Mira Sorvino – Shining Vale

By: Jamie Steinberg

Q) What’s it kind of like to kind of play a character that’s a little retro?

A) She’s from the 50s. The historical person of Rosemary has lived in the house 70 years ago, lived in the 50s with her family and she was a very miserable person with dreams of grander and dreams of a different life that she couldn’t achieve. And then her ectoplasmic manifestation in the present is trying to cozy up to Pat Phelps. She still has all the trappings of that era. She talks like a character from a movie or TV series from the time and the crazy part is, I don’t even know whether real people talked that way. But all the evidence that we have, like when I watched “Leave It to Beaver” or “Ozzie and Harriet” or “The Donna Reed Show.” And then you’ve got these fantastic noir crime thrillers which I watched for inspiration. And I think that’s how she sees herself. She wants to see herself as this sort of silver screen power woman, and she’s a little bit silly, so it’s not as powerful as she hopes. But like, she’s trying to be what she wasn’t in life. So, in her real life, she was disempowered and like hopeful and then squashed. And her new manifestation is all like verve and “Let’s do it baby! Let’s drink!” And I loved having that anachronistic vibe so that it was a clear contrast with the current day people. And that still though her message was modern, even though she was doing it in archaic way. It’s like, are you happy with your life? This is all you really expected to get out of life? Are you letting other people’s expectations rule what you can be? Why don’t you take charge of your own life? Be everything that you want to be, experienced life the way you want it. It’s time for you. It’s sort of what she’s saying, even though she’s saying like, “Let’s go to Paris and throw a fantastic party!” But so I just I just not being heard is really fun.

Q) Jeff Astrof was talking about how no matter how big the stars were and that they wanted to be in the show and we’re willing to demonstrate, “I don’t care where I am on the run sheet, the call sheet (whatever you want to call it). I want to be on the show.” How did you first find out about it?

A) I think my agents found out about it and I read the script and had a talk with Jeff and he sent me later scenes from it because obviously in the first episode, I ended on kind of a discovery towards the end. But he sent me some of the Tiki Bar scenes where you really see her at work trying to enlist Pat (Courteney Cox) to come over and be her sister in adventure. And I was really intrigued. And then via Zoom I got to meet Courteney, who I’ve met before, but like artistically about the project and it seemed like a wonderful fit and was going to be fantastic. And so, I was so excited about it, and it has proven to be one of my favorite jobs I’ve ever had.

Q) Can you tell us what the most both the most fun thing that there was about filming the show and also the most challenging aspect of playing the character?

A) Well, those two both came to play in… So, Jeff being the amazing, wonderful generous showrunner that he is like when I told him, “Oh, I would love it if she could dance because there’s old 50s movies that she’s in love with. They always had these dance numbers.” And all of a sudden he wrote me and Courteney and Greg [Kinnear] like a little dance bit at the beginning of one of the later episodes, and I was overjoyed and terrified because I had hung up my pointe shoes at fourteen years old Although I’d taken like eight years of classes and you know, as an adult actually still studied, still study ballet still studied some jazz did like a salsa and ballroom stuff for some of the other movies I’ve done like Summer of Sam. But so, I got to do this scene that it’s very brief, but it’s like an homage to Fred Astaire and the coat rack or Jean Kelly and the mop and broom. And I couldn’t have had more fun, and I couldn’t be more nervous. I worked on it for a week with the choreographer like trying to appear trying to show up like a real dancer. Liz Friedman was a director and she used to direct videos and dance and like she knows all about dance. So, I was like, “Oh my God!” But I ended up being really happy with it and proud of it and had the time of my life. So, it was both as much fun as one could have on a day of work and as nervous to be on a set because I am not a professional dancer. Like acting it’s kind of under my feet now. Like I know what I’m doing, even if certain scenes will be more challenging than others emotionally or I’ll have more work to do on a certain aspect of preparation. Like, I’m not a professional dancer. So, getting to dance in a professional scene was a joy, but it was also a terror, but I loved it. I’m so grateful so grateful.

Q) Did it take stepping into the costume for you to really embody her or did you just find her based on the wonderful words on the page?

A) It was a combo platter. It was like once I first started working on her I actually had an old 50’s dress that I ended up wearing into one of the fittings because it was giving me vibes of her and I offered to bleach my hair completely platinum so that I could be more ghostly and 50s-ish, and that helped. And then I just started watching like “The Donna Reed Show” and “Ozzie and Harriet” and then all these 50s noir movies because I felt like historical Rosemary was like a normal person who was somewhat repressed. Maybe a little high strung. Definitely sort of held down by her husband. He was very abusive and neglectful and controlled her within an inch of her life. And the spirit Rosemary is everything was made hope to be in life but couldn’t really be so now she’s fabulous. Now she’s got these tremendous costumes. Now she’s got these lofty airs and she’s hosting. She’s hosting people in her own bar. “Come on in let me for your drink, darling.” You know, and she’s just living that life that she wished that she could live given the parameters of the narrow vision of what a great life looked like to her at the time. So, yeah, so it was sort of working on the two characters because at certain points in the show, you see her as Rosemary, as the real Rosemary. And most of the time you’re seeing her Spirit Rosemary, but sometimes real Rosemary comes through in Spirit Rosemary. Like there’s a moment because I think you’ve seen the bathroom scene. Right? So, at the mirror real Rosemary comes through there. So, it’s like spirit Rosemary’s in the bath, and then real Rosemary like tries to break through. So, it’s a very interesting, fun challenge to play this multilayered, not even just person but spirit.

Q) What is it like to balance all of that, including the horror and the comedy elements?

A) Well, I find that if you make a character sort of odd enough or quirky enough, if the writing is funny, just delivering it in in character will make it funny. So, because she is somewhat anachronistic and has so much excitement for things that others would not consider exciting or doesn’t know that smoking is bad for you or just all these things that just set her apart. But the comedy sort of took care of itself in no way. The horror was also larger delivered by the way seen started and or whether there’s like jumpscares. It’s only as the story progressive and her sort of darker nature starts growing. That’s when I had to really be part of the scare in an active way because you had to believe me capable of harm, which I had to sort of dig into the darker trauma of the past Rosemary life to bring that gravitas to highfalutin modernism.

Q) With a character like Rosemary, there’s a lot of work. There’s a lot of craft to it. Are you able to turn off hirty seconds after they yell cut, or is it the kind of thing where you spend days is that character and you can’t snap out of it?

A) I can snap out of it now. I mean, the kinds of things you don’t snap out of so easily are really, really depressing things. But when I played Norma Jean in Marilyn, and then the last thing we shot the day before Christmas Eve was her dying ambulance. And then flew back to New York and had jetlag and it took me two weeks to surface I was really depressed and sad and dark. When I did The Grey Zone, an incredible movie that no one’s seen about a successful rebellion at Auschwitz perpetrated by the Sonderkommando and the women who were just like slave labor in the munitions factories, that’s such a dark movie and the fate of all those people was so devastating. That hung with me for weeks and weeks and I had nightmares. But when you’re doing something that’s a little bit lighter and more sort of definitely switches from the dark to light back again, psychologically, it’s pretty easy to bounce out of it. I would have fun rehearsing my stuff, but then have four children, so I don’t really have the luxury of staying with her. I have a very real life that awaits me the second I even look at my phone and have a million texts from this child and that one and that school. And this one it’s just a lot going on. But I think it’s also experienced the fact that I’ve been doing this for so long that makes it easy for me to jump in and jump out.

Q) When people recognize you and they tell you how much they like you, what is the movie or show that you’re most recognized for? Is it Romy and Michele?

A) Absolutely! Yeah, people say, “I’m the Mary!” They say stuff like that. Yeah, that’s the one.

Q) This is such a beautiful role for you, and you are a part of social media. Are you a looking forward to that instant fan feedback finally to something people are going to get to see you in lately? And also, what do you think it is about the series that’s really going to make it a fast fan favorite?

A) I can just say that everybody that we’ve spoken to has said how much they got it. And that’s really rare. It’s really rare for every journalist to talk to to have unbridled genuine enthusiasm when they’re talking about something. It didn’t feel like work today. “Okay, today we’re talking this actor about this project.” It’s like, “Wow, I really enjoyed this. This was so much fun. I can’t wait to see the rest of it.” Like everybody’s talking like that. So, I do have high hopes that actually the general public will feel the same way. And when we act, we don’t do it to act in our bathroom. We do it to connect with people. So I’m really looking forward to having the fans like it. I’m looking forward to them enjoying it – that it means something because that’s since you’re not in front of a live audience. If you were a theatre actor, you would know right away from just the breath in the room, whether people were attached to it or not. And, certainly, by the end by the amount of applause and standing ovations or whatever. Our only way is that people really like the film and then we get to hear from more than the show and we get to hear from them over the ether. And that will be fine. I’m looking forward to it.

*CONFERENCE CALL*