Deborah S. Craig in Hart of Dixie

By happenstance, we caught the pilot episode of new CW show Hart of Dixie, a few months into the season and kept it on in the background. We aren’t snobs about what we watch with Gossip Girl, 90210, and The Ringer on the roster and so Hart of Dixie also had some appeal and we were hooked after the pilot.

When browsing through the show’s IMDB page, nothing would catch my eye if I just scanned the actors’ names but scanning the character names column, “Shelley Ng” jumps out amongst the otherwise Southern names and I started to look for her in the following episodes.

Shelley Ng is an over-the-top looking waitress at the Rammer Jammer, the bar where the characters tend to find themselves and she quickly befriends main character Zoe Hart, played by Rachel Bilson.

While the show is full of animated and quirky characters, Shelley Ng stands out for several reasons. She looks more mature and less lady-like than the Dixie belles, her counterparts. Shelley is more like a glamour 50s diner-lady and has a working-class attitude and humour to go with it.

By far, people are tuning in for Rachel Bilson’s Zoe Hart’s witty quips and cute outfits and to see what yellow-hued stuck-in-time outfit Lemon Breeland is wearing in each scene. Then for me, Shelley Ng is a close second.

On a cursory dig around, I can’t find too much on Deborah S. Craig although she’s one of the older cast members, born in 1974. She’s multi-talented as an actor, writer, certified yoga instructor and singer. Her twitter feed (@DeborahSCraig) and Facebook page show that quirkiness naturally comes to her. And it seems she created this controversial and hilarious short video, Yoga for Black People.