Jennifer Love Hewitt massages her image

VAN NUYS, Calif. -- Nude underwear, killer curves and a black backdrop.

Thats the stripped-down marketing campaign driving eyeballs to Jennifer Love Hewitts racy new Lifetime series, The Client List, which launches Sunday.

But Hewitt will tell it to you straight. The scariest part of those billboards was how hungry I was when we were doing the photo shoot, says Hewitt in her trailer, laughing. Because for days I was just like, Let me suck on an ice cube and pretend its chicken.

Sex is on the front burner in the series, which revolves around Hewitt as Riley Parks, a Texas mom who turns to giving erotic massages to break even on her mortgage.

Hewitt is ready to shake up her image. Im not just going to turn the music up a little bit. Im going to turn the music up really loud, she says, curling up in an oversized T-shirt and ripped jeans while sipping on lemon-flavored sparkling water, her extra-long lashes and TV makeup still in place. That, for me, was those billboards, and for (Lifetime), its this show.

To play Riley, who is often in lingerie, Hewitt has been working out like crazy, skipping junk food and soda, and treating herself to desserts once a week. She calls flaunting her new body, years after tabloids gleefully ran photos of her then-curvier self on the covers of magazines, bittersweet. I didnt have a body image issue until they plastered me on the cover of things, she says. Then I got one.

The Client List began as a Lifetime Original Movie that premiered in 2010 to 3.9 million viewers, with Hewitt starring. Hewitt, who is also an executive producer, will reboot Rileys story in the series with a newly empowered protagonist and a few new characters (Cybill Shepherd remains as her mother).

The series will be lighter, and funnier. The movie had a bit of a dark tone to it and I think it felt a bit heavy and a bit more reminiscent of what the old brand and tone of Lifetime has been, says Kim Rozenfeld, executive vice! preside nt of current programming at Sony Pictures Television, which produces the show. He says the sexual content was handled carefully by the team. It was very important not for it to be flagrant and not for it to be gratuitous.

But theres plenty of steamy content to satisfy those intrigued by Hewitts billboards.

In the first episode, Rileys husband mysteriously leaves her with two children to take care of, and she ends up applying for a job at a massage clinic called The Rub. Lingerie-fueled massage sessions quickly follow.

I think we might surprise some people with how they feel about what she does, says Hewitt, whose character often counsels the men she services. Even though the ad campaigns and a lot of the provocative parts of promoting this show are about the happy endings, the show is really a very normal series about a woman whos just trying to be a single mom.

Hewitt, who is single, says her view of love has grown up. Ive always been a hopeless romantic, she says. Ive always had my head in the rom-com which I think is a great quality. The problem is, rom-coms arent real.

Although she still tweets actively about love, Im at a place where I could get married, I could not get married, she says. Kids is not something Ill give up on, thats something I really want in my life, but I just sort of started shifting my mind-set a little bit.

Prince Charming, right now, might just turn out to be a network. Lifetime and I are in such synergy right now because were both in exactly the same place, she says.