos, Steve Buscemi's good-natured angst over actress Alison Bartlett's other job on Sesame Street was laid bare.

"Everybody's going to hate me!" Buscemi moaned. "I'm bedding down Gina!"
Alison Bartlett, who has been turning heads on Sesame Street since joining the show in 1986, is now turning heads for her role as a mobster's girlfriend on The Sopranos.

What would Elmo say?

Good-natured Gina, the veterinarian and Sesame Street neighbor for nearly two decades, seminude and in bed with a man? A mobster just out of prison, no less.

Even in a profession with vertigo-inducing character switches, Bartlett's feat -- simultaneously performing on television's most violent show and probably its most gentle -- is noteworthy.

"It is an extreme," she said. "An absolute extreme."

Children's Television Workshop, which makes Sesame Street, has rules about what outside work its performers can take on. Lewis Bernstein, the show's executive producer, said he trusted Bartlett to do what's right. He was able to see for himself Sunday, when the love scene involving Bartlett's character, Gwen McIntyre, aired.

Bartlett has been a member of the Sesame Street family since 1986, first portraying a student in a science class. Gina graduated from college, came back to run a day care and is now a vet, even though Bartlett is allergic to dogs.

Before joining Sesame Street, Bartlett had prime Sopranos training: At age 12, she played a girl who chopped her boyfriend's head off in a Gary Sinise-directed play.

Taking time off to have three children, Sesame Street was Bartlett's only acting job for many years. But in the past two years, she's actively sought other work. She's on a new series, The Jury, to air on Fox this summer. She played a prison guard raped by a prisoner on Law & Order and a closet lesbian schoolteacher on Law & Order: Criminal Intent.

"It's a good thing my children go to bed at 8 o'clock," she said.

Georgianne Walken, casting director on The Sopranos, said Bartlett nailed the audition for her character, Gwen, by capturing the maternal instincts of a woman who fell in love with a prison inmate.

Bartlett said she pursued the role because The Sopranos is a great show, not because she was trying to break from the constraints of a long-established character.

She and her manager, Carolyn Anthony, cleared the job with Children's Television Workshop. Bartlett's contract with The Sopranos had a long list of activities she would not do, words she would not say.

Children's Television Workshop forbids its actors from making commercial endorsements for children's products, or performing in roles on other children's shows because it might confuse Sesame Street's young fans. The show asks actors not to appear in roles that would cast their Sesame Street characters in a bad light, Bernstein said.

Bartlett's appearance on The Sopranos shouldn't be a problem because any parent with common sense isn't letting his preschool children watch the show, he said.

Sesame Street is also careful in picking outside celebrities to appear on the show, which is done partly to attract parents to watch with their children. Tony Soprano himself, James Gandolfini, was on three years ago to talk to children about fears.

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