Friend-ly Fire Dina Meyer will follow a romance on Friends with a new series Few women can resist the charms of adorable but dim-witted Joey Tribbiani (Matt LeBlanc) on NBC's Friends, but his newest conquest turns out to be a challenge. Enter Dina Meyer (right), who appears as Joey's love interest for three episodes beginning March 27. Cast as the pretentious Kate Miller, Joey's costar in an off-Broadway show, Meyer -- who has played a seductress (Beverly Hills, 90210), an android ("Johnny Mnemonic"), and a peasant ("Dragonheart") -- portrays a "serious thespian," a first for her. "Playing an actress isn't difficult," she says. "It's playing the Yalie grad snob that's more challenging, because I don't know from that at all." Though Meyer says she is nothing like her character (she followed her parents' advice and got a college degree in business), she enjoyed playing hard to get. "I think every guy needs that occasionally," she jokes. She also relished playing someone so unlike Monica, Rachel, or Phoebe. "She doesn't blend in at all, which is good because it separates her from everybody else," says the 28-year-old. "If she were like the other girls, maybe Joey would be trying to make a move on them." (That, of course, he's already tried.) Next up for Meyer is a role battling alien bugs in the Paul Verhoeven sci-fi thriller "Starship Troopers" and her first starring role in a series. Midway through taping her Friends fling, she was signed by CBS to star opposite David Caruso in an as-yet-untitled dramatic series scheduled for fall. The native New Yorker has already jumped headfirst into her role as an investigator for the U.S. attorney's office in New York City (and Caruso's love interest): "I've had gun training and been fitted for a holster," she says. "I'm ready." -- Stef McDonald