For eight seasons TV audiences loved watching actress Tracee Ellis Ross bask in the single girl dating scene as Joan Clayton on the hit comedy series Girlfriends. But for her new role as Dr. Carla Reed in the new BET sitcom, Reed Between The Lines, which also stars The Cosby Show star Malcolm-Jamal Warner, she’s drastically changing sitcom gears.

“What you can expect to see is a happily married couple, who’s working it out raising three kids,” Ross told BET.com. “Malcolm plays a stay–at–home dad, an online NYU professor holding down the fort so I can get my practice moving because I am a therapist. Our show is about the zany things that happen when you have three kids, are trying to work and live your life.”

Ross says it’s been a “wonderful and very special” experience playing a new television role and that fans shouldn’t expect a rehash of her old one. “She’s different than Joan,” she says. “Carla has a lot more faith, is a lot less neurotic and she has a man behind her and at her side.”

Reed Between The Lines premieres October 11th on BET.

(Photo: Shareif Ziyadat/PictureGroup)