updated: Feb 15, 2002
Nicki Fifer (Kate Walsh) was Drew's girlfriend for most of the third season (1997). She confesses that she used to be really fat but has now lost 80lbs and has only another 2lb to go to reach her target weight. Drew promises to help but Nicki doesn't cope well being around a food-lover: she is soon piling on the weight again. Eventually she realises she can not cope either with her weight or with a food-lover and the wedding is called off just before the bachelor party.
The makeup and fatsuit were both done very well. As this was a running storyline Kate needed a different set of prosthetics for each episode in which she appeared to show the effects of her progressive weight gain: three or four different sets of prosthetics. I don't know who was responsible for this makeup: I assume it was a specialist FX artist rather than the shows regular makeup team — if you know please email me.
Costume designer, Julie Rhine: When we first started it, Kate actually thought it was very fun. And we were all laughing a lot, but the suit was so form-fitting that by the time they started doing the prosthetics around Kate's face and chin area, she felt incredibly restricted and kind of claustrophobic...[by the end of her stint as Nicki] the novelty had worn off and she was quite large and it was cumbersome and… I think she was ready to stop wearing it.