Maura on WIGS: Ruth & Erica

[Martine]

Lets not forget this, it's coming closer !!!

A scripted drama on YouTube starring actress Maura Tierney just may wind up as the ultimate "reality" show for midlifers. "Ruth and Erica," a 13-episode dramatic series, debuts Sept. 24 on WIGS, YouTube's most-viewed scripted channel for drama.

Tierney, 47, is best known for her TV roles as Abby Lockhart on "ER" and Lisa Miller in "NewsRadio," and appears in the upcoming season of "The Good Wife." She plays Erica, an unmarried landscape architect living in San Diego who struggles to balance the long-distance care of her aging parents with the demands of her own life. The series also stars Lois Smith ("Twister" and "True Blood") as Erica's mother Ruth; and Philip Baker Hall ("Magnolia") as Erica's father Harry. Michael C. Hall stars as Tierney's boyfriend, and Rosalind Chao, Jane Kaczmarek and Steven Weber make cameos.

Midlifers are likely to identify with Erica as she deals with her father's worsening dementia and Alzheimer's, her mother's growing fraility, and her parents' unwillingness to change their lives to better accommodate their physical decline.

The Huffington Post caught up with Tierney recently to talk about her role and the series.

In a way, this is the ultimate reality series inasmuch as it is a reality many Baby Boomers are living every day as they juggle the demands of their own lives with their parents' needs. Your portrayal is just so on target -- did you bring some first-hand experience to the role?

Actually, no. I have been spared being in that place. I lost my dad a few years ago to a brief illness and my mother, who is 68, is still working and completely active. When I first read the script by [writer and show creator] Amy Lipmann -- I just found it so touching and moving. Everything that comes across in my performance is what she wrote -- her words. She used the place of dealing with aging parents to tap into all these other issues we have.

Before we move on to those other issues, let's focus for a minute on some of the behaviors that Harry exhibits as his dementia kicks into higher gear. He has his moments of lucidity -- urging you to quit sleeping with married men -- but then he does things like flag down a police car thinking it's a taxi. In one of the later episodes, he doesn't recognize your character as his daughter and begins to tell you about her when she was a little girl. It was a painful reality to watch.




I think when we watch our parents slide, it becomes important to realize it's no longer about us. While it's hard for Erica to realize her father doesn't know who she is, she engages him. She listens as he tells her about Erica as a little girl -- how she liked to be the line leader in school and how she was fascinated by topiaries and wanted to be a topiarist. Again, that's Amy's words.

It's an extremely sad, poignant moment. I think what she was trying to do is understand unconditional love and what it means to take care of someone. It ceases to be about Erica. She can't get her feelings hurt [because] her father doesn't know who she is. She has to man up. Whatever our issues were in the past with our parents, it just doesn't matter anymore. You move into a different phase of the relationship.

In one of the final episodes, your character -- noting that she is an only child and has no children of her own -- says that she has had to make her own arrangements for her care. Yet when she's pressed about what that means, she says "I'm going to be cremated." Doesn't that skip over a whole lot? You go from middle age and the ability to decide what your older age will look like straight to death.

I think dealing with watching the aging process up close gets you to reflect on your own mortality and your own loss of relevance. It sounds corny but we ask ourselves, "what does this all mean?" But as for the planning part, it's more like the character is crazy.

OK, so Erica is single, has an affair with a married man and even her father with dementia taps into her loneliness. At one point, he tries to fix her up with the guy selling slicing and dicing machines on the late-night home shopping network. Her mother hires an ex-drug addict real estate agent [Michael C. Hall] who was one of Erica's high school classmates and grills him about whether Erica ever did drugs, all the while insisting that the mere idea of it would be preposterous since Erica went to such a good college. A complicated character?

Well, I hope so! There are multiple layers going on here -- beyond the taking care of parents.

How was working on "Ruth and Erica" differ from projects in your past? You spent many years on "ER" -- a successful primetime drama.

On "ER," we dealt somewhat realistically with things. But "Ruth and Erica" was made straight for the Internet. We were allowed to tell this story however we wanted to. The drama unfolds very slowly. There aren't the same strictures of a network in place. On "ER" we did the best we could in 44 minutes or whatever it is of network TV. Doing a webisode couldn't be more different. There are no rules, you can use whatever kind of language you want. This is about real shit, uncensored.

What was your own take-away from this?

A lot was lifted from Amy's personal situation. When they first sent me the script, I thought 'this is the greatest piece of writing I've read in years' and I knew I wanted to do it. It was very touching, moving to me.



www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/09/20/maura-tierney_n_1893617.html

[Tara]

Thanks, Martine. She's doing some more press about this series (and about Good Wife) today, so hopefully we'll have more interviews soon.

[sissa]

Maura Tierney Stars In Family Alzheimer’s Drama

by Lori Newman on September 20, 2012 ·

Maura Tierney, left, and Lois Smith in new YouTube series. Photo: WIGSCO LLC
If you’re a member of the “sandwich generation,” you baby boomers know it’s not about eating a daily ham on rye. Rather, you’re in a tug-of-war, caring for both children and aged parents. It’s not easy, especially if your parent has Alzheimer’s disease.

That’s why we’re excited to see Monday’s debut of a new web-based show scheduled to air on YouTube’s popular WIGS channel – just in time for the final week of World Alzheimer’s Month.

“Ruth and Erica,” the new 13-episode scripted dramatic series, stars Maura Tierney, 47, and Lois Smith, 81, both of whom embarked on acting careers at about age 21. Neither actress has taken care of an aging parent, but both say the show has taught them how life and relationships change as we age.

Written by Amy Lippman (“Party of Five”), the family deals with husband and father “Harry” (Philip Baker Hall), who’s suffering from Alzheimer’s disease and dementia.

Dementia is a loss of brain function that occurs with some diseases, and Alzheimer’s is a form of dementia that worsens over time, according to the National Institutes of Health.

Tierney’s Erica is a “middle-aged woman … coping with some of the issues she’s confronting with her own life and simultaneously dealing with taking care of her parents who are aging,” the actress says.

Smith’s Ruth pretends that nothing has to change as she and her husband, Harry, age, nor that she and her husband are deteriorating with age.

“Maura’s character (Erica) spends a lot of time trying to talk me into seeing what the problems are,” Smith says. “That it’s not going to be the way it was.”

As anyone who’s been touched by Alzheimer’s knows, that’s a tough thing to hear after enjoying lifelong independence.

Lippman said the story of “Ruth and Erica” was sparked by her experience with her own aging parents. She pushed her concerns to their furthest extreme, highlighting the travails of family members dealing with an Alzheimer’s patient.

“It’s really a mother-and-daughter story,” Lippman tells Lifescript. “It’s really about how it affects the caregivers.”

“Ruth and Erica” also asks, “How much of my life do I need to give up to ensure that they’re OK?” Lippman says.

That’s not an easy question for any of us to answer. But it certainly warrants some thought before it must be answered.

healthbistro.lifescript.com/2012/09/20/maura-tierney-stars-in-family-alzheimers-drama/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=maura-tierney-stars-in-family-alzheimers-drama

[Martine]

The trailer for 'Ruth & Erica' starts at 8:25. Looks really good! Can hardly wait!

[loopyallie]

Thank you for sharing! I shall be watching! ;D

At least its a good Maura fix after this weekend as I am inpatiently waiting for The Good Wife back on at the end of the month. What more I want? My fave actress on one of my fave show again! (the other was ER )

[Tara]

Hey, Allie!

Just a heads-up to everyone that WIGS is making the first episode available a day early to 25 people who retweet this:

Not sure if they mean the first 25 or that they'll randomly choose 25, but it's worth a shot if you want to see it on Sunday instead of Monday.

[loopyallie]

Hey Tara!

I've retweeted. The whole series looks good, i will have a viewing this evening of the other episodes. A few well known names there.

[Martine]

I just got the link to the first episode !!! Posted it on my Tumblr!
www.tumblr.com/blog/iwassolucky

Haha it was very funny, love the interaction with her mom

[sissa]

The Drama of Aging and Caregiving, on YouTube
By PAULA SPAN - September 24, 2012

Maura Tierney and Lois Smith, as Erica and Ruth, discuss care of Erica’s father, Harry, played by Philip Baker Hall in “Ruth & Erica,” a series on the YouTube channel WIGS.
“I don’t want to take care of them,” Erica confesses in Episode 12 to the man she’s just slept with, speaking about her elderly parents.

“Who does?” The man is the real estate broker who has just sold her parents’ home in San Francisco so that, after a year’s resentful debate, they can downsize.

“People do. Children do,” Erica replies. “They think of it as payback for all the sacrifices their parents made for them. They think it’s a privilege.”

“I don’t know those kinds of people,” he says.

Amy Lippman invented those characters, told them what to say, then directed all 13 episodes of “Ruth & Erica,” a YouTube drama about aging and caregiving. You can find the first one today on the female-centric channel called WIGS, which stands for Where It Gets Interesting.

“I decided to write about something I was experiencing, and all my friends were experiencing — parents who’d been independent and self-sufficient, but were beginning to need more support and guidance,” said Ms. Lippman, who’s in her late 40s. “It seems to have come as a shock to all of us.”

Each slickly produced “Ruth & Erica” episode runs about eight minutes. New ones will appear on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays; all 13 will live indefinitely online.

Funny how the number of movies, TV shows and books that focus on aging, and on dementia in particular, keeps growing. “It’s sort of in the ether right now,” said Ms. Lippman, whose own parents recently sold their house — a painful step — in Northern California.

I recently saw “Robot & Frank,” for example. It’s set in “the near future” when, apparently, people have even schmancier phones and zippier minicars and wonderfully helpful caregiving robots, but dementia remains incurable and elder care issues provoke as much family tension as ever.

“Robot & Frank” didn’t climb into my personal Top Five Movies About Aging (since you asked: “Away from Her,” “The Iron Lady,” “The Savages,” “About Schmidt” and “Iris” — what’s your list?), but it had its charms.

“Ruth & Erica,” which unfolds over a year, goes deeper. The veteran actors Lois Smith and Philip Baker Hall give wonderful, wrenching performances as Ruth and Harry Rappaport, who fight their only child’s suggestions of a move to a retirement community as Harry sinks into dementia.

Maura Tierney seems a decade or two too young to be their daughter. Flying in for visits and crisis management, she doesn’t look nearly careworn and frazzled enough. But she’s otherwise a very believable Erica — funny and honest and willing to say aloud what lots of adult children think.

Producing scripted drama for the Web gave Ms. Lippman a shot at something that would have been hard to pull off in movies or television. “It’s an opportunity to tell an intimate, realistic story with absolutely no pyrotechnics,” she said.

In fact, it was so realistic that during production, “almost everyone who worked on the series, including the crew, came up to me and said, ‘My grandmother.’ ‘My parents.’ ‘My sister had to move in with my mother,’” Ms. Lippman said. “I felt this reverberation.”

Paula Span is the author of “When the Time Comes: Families With Aging Parents Share Their Struggles and Solutions.”

newoldage.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/09/24/the-drama-of-aging-and-caregiving-on-youtube/

[Martine]

Episode 2 of Ruth & Erica:

[sissa]

Martine, you are an angel. Thanks

YouTube Series Shows Drama, Humor in Dealing With Aging Parents
Posted on 09/25/2012 by Elizabeth Nolan Brown | AARP Blog

Here’s the synopsis given for Ruth & Erica, a new YouTube series starring Maura Tierney and Louis Smith: A woman struggles with her mother’s reluctance to make the life changes necessary in light of her increasing frailty. Judging from the pilot episode, which premiered yesterday, that is indeed the meat of the matter. But it fails to capture the warmth and humor in writer/director Amy Lippman’s script or Tierney’s and Smith’s performances.

See Also: Helping Aging Parents Move >>

Luckily, you can check Ruth & Erica out for yourself if you’ve got a few moments — each of the series’ 13 episodes runs under 10 minutes. The show is produced by WIGS, a digital channel that makes original, scripted series and films “about the lives of women.”

I was pleasantly surprised by the pilot episode, which managed to make me chuckle out loud several times while covering some pretty weighty material. In it, Smith and Tierney, who play the title characters, are joined by 81-year-old actor Philip Baker Hall as Erica’s father (Michael C. Hall and Steven Weber will show up in later episodes). It’s the first day of middle-aged daughter Erica’s visit to her parents’ house (for what reason, we don’t know), and dad seems cheerfully oblivious to any tension. But mom seems to take everything Erica does — from throwing out moldy, unidentifiable fruit in the fridge to taking the driver’s seat in her parents’ car — as an affront.

See Also: How do you know when it’s time for your loved one to limit or stop driving?

Here’s a snippet of dialogue about the driving business:

Ruth: Asking for his keys? ‘I don’t feel safe.’ Well you don’t say that to a father, to your father. The man has kept you safe your whole life. Do you know how it feels hearing that from you? The man has never had an accident. Never even gotten a parking ticket.

Erica: But he fell asleep at a stop sign.

Ruth: Once! Oh, I never should have told you that. You’ve never gotten tired driving home from work?

And for now, it’s easy to see where they’re both coming from — though, as New York Times blogger Paula Span reveals, it will come out later that Erica’s father is in the early stages of dementia. Lippman told Span:

I decided to write about something I was experiencing, and all my friends were experiencing — parents who’d been independent and self-sufficient, but were beginning to need more support and guidance.

During production, “almost everyone who worked on the series, including the crew, came up to me and said, ‘My grandmother.’ ‘My parents.’ ‘My sister had to move in with my mother,’” Lippman said. “I felt this reverberation.”

New episodes of Ruth & Erica will air on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays; you can catch them all here. Check out episode one below.

blog.aarp.org/2012/09/25/new-youtube-series-shows-drama-humor-in-dealing-with-aging-parents/

[Martine]

Well thank You Sissa So are you!

Episode 3 of Ruth & Erica:

[Martine]

Episode 4


& another interesting Behind Scenes clip

[Martine]

Episode 5

[sissa]

I´m really enjoying this webseries. When Erica stole his pants I was LOL and my sister asked me what was going on and I told her. She said Erica won´t see this lover again. I agree, but somehow I´ll miss Steven Weber (who´s a great actor and is doing a wonderful job as a real jerk).

Emmy nominee Maura Tierney a no-show twice at press conference for Wigs web series ‘Ruth & Erica’

September 25, 2012 by Rich Mbariket

Writing about Emmy nominee Maura Tierney (ER, Baby Mama, Rescue Me) not showing twice at the scheduled press conference for her own web series isn’t the story I should be writing about today. What I should be writing about was how amazing it was to have interviewed Maura about her new Wigs web series titled ‘Ruth & Erica’ which debuted today online at youtube.com/wigs.

Instead, I’m sitting here at a cafe in Manhattan writing about her unprofessional middle finger to me and other journalists invited to interview her about Ruth & Erica. When asked why she did not show up twice now at the press conference, I’m told that her “publicists” couldn’t get a hold of her… both times! Classy Maura, just classy!

Posted in: WEB SERIES NETWORK

From: Simply Boundless Entertainment

www.simplyboundless.com/2012/09/emmy-nominee-maura-tierney-a-no-show-twice-at-press-conference-for-wigs-web-series-ruth-erica/#more-29697

Note: I didn´t find the reporter´s name - Any help folks?

Edit to add the writer´s name.