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Post by sissa on Apr 15, 2015 8:04:47 GMT 10
Producers spill on Yanks vs. Brits — who ad-libs bestThe Associated Press - 04/12/2015 LOS ANGELES — American actors don't always stick to the scripts the way their U.K. counterparts do, but that's OK, according to two top writer-producers. British actors "really freak out" when given the freedom to change their lines, Lee Daniels, executive producer of Fox's hit drama "Empire," said at a recent Hollywood Radio and Television Society panel discussion. During production of the 2013 film "Lee Daniels' The Butler," veteran British actor Alan Rickman, playing President Ronald Reagan, "was married to the word," Daniels said. "I said, 'You don't have to say the word.' ... And he was like, 'No, this is the word,' " Daniels said. He's willing to acknowledge that his scripts have room for improvement and that actors can add nuance to the characters they know so well, Daniels said. Taraji P. Henson, who plays matriarch Cookie Lyon in "Empire," will "add a line or word that makes it sparkle," he said. "The Affair" producer Sarah Treem agreed with his assessment. Treem, a playwright whose other TV credits include "House of Cards," produces Showtime's drama series with a cast that includes American actors Maura Tierney and Joshua Jackson and, from England, Dominic West and Ruth Wilson. "British actors really like the text. ... They practice the text, and they're perfect on the text," she said. In contrast, Tierney is a "genius" at improvising, Treem said. That's prompted the script supervisor to ask if the actress should be told to refrain.
" 'No, let the woman speak,' " is Treem's reply. "She'll come up with something that is honestly more instinctive and more natural than what's on the page," the writer added.
She noted another national difference, this involving America and France. Treem said that "hate mail" was posted online after she gave a U.S. interview in which she questioned whether monogamy can hold in a long-term relationship. "I was on the phone talking with somebody from France about the show and they had this totally different perspective. It's great talking to the French," Treem said. In the event that included producers from CBS' "The Good Wife," FX's "Fargo" and Amazon Studios' "Transparent," the panelists were asked about a dream writing project they have yet to pursue. "I haven't been afraid since 'Rosemary's Baby' or 'The Exorcist,' Daniels said. "And I don't think there's been an African-American horror movie that's really got me to the bones. I think I'd like to tackle that." www.denverpost.com/television/ci_27882881/producers-spill-yanks-vs-brits-who-ad-libs
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Post by sissa on May 4, 2015 11:36:45 GMT 10
Sarah Treem: 'The Affair' Won't Pay Off Until Season 3And yet the fledgling series is already cleaning up at the award shows. By Emily Zemler - Jan 12, 2015 @ 6:15 PM "We're not going to win," The Affair creator Sarah Treem insisted to ELLE on the red carpet before the Golden Globes last night. "House of Cards is going to win and they'll deserve it." Treem was wrong: Her fledgling Showtime series triumphed over Netflix's House of Cards (not to mention Game of Thrones, The Good Wife, and Downton Abbey) to win the Best Television Drama award, underscoring the fact that The Affair is a deeply interesting show, even if it's not the most famous one. In its first season, the show followed the beginning of an affair between two married people, played by Dominic West and Ruth Wilson, in a surprising way: alternating perspectives, giving viewers both the female and male side of the story. That approach alone was enough to make it stand out, but Treem isn't resting on her laurels. She has big plans for the show's second season and has actually thought the narrative out through at least three seasons. "What we had always said when we started the show was that each season was going to represent a different stage in a love affair," Treem said. "The first season is the crush, the melodrama. It's the romance of that early feeling of 'I can't live without you.' So the tone of the season reflected that. And then the second season was always supposed to be darker. It's what happens when the blush is off the rose, when people doubt each other, when they start to get obsessed with each other. I think the second season is going to be darker in tone, and tighter. And the third season changes again. I will be sad if we don't get a third because I don't think it quite pays off until the third season." So far viewers have only seen two sides of the story: that of grieving Hamptons waitress Alison (Ruth Wilson) and that of Noah (Dominic West), a novelist father of four. But Treem hopes that we will get to see other versions of the narrative as well. "That was always the intent for the second season, to increase perspectives," she said. "As we start talking about the season, there's so much we want to do with Noah and Alison that we're going to see. But at this point I would say the intent is to broaden the perspectives." On top of the show's Best Television Drama award, star Ruth Wilson also won Best Actress in a Television Drama for her work on the show. And it was hard work: In the press room after the Globes, Wilson told reporters that the "relentless grief," the need to dig into Alison's sadness, was exhausting. "I loved the fact that I could play different versions of this character and I got a respite from playing Noah's version of her and my version," Wilson said. "It was each scene that used to throw her into more depths of despair, and I would say I had to go in deep and darker and explore this character and that was hard, especially with the time we have filming, little time, and being away from home. So by the end that was quite exhausting, but in the same way incredibly satisfying." Yet for Maura Tierney, who plays Noah's scorned wife on the show, the story was what drew her in. "I wanted to do it because I loved the writing," the actress told ELLE. "I think people have responded to it for a lot of reasons. There's a lot of sex on it, which people like. I think people like the split narrative and that it takes on infidelity in a way that's complicated." Added one of the show's lesser-discussed standouts, Julia Goldani Telles, who plays Noah's oldest daughter, Whitney, "[Winning the award] just confirms my idea that this is a really special show." Treem herself has been overwhelmed by the massive reaction the series has gotten since it premiered in October. "People's responses to the show are so different that it sometimes feels like I'm making a hundred different shows," Treem said. "When people love the show I'm really happy and when people hate the show I'm honestly really happy. It means that people care about the show. We just wanted to be part of the conversation." www.elle.com/culture/movies-tv/news/a25425/sarah-treem-the-affair-golden-globes-interview/
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Post by Martine on May 5, 2015 3:24:15 GMT 10
Affairs of the Art The veteran actress gets real about cheating, her hardest role and her fave leading man. Jonathan Soroff Photo Credit: Kristina Loggia; Hair: Peter Butler; Makeup: Matin/Ray Brown Productions; Wardrobe: Kareem James Prolific television, film and stage actress Maura Tierney, 50, was born and raised in Boston and studied acting at New York University. First known for her work on the sitcom NewsRadio, she starred on ER for eight seasons and had roles on The Good Wife and Rescue Me before her current turn as cheated-on wife Helen Solloway in the Showtime drama The Affair. On the big screen, she has appeared in Primary Colors, Nature Calls, Baby Mama and Liar, Liar, while her extensive stage work includes her 2013 Broadway debut opposite Tom Hanks in Nora Ephron’s Lucky Guy. She divides her time between Los Angeles and New York. Jonathan Soroff: Favorite of all your shows? Maura Tierney: The first thing that comes to mind is Rescue Me, because I really, really liked the character that I played on that show. It was after doing ER for so long, and it was really nice that somebody cast me as a completely different character than the one I’d played for eight seasons. She was snarky and irreverent and funny, and I wore awesome clothes. I guess I judge the shows I like by how much I like my wardrobe. Role you didn’t get but wish you had? You kinda can’t think like that, because you have to move forward. But early in my career, I really wanted to be in Say Anything. I read for that movie, I’m not shitting you, four or five times. I desperately wanted to be in it. I also read for Jerry Maguire and got really far down the line with that. I read with Tom Cruise. But Cameron Crowe just won’t put me in a movie. Hardest role you ever played? Hmmm. Lucky Guy, the play I did with Tom Hanks, wasn’t quite finished before Nora Ephron died. It was a struggle every night to see if I would land it. It wasn’t entirely there, so I had to sweat it, because it was important that it be good. Broadway and Tom Hanks. Isn’t that just being greedy? Listen, I throw deep, as Tom Hanks says. I know. Can you imagine? No, you can’t imagine. Our audiences were so dying to see the show. We were sold out every night. The play was wonderful. Every night the audience would leap to their feet the moment it was over. It was something I’ll never experience again. Did being treated for cancer affect the way you approach acting? Well, I don’t know. I guess it affected everything, so if you look at it that way, yes. But not really. An interesting thing, though, is that as soon as I finished treatment, the first job I got was with the Wooster Group, which is this very avant-garde theater company in New York, and that experience changed my whole approach to acting. With all those seasons on ER, did you learn any real medicine? Absolutely not. I don’t even know how to take someone’s pulse. Although I know all the lingo, so I could talk to a doctor about a procedure. But I couldn’t actually do anything. The most might be stitching someone up and leaving them with a really bad Frankensteiny scar. Would you ever have an affair? Yes. I don’t mean to say that eagerly. But life is really complicated. I was married for 15 years and never did, but I could never say never. I don’t know. That’s why I like the show. It asks a lot of questions. What would you do if you found out your husband was cheating? I did find it out with a boyfriend, not my ex-husband, and it was hard. But I remember talking to my mother like 15 years ago. There was someone we knew who had an affair, and the wife took him back. I remember saying, “I would never, ever do that.” And my mother paused, then said, “You know, when you get older, you’d be surprised by the shit you can put up with.” And she’s right. Everybody’s human. You’ve had such a run of great luck with hit shows. To what do you attribute that? Hard work. And talent. [Laughs] Seriously, there were times when I really didn’t work for, like, two years. But I did get lucky, and I think that a good part of that was that I happened to work with really good show-runners. The beginning of my career, I worked with Norman Lear. NewsRadio was created by Paul Simms, a really unique voice and a very strong show-runner. John Wells and then David Zabel on ER. I’ve been very fortunate to work with super smart and talented show-runners, as well as great writers. What do you look for in a script? If it’s unique. If it’s a perspective I haven’t seen before. If the female character is not two-dimensional. And I really do think it’s important that there’s humor. Nothing works without some humor. Comedy or drama? I’ve been doing drama for so long now, I would love to do another half-hour comedy. I’d love to do a multi-cam half-hour, which is something that’s disappearing. Anything you want to erase from your resume? Dead Women in Lingerie. [Laughs] What was the movie you did with O.J. Simpson? That was my first job. Student Exchange. It had O.J. Simpson, Lindsay Wagner, the Bionic Woman, Captain Stubing from The Love Boat, Gavin MacLeod, Heather Graham, Moon Unit Zappa… Was that movie unfairly overlooked by the Academy? Ahh, no. O.J.’s work might have been. You know what Jim Carrey said to me? We were making Liar, Liar right around the time of the trial, and I told Jim Carrey, “Y’know, I worked with O.J. Simpson.” He said, “Oh, really? Did he try to cut your head off?” [Laughs] You’ve worked with him, John Travolta, Richard Gere. Who was your favorite leading man? Hmm…I’m going to go with Richard Gere, because that was sort of the first big movie I got. I remember walking onto set at Paramount with him, thinking, “I’m walking onto a movie set with Richard Gere!” He was such a movie star. A lovely, charming man and super foxy. Anyone you would never want to work with again? Al Pacino, because he just didn’t like me. [Laughs] Weirdest thing you ever read about yourself? Probably from my time on ER, stuff about fighting on the set that just never happened. But I escape the tabloids for the most part. Weirdest fan encounter? Well, there was one guy who used to send me so many letters. They were very nice, but really hundreds of them. Anyway, he suffered from severe agoraphobia, and he was convinced that if I would just meet him somewhere, he would finally leave his house. He also wrote a script for me. It was actually pretty funny. Red carpet awkwardness? Well, it’s always funny when people won’t let you go because they can’t figure out who you are. And it becomes an interrogation. It’s kind of amazing when people start getting annoyed at me because they can’t remember who I am. I’m like, “Just IMDB me. I have to go.” Red carpet secret? I should take a class. I feel dorky. I remember going to the Golden Globes and being voted one of the 10 worst dressed, which made me sad, because I liked my dress. But there is nothing natural about that whole experience. It’s so awkward to stand there and hold your body in a way that’s completely unnatural, but that’s what you have to do to look good. It feels really phony and self-conscious. Thing you miss most about Boston? Oddly, my grandmother’s apartment in the projects. She lived there for 55 years, in Southie, and I went there my whole life. It was just so full of life and stuff from childhood, and I can never ever go back there. The other places I miss I can still go back to. www.improper.com/features/affairs-of-the-art/#.VUepeX_u1-Q.twitter
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Post by Martine on May 8, 2015 6:04:26 GMT 10
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Post by sissa on May 8, 2015 23:22:05 GMT 10
Maura Tierney on telling her side of the story next season in 'The Affair' [Exclusive Video]By Daniel Montgomery May 08 2015 "What appealed to me about the character was basically that I got to play two characters," says Maura Tierney about her role in Showtime's drama "The Affair." (Watch our complete interview below.) She plays Helen Solloway, whose husband Noah (Dominic West) begins an extramarital relationship with Alison (Ruth Wilson), a grieving waitress in Montauk. The story alternates between Noah and Alison's points of view, showing us how differently they see each other, their relationship, and their respective spouses. Joshua Jackson dishes different perspectives of 'The Affair' [Exclusive Video] Who will win the Emmy for Best Drama Supporting Actress?Prediction rank: 1Maggie SmithOdds: 7/2Prediction rank: 2Christine BaranskiOdds: 5/1Prediction rank: 3Uzo AdubaOdds: 13/2Win $1,000 for best Emmys predictionsMake Your Predictions - Click HereMake your predictions and win big prizesPrediction rank: 4Christina HendricksOdds: 15/2Can YOU top our famous leaderboards?Make Your PredictionClick HereChristina HendricksUzo AdubaChristine BaranskiDROPArrange by your preference.Drag to change positioning.2 contenders to right column. contenders here. DRAG Who will win the Emmy for Best Drama S..How many points do you want to bet? -Drop Here-Maggie SmithMaggie Smith7/2Christine Baranski5/1Uzo Aduba13/2Click HereNow it's your turn to make Predictions "For all we know, none of it happened like that. Everybody's memory is so subjective," says Tierney of how difficult it is to suss out the truth of any story. "I know that I've been, for example, at an event or at a party with someone, and we are experiencing the exact same event … [but] we both walked away literally with completely different ideas. That's not even memory. That's experiencing a moment of two people in the same physical place experiencing it completely differently." That subjectivity manifests in ways both large and small in the series. For instance, Alison perceives Helen as "intimidating on every level," while Noah's version is "very idealized. She's sort of perfect ... He views her as this very warm, likable person, and that could be his guilty conscience. Maybe she's not that." What we don't know yet is how Helen sees herself, but "we will see it, actually, next season. We'll see both Helen and Cole's perspective," Tierney reveals. "I actually just got the scripts, so I don't know what it is yet, but I'll find out as soon as I hang up with you guys." www.goldderby.com/news/9183/maura-tierney-interview-the-affair-showtime-emmys-entertainment-13579086-story.htmlcredits: twitter.com/mauratierneyfan
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Post by sissa on May 15, 2015 23:29:21 GMT 10
Emmy contenders: Maura Tierney dishes on 'The Affair'By GLENN WHIPP Showtime's marital drama "The Affair" ended its first season five months ago and we haven't stopped stewing over many of the questions its finale left unanswered. Did Noah murder Scotty Lockhart? How on Earth does Noah leave his family, moments after they've been held at gunpoint, for his lover, Alison? And really ... that's the final straw for Noah's long-suffering wife, Helen, right? Fortunately, Maura Tierney dropped by The Times' studio recently to help us sort through these questions and discuss what's going on with her character, Helen, as the show gets back to the future in the upcoming second season. The good news: Season 2 will give us events from Helen's perspective, though perhaps not in the way Tierney imagines. "I made a joke that when we go to Helen's POV, everyone's giant, weird puppets like Mummenschanz, like Helen's insane," Tierney said. "But they're not going to do that, no." Tierney talked about why couples seem incapable of watching "The Affair" together, the ways that Helen might change (expect "radical departures," per show creator Sarah Treem) now that her world has come crashing down, and what it was like to catch up with former "ER" costar Julianna Margulies when Tierney guested on "The Good Wife." www.latimes.com/entertainment/envelope/emmys/la-et-st-emmys-maura-tierney-the-affair-20150506-story.htmlJosh Hartnett Premieres 'Penny Dreadful' Season 2 in TorontoWED, 22 APRIL 2015 Josh Hartnett stops to pose while stepping out for the season two premiere of his hit show Penny Dreadful held at TIFF Bell Lightbox on Tuesday night (April 21) in Toronto, Canada. The 36-year-old actor was joined on the carpet by The Affair star Maura Tierney and Shameless actress Shanola Hampton, as well as President of Showtime David Nevins. In case you missed it, check out the trailer for the second season of Penny Dreadful! The show returns on Sunday, May 3 @ 10 PM ET/PT! Read more: www.justjared.com/tags/maura-tierney/#ixzz3aDBXThNy Joshua Jackson & Ruth Wilson Screen 'The Affair' in L.A.THU, 07 MAY 2015 Joshua Jackson is super handsome as he steps out for a screening and panel discussion of his hit show The Affair held at Samuel Goldwyn Theater on Wednesday night (May 6) in Beverly Hills, Calif. The 36-year-old actor was joined by his co-stars Ruth Wilson, Maura Tierney, and Julia Goldani Telles. “And while I’m on the Twitter, who the hell is this john jackson that’s squiring around my lady @yahoostyle ?” Josh tweeted that day about his girlfriend Diane Kruger. FYI: Ruth is wearing a Gabriela Hearst dress. Joshua is wearing Vans California Collection shoes. Read more: www.justjared.com/tags/maura-tierney/#ixzz3aDC70Ln0Maura Tierney on the success of The AffairApril 21, 2015 You may know Maura Tierney from her 8-year starring run on the hit show ER or the classic comedy Liar Liar. Now, she plays a loving wife and mother desperately trying to save her marriage on the Golden Globe-winning drama The Affair. The Affair has only been on for one season and has already won two Golden Globes. During her visit at The Social, Maura discussed the show's success and shared the secret to starring in hit shows. Plus, the actress shared an amazing story involving David Bowie, her co-star in The Linguini Incident. Watch the clip above for the entire interview. www.thesocial.ca/culture/television/maura-tierney-on-the-success-of-the-affair
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Post by sissa on May 15, 2015 23:30:12 GMT 10
FYC: MAURA TIERNEY IN ‘THE AFFAIR’Maura Tierney deserves another shot at the Emmy in Showtime's martial-strife drama The Affair. CLARENCE MOYE — MAY 13, 2015 Showtime’s The Affair is, at its core, a character drama masquerading as a mystery. Sure, the device of the “he said / she said” gimmick helps propels the story and ultimately becomes a through-line into the narrative, but the heart of the series – its most valuable asset – lines within its carefully constructed characters. The heartbroken waitress who opens herself to an affair to cope with the loss of a child. The struggling author disappointed in his adult life. And the wife coping with an unravelling family and the loss of her husband, the rock upon which she relied. That wife, Helen Solloway, is marvelously lived-in by previous Emmy nominee Maura Tierney (E.R.). If justice prevails on Emmy nomination morning, then she will be rewarded again with a nomination for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Drama Series. The beginning of The Affair centers mostly on the central embroiled pair: Noah Solloway (Dominic West) and Alison Bailey (Ruth Wilson). Tierney spends the first three-quarters of the show drifting in and out of his storyline, serving the part of the dutiful wife and mother at their summer in Montauk. The wealthy daughter of a celebrated novelist, Helen always appears to have settled for Noah – at least that’s what he believes – but you’re always aware that through all of the child, parent, and job stress she deeply loves him. So, when Noah begins the affair with Alison, the audience is somewhat torn. Helen isn’t a shrew. She isn’t a bitch. She’ isn’t a saint either. She’s a real woman in the real world. And that is, perhaps, too much for Noah to absorb. Once they leave the island, the audience believes Noah has escaped detection. After a panic attack thought to be a heart attack shakes him, Noah confesses his infidelity to Helen. When Noah says the words “I had a fling,” Tierney’s face registers each and every arrow that hits her heart. You could watch the scene in slow-mo and pinpoint the exact moment she loses her faith and love in him and in life itself. You think, for a while, that the uptight, extremely waspy Helen will overlook the incident, much as her mother had for a lifetime. Yet, at home, Tierney gradually unravels, building the confrontation scene from a one of incredulity (Noah tries to make the affair about his damaged ego and his self-induced shortcomings) to one of seething woman-scored rage (later, when she discovers a tell-tale pair of panties in his dresser drawer). The part of the cheated-upon wife has been written many times in all forms of art, yet Tierney expertly renders the soul of the woman. Even after things appear at its bleakest, she remains hopeful. She is torn. She is disappointed. She is hurt. Yet, she fights for him in the end. And ultimately loses, we discover. While West and particularly Wilson are both excellent in the series, Tierney’s performance is the drama’s quiet anchor, and, when all is said and done, you’re left wondering if Noah made a huge mistake in turning her away. www.awardsdaily.com/tv/fyc-maura-tierney-in-the-affair/
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Post by sissa on May 29, 2015 4:28:10 GMT 10
The Affair - Showtime/Paramount Announces 'Season 1' on DVD: Date, Box, Extras4-disc set will be available in the USA and Canada starting in early August Posted by David Lambert - 5/19/2015 THE AFFAIR explores the emotional effects of an extramarital relationship. Noah (Dominic West) is a New York City schoolteacher and novelist who is happily married, but resents his dependence on his wealthy father-in-law. Alison (Ruth Wilson) is a young waitress trying to piece her life and marriage back together in the wake of a tragedy. The provocative drama unfolds when Alison and Noah meet in Montauk at the end of Long Island. Showtime and Paramount Home Media Distribution have announced that on August 4th they will release The Affair - Season 1 on DVD. This 4-disc set stars Dominic West (The Wire, John Carter), Ruth Wilson (Saving Mr. Banks, The Lone Ranger), Maura Tierney (ER, NewsRadio), and Joshua Jackson (Dawson's Creek, Fringe). Price is expected to be $39.98 SRP in the USA and CA$46.99 SRP in Canada. Here's a list of the extras that are included: Tale of Two Costumes Character Profile: Montauk Character Profile: Noah Character Profile: Helen Character Profile: Alison Character Profile: Cole Happyish: Episode 1 Happyish: Episode 2 Ray Donovan S1: Episode 1 Madam Secretary S1: Episode 1 Amazon.com doesn't show a listing yet State-side for The Affair - Season 1, but Amazon.ca has a pre-order entry up for the title north of the border. Here's the button link, and the package art: www.tvshowsondvd.com/news/Affair-Season-1/21110NEWS/ Pretty Little Liars Star Joins The Affair...as Joshua Jackson's New Love Interest?!by TIERNEY BRICKER Today 8:00 AM PDT Is another affair about to go down on The Affair?! Pretty Little Liars' Miranda Rae Mayo is set to join The Affair (aka one of our latest TV obsessions!) when it returns for its second season in the fall, E! News has exclusively learned. And she's playing a new love interest for one of the Showtime drama's leading men: Joshua Jackson! Mayo is set to play Luisa, Cole's independent and free spirited new love interest, who illegally emigrated from Ecuador as a child and is working her way through school. And it doesn't seem like this is a casual fling, as Mayo is set to appear in at least five episodes of the Golden Globe-winning series' sophomore season. So it looks like Cole and Alison's (Ruth Wilson) relationship really is done. And sorry to all of the fans rooting for a hookup to go down between Cole and Helen (Maura Tierney)! Mayo recently played a major love interest for Shay Mitchell on ABC Family's hit series Pretty Little Liars, and is also set to appear in True Detective's highly anticipated second season when it premieres in June. But Lucia won't be the only new character fans of The Affair will be introduced to in season two: Joanna Gleason is set to join the series as the editor-in-chief of a publishing company with ties to Noah (Dominic West), while Richard Schiff will play the Butler family's longtime attorney. Season two of The Affair will also give viewers something they've been asking for since the series began: Cole and Helen's POVs! "We go out into four stories now, which is tremendously exciting," Jackson tells E! News. "It gives me and Maura the opportunity to tell the story from our perspective and then it gives the other two the chance to do the fun stuff we were doing, which is to portray a character through someone else's eyes." The Affair will return to Showtime this fall. www.eonline.com/news/660566/pretty-little-liars-star-joins-the-affair-as-joshua-jackson-s-new-love-interestShowtime’s ‘The Affair’ Casts Joanna Gleason for Season 2by Elizabeth Wagmeister - MAY 27, 2015 | 11:10AM PT “The West Wing” and “Newsroom” alum Joanna Gleason has been cast in Showtime’s critically-acclaimed drama “The Affair,” Variety has learned. She joins the second season in a recurring role. Gleason will play Yvonne, an editor in-chief of a prestigious publishing label and Hudson Valley bohemian who’s invested in her job and the cultivation of promising new writer, and is connected to Noah (Dominic West). Gleason’s other credits include “The Good Wife,” “Blue Bloods,” “Royal Pains,” “Friends,” “ER” and “The Wedding Planner.” “The Affair,” starring West, Ruth Wilson, Maura Tierney and Joshua Jackson, tells the story of an extramarital relationship between Noah and Alison (Wilson) from each of their perspectives. The freshman series won best drama at the Golden Globes, along with best actress for Wilson. Gleason is repped by Bill Veloric at Innovative. variety.com/2015/tv/news/the-affair-joanna-gleason-cast-season-2-showtime-1201506504/Richard Schiff Joins Showtime’s The Affair'; Richard Schiff (The Gambler) has booked a major recurring role on the upcoming second season of Showtime drama The Affair. He will play Jon Gottlief, a high-profile city attorney who has been Bruce Butler’s (John Doman) longtime family lawyer, in a season-long arc. Schiff has been on a tear recently. He will next been in the upcoming film Entourage and HBO’s The Ballers, playing Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson’s very successful and demanding boss. He’s currently shooting Rogue for Direct TV and recurring on WGN America’s Manhattan. He’ll also be seen in David Wain’s Wet Hot American Summer series on Netflix. His other credits include features The Automatic Hate, Take Me To The River, and The Gambler. Schiff is repped by Paradigm and Leverage Management. deadline.com/2015/05/richard-schiff-cast-the-affair-stephanie-erb-ray-donovan-1201433375/
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Post by sissa on Jul 3, 2015 2:01:52 GMT 10
Mary McDonnell got it right by doing things backward BY LUAINE LEE Tribune News ServiceJune 29, 2015 LOS ANGELES — The secret to a happy marriage and family is to do everything backward, says actress Mary McDonnell. ... If you missed Season 1 of Showtime's terrific "The Affair," you can find it on DVD starting Aug. 4. The story follows the fallout from an extra-marital affair, told from two different view points � from the man who's the father of four and the woman, who is married but has suffered a tragic loss. Dominic West ("The Wire") and Ruth Wilson ("Luther") costar as the lovers. Maura Tierney and Joshua Jackson play the spouses. You won't find a better male performance from last year than West's as the conflicted, impassioned novelist. "This is perfect for an actor because the nature of acting is to have to become very, very into it with strangers very quickly," says West, "whether you're doing a play or this show. In this show we're doing a lot of intimate sex scenes with Ruth, whom I'd never met before and Maura, whom I'd never met before. And that's a big challenge." Read more here: www.bradenton.com/2015/06/29/5873610/mary-mcdonnell-got-it-right-by.html#storylink=cpy'The Affair' Scoop: Jennifer Esposito to Guest in Season 2Kimberly Potts - June 30, 2015 As if Noah Holloway doesn’t have enough trouble managing relationships with the women in his life, it looks like there’ll be one more female to complicate his world in Season 2 of The Affair: his sister. Yahoo TV can exclusively reveal that current Mistresses co-star Jennifer Esposito will drop in on Noah (Dominic West) in Season 2’s fourth episode, playing his sib, Nina Parla. Nina is the mother of twins, and is described as being particularly “frank.” And since she’s privy to all kinds of information about Noah’s past, and Noah likes to keep all info about his roots on the down low, we’re guessing he might not be so excited to have his sis all up in his Kool-Aid. Besides, as the newly released trailer for Season 2 (below) reveals, Mr. Holloway already has plenty of drama on his plate. He and mistress Alison (Golden Globe winner Ruth Wilson) appear to be cohabitating, but Noah’s estranged wife, Helen (Maura Tierney), demands that Alison steer clear of her children, and Alison’s hubby, Cole (Joshua Jackson), shows up for a visit that leaves one half of “Noahison” less than thrilled to see him. www.yahoo.com/tv/the-affair-jennifer-esposito-casting-122873725260.htmlBelow the radar but Emmy-worthy MATTHEW GILBERT - GLOBE STAFF JUNE 25, 2015 Of course Jon Hamm, Elisabeth Moss, and “Mad Men” will be honored this year, when the Emmy nominations are announced on July 16. And they should be, along with a bunch of similarly worthy and obvious names and titles. Jeffrey Tambor, “Transparent,” Taraji P. Henson, Terrence Howard, Peter Dinklage, Lena Headey, “Game of Thrones,” the “Parks and Recreation” folks — the list of the deserving is long. But there are also a number of under-the-radar actors and series I’m hoping the Emmy voters — the brilliant, open-minded Emmy voters — will include on their lists. With the glut of eligible nominees, a few of the lesser-known ones really ought to get some public notice — even if it’s only in columns like this one, where critics get to dump their bittersweet Emmy kudos on all of the underdogs. PAUL SCHIRALDI/HBO For instance, we know Julia Louis-Dreyfus and “Veep” will get nods. They’re at the top of most conversations about good TV comedy at this moment, and rightfully so. But I’d love to see Timothy Simons also get nominated for his scene-stealing turn as Jonah Ryan, the obnoxious guy everybody treats like a punching bag. This season, Jonah was the subject of a provocative twist on sexual harassment, when the vice president’s chief of staff kept grabbing his testicles. He also had to sit through a public reading of the “Jonad Files,” a list of insulting nicknames for him. He delivered expert comedic work, always with a hint of pathos. I’ve been screaming about “Shameless” for years, since the Academy refuses to salute the quality of its storytelling and acting. Finally, last season, William H. Macy did get a nomination. But I have to mention Noel Fisher, who had yet another strong season as the rough but honorable Mickey. We saw Mickey work through his fears to stand by his bipolar lover, Ian, despite his urge to run. The show can be madcap and wacky, of course, such as when Mickey tried to kill the hateful Sammi. But it can be quite moving, too, and Fisher was responsible for some of those deeper moments. It won’t surprise me if Lisa Kudrow gets a nod for her work in “The Comeback”; she was nominated for the first season of the extraordinary comedy back in 2006. But I have a great affection for Robert Michael Morris, who plays Valerie Cherish’s hairdresser, Mickey. Mickey is a wonderful sidekick, a guy who selflessly mothers Valerie and supports her no matter what. With Mickey’s cancer scare, Morris played an important role in the second season, evoking some of the most sincere feelings we’ve ever seen in Valerie. It was a thrill to watch him. After a season competing as a comedy, “Orange Is the New Black” has been moved where it belongs this year, into the drama categories. I’m guessing the show will get a nod, and I’m thinking Taylor Schilling, Uzo Aduba, Kate Mulgrew, Laverne Cox, and other previously nominated actresses may get a second vote of confidence. But I really, really, really want Samira Wiley, who plays Poussey Washington, to be in the running. Her work last season was powerful and poignant, as Poussey resisted the lure of Vee and lost her friends in the process. With her wide-open, warm eyes, Wiley brought us deep inside one of the show’s most honorable characters. Samira Wiley (right) is among the actors deserving accolades. NETFLIX/AP Samira Wiley (right) is among the actors deserving accolades. There were four fine performances on the dramatic comedy “Togetherness,” including Amanda Peet’s arresting turn as a self-aware commitment-phobe. But Steve Zissis is the actor who stood out most for me, and who is also least likely to get noticed since he’s relatively unknown. Zissis’s Alex could have been the Jack Black-ish best friend, but Zissis made him so much more emotionally complex, an unrealized guy whose sweetness hasn’t helped him in life. The show, too, ought to get a nod, but that’s also unlikely in a crowded category that includes “Veep,” “Modern Family,” “Transparent,” “Louie,” “Silicon Valley,” and others. I’m afraid there won’t be room for “You’re the Worst,” either. It’s another under-the-radar but appealing comedy, a witty anti-romantic romance. And yet another small comedy that deserves Emmy love: “Man Seeking Woman.” It’s not for everyone, but it does what it does really well, which is to take the common sitcom theme of 20-something dating and blow it wide open with surrealistic sequences. Jay Baruchel’s single guy has a lot of fears and fantasies, and they all take shape around him in otherworldly visions that are brilliantly rendered. This year, by the way, voters are going to wake up and give nominations to what is currently one of TV’s best dramas, “The Americans.” They will also correct past mistakes and give nods to the fantastic leads, Keri Russell and Matthew Rhys. Right? But I’d love to see them also give credit to Holly Taylor, who plays the daughter of Russian spies who has become a devout Christian. Taylor showed us each painful step along the journey to awareness as Paige finally learned the truth about her parents. It was a lovely, subtle performance, as Taylor stayed true to her restrained character and never lapsed into histrionics. Is it possible voters will ignore Ben Mendelsohn, who lifted “Bloodline” from a heated-up soap opera into a textured character drama? Can they actually turn away from Carrie Coon’s raw, riveting performance on “The Leftovers”? Will they forget to bestow love on Maura Tierney, who upped the ante on “The Affair”? No, no, they would never do that. Matthew Gilbert can be reached at gilbert@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter @matthewgilbert.
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Post by sissa on Oct 20, 2015 9:32:57 GMT 10
‘The Affair’ Season 2 Premiere Recap: A Brewing StormBy MIKE HALE OCTOBER 5, 2015 11:37 AM Season 2, Episode 1 Somebody dies, sometime, somewhere on a dark and lonely road. That’s pretty much what we know about the mystery that both has and hasn’t happened yet in “The Affair,” which started its second season on Sunday night. So we won’t worry too much about it in these recaps, since we’d probably just get it wrong anyway, but we encourage any and all speculation in the comments. All correct guesses will be noted if and when Sarah Treem and her staff of writers spell it out for us. As we all know, the series presents its story — adultery and intrigue, shuttling between Brooklyn and Montauk — in a he-said, she-said fashion, jumping between the perspectives of the Brooklyn writer Noah Solloway (Dominic West) and his lover Alison (Ruth Wilson), a Montauk waitress. And it proceeds along at least two timelines, before and after the roadside death for which Noah, in a future timeline, has been arrested. For Season 2 the show shifts to he-said, she-said times two, with the addition of the perspectives of Helen (Maura Tierney), Noah’s wife (ex-wife in the future), and Cole (Joshua Jackson), Alison’s husband (future status unknown). It also adds a major new location, a house along the Hudson in Cold Spring, N.Y., to which Noah has retreated in the present time line while he revises his second novel and goes through divorce mediation with Helen. The premiere begins with Noah dreaming about driving down a dark road, with a ghostly — and seemingly female — figure walking ahead of him. That was confusing on two counts, first because we’ve been led to believe that the victim in the future hit-and-run is a man (Scott Lockhart, Alison’s brother-in-law), and second because Noah woke up into the present, staring at an empty screen in the idyllic house found for him by his publisher-editor, Harry. Apparently Noah’s somewhat meager roster of talents includes seeing the future. We’re seeing the situation from Noah’s point of view and it’s not pretty. Harry doesn’t like what Noah’s done with the ending of the novel, changing it from a murder to, in Noah’s words, “two people sitting down with an unimaginable secret between them.” (More prescience? Or do I just really misunderstand the timeline?) Next is a stop in Brooklyn, where Noah has made an appointment to pick up his stuff from the house where he used to live with Helen and their four children. Waiting for him is Helen’s frightening mother, Margaret (Kathleen Chalfant), there to make sure he doesn’t take more than a few suitcases. Angry (even in his own telling), he storms back into the house and gathers dishes, books and artwork. He discovers that his older son has been hiding in his room the whole time, and learns that their planned trip to a baseball game is off because Margaret has scheduled an appointment for the boy with a therapist. Out on the sidewalk, he runs into his younger son, who’s happy to see him until Noah, seeing himself in the role of the truth-telling realist, informs him that yes, his parents are getting divorced. The boy promptly slugs Noah, bloodying his nose, and runs into the house. Next up in Noah’s day of sorrows: divorce mediation, with a mediator (cleverly played, in two very different performances, by Jeremy Shamos) who in this accounting is a chirping buffoon. “You have chosen to be divorced in a humane way,” he says, citing his three years of law school and calling the process “easy peasy.” This was easily the best scene in the episode, because the wonderful Ms. Tierney, who enlivens the show every time she appears, got to play Helen from Noah’s perspective, shifting seamlessly from child-like to condescending to shrewish. It was also clear that she was still, in Noah’s eyes, desirable, despite all the bad water under the bridge. Moving quickly through the question of their assets — she keeps the house (it’s hers anyway), he keeps the profits from his book — they arrived at the question of custody, and how Noah, with no home of his own in the city, would be able to host the children if given equal time. Helen’s real agenda came out as they left the session, when she told Noah “I don’t want her near my kids.” Let’s jump ahead here to the same scene, repeated later from Helen’s point of view. The mediator was now curt, matter of fact and inclined to identify with Noah. Noah, who saw himself wearing a suit, was now in a leather jacket and casual shirt. Helen, whom Noah saw in a nondescript pant suit, was now in the sexy outfit she’d worn out the night before. (More about that later.) Helen was now solicitous about Noah’s custody issues, offering to help him pay for a place in the city, but her Noah was an angry, loose cannon, yelling that he was done taking money from her parents. Crucially, when Helen asked whether he was living with Alison, this Noah denied it. In Noah’s telling, when asked the same question, he simply refused to answer. Jumping back to Noah’s memory, we see that in Helen’s account, he was a liar. When he gets back to the Cold Spring house that night, Alison is waiting for him, cooking dinner like a domestic angel, professing her happiness, dancing with him on the dock. (When she protests that’s there’s no music, Noah, a corny romantic in his own P.O.V., points to the sky, where the birds are singing.) Noah’s bad day ends on crescendo of contentment as he takes his Williams College canvas chair out to the end of the dock and pops open a beer, but then the camera swings to the right and there’s an immense storm cloud hanging over the Hudson. You can’t believe the show would stoop to something so obvious, but hey — with the unreliable-narrator setup they can basically get away with anything. It’s Noah who’s imagining that foreboding cloud, not the actual writers. Part two begins with a title saying “Part Two” but no name. It’s a bit of bait and switch — we see a room-service tray and clothes on the floor, the edible and wearable detritus of a hotel rendezvous, and we’re conditioned from Season 1 to think of this as an Alison scene. But then the camera moves over to the bed and we see Noah’s best friend, Max (Josh Stamberg), in bed with Helen. Not until then does the name “Helen” flash onscreen. This is a Helen we haven’t seen before — naked, for one thing, and engaging in loud sex. But it’s really the same Helen. She’s not making any of the noise, and she clearly can’t believe where she’s found herself after an evening of drinking. Max, in her eyes, is a silly braggart, telling a room-service attendant “I just bought this hotel” and rubbing himself suggestively with her foot. Later we see Helen (meaning Helen sees herself) crying in the shower, and on her way to the mediation she stops in Washington Square Park to vape some marijuana — throughout the episode we see her anesthetizing herself with weed and wine. After the meeting with Noah, she picks up her youngest daughter at dance class, where she overhears a catty mom gossiping about her and Noah’s problems. At home, her younger son is sobbing after his conversation with Noah and her older daughter is in a screaming match with Margaret over a college application essay. (She wants to write about the Season 1 incident when Cole pulled a gun.) In a cracked reflection of Noah’s escape back to Cold Spring, Helen finds some solace at the end of her horrible day. Showing up at a benefit Margaret has forced her to attend, she finds Max there, obviously invited by Margaret. He’s still overbearing and embarrassing in her eyes, but at least he’s there, and he slips her a marijuana lozenge, which is more than Noah’s doing these days. When he brings her home and kisses her on her stoop, she’s not happy but she doesn’t look unhappy, either. However, Brooklyn is getting that same storm that was moving in along the Hudson, and we last see Helen listening to the thunder and rain. That little bit of tidy symbolism has to be blamed on the show’s writers, I’m afraid. We’ve left out the future story line, which served as a postscript to both Noah’s and Helen’s stories. Noah saw himself in a holding cell with Detective Jeffries (Victor Williams), who pretended to be sympathetic and encouraged Noah to cop a plea — “They can’t even prove you actually killed him,” the detective said, specifying that the victim is a “him” but not giving a name. (This presumably was happening immediately after Noah’s arrest in the Season 1 finale — he was wearing the same shirt.) Helen’s telling picked up immediately afterward, when she arrived at the jail with a high-powered lawyer (Richard Schiff) who called her his associate. She was no longer Noah’s wife, but she was, much to Noah’s surprise, paying for the lawyer, something he said he couldn’t afford (even though he was arrested in what looked like an expensive apartment he was sharing with Alison). Let us know what you thought of the season premiere of “The Affair,” and Helen’s debut as a narrator. artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/10/05/the-affair-season-2-premiere-recap/?_r=0Adding More Perspectives Is the Best Thing to Happen to The AffairBy Kaitlin Thomas staff Oct 05, 2015 The Affair's use of dual perspectives to depict the emotional fallout from the devolution of two marriages and the beginning of another was a risky but inventive experiment in storytelling that initially allowed the show to captivate and enrapture its audience. But as the season progressed and the show became a more conventional drama beneath a shiny exterior, the effectiveness of the design was up for debate. The show's momentum was stymied halfway through the season as the frayed threads of Noah (Dominic West) and Allison's (Ruth Wilson) storylines became more entwined, which in turn made it more difficult to sustain or support the argument for its dual framework. The continued discrepancies in the events depicted eventually confused viewers and the elevated melodrama of the season finale frustrated even more. As the show begins its second season, with Noah and Allison embarking on their own relationship in the past and Noah's ongoing issues as he faces charges for Scotty's murder in the present, the writers' are attempting to rebalance the narrative and prove to the show's critics that there is still an intriguing and addicting story to be told here, one that covers love and happiness, dreams and expectations, wealth and class. The way in which they're doing that is to add the perspectives of Noah and Allison's respective spouses. In the first season, Helen (Maura Tierney) and Cole (Joshua Jackson) were just vague ideas and emotions molded into the shape of people. They played their roles dutifully, but because they were only seen through the eyes of other people, they didn't have the depth they might have had on another series. The writers never needed to give them real personalities and feelings beyond what was necessary to color Noah and Allison's impressions of them, and because of this, it was difficult to tell what was real and what was just projection on Noah or Allison's part. By giving Helen and Cole distinct, clear voices in Season 2, the show has found another way to support its intricate framework now that Noah and Allison are together, as well as a way for the audience to connect with their characters in ways they never could before. The Season 2 premiere followed Noah and Helen as they embarked on the first chapter of their lives as a former couple going through a divorce. Noah had moved upstate and finished his second novel that he claimed was a work of fiction but was clearly inspired by the events of the previous summer in Montauk (this particular draft ended with a couple sitting down to dinner, much like Noah did with Allison toward the end of his chapter, but we know will later end with the woman's murder). Noah was in the city to pack up his belongings at the house, and for meetings with his agent and the man mediating his and Helen's divorce. Meanwhile, Helen had started sleeping with Noah's best friend Max, who was the type of man her parents had always wanted her to marry, and was struggling to keep her family together in the wake of everything that had happened. Noah can paint it however he wanted in his own story, but from Helen's point of view, he essentially abandoned their family by escaping to a quiet retreat upstate with Allison—though he denied she lived there in both his and Helen's perspectives—while she dealt with the fallout their divorce had on their children in the city. And this is where the additional perspectives really act as an asset for the series; they allow us to see the ramifications of Noah and Allison's infidelities by seeing them through the eyes of an outsider. Affairs are hot and steamy by nature, the risk of getting caught and the knowledge that what is happening is wrong fuels that particular fire. But once an affair makes the transition from taboo fling to full-on relationship, the intoxicating draw is gone and the heat is turned down to a mere simmer. In his story, Noah literally just ate dinner, had a nice conversation, and then sat out on his dock as an ominous, heavy-handed metaphor of a storm cloud came his way. He may have been happy, and it may even sound nice on paper, but holy hell does it make for a boring television series. It's not very sustainable or even all that interesting, even with the knowledge that he'll later be arrested for allegedly murdering Scotty Lockhart. It wasn't until the show started to inspect the damage done by Noah's affair that we started to see the same meaty storytelling potential that made the earliest episodes of Season 1 so addicting. Because when a couple has an affair, it doesn't just affect the people who've stepped out on their marriages, it also affects the people around them, most obviously their spouses and their children. In this case, Whitney wasn't speaking to Noah and Trevor punched him in the face before breaking down. Meanwhile, Martin's psychological health was taking a toll on his physical health as a result of his fractured home life. Luckily, or perhaps unluckily, Stacey was too young to comprehend what had happened between her parents, but the mothers of the other ballerinas in her class were not, and Helen overheard them gossiping about Noah's affair and their divorce. One even asked Helen if there were signs of Noah's wandering eye that she'd missed, as if his philandering ways were somehow her fault. We know that Helen chose Noah 25 years ago because he was safe and because he was not from the same world she grew up in, the one in which her parents still lived. But aside from these easy-to-make observations, we don't know much about her. We never had the opportunity to get to know her or how she really felt about their marriage or her life. We could make guesses based on what Noah said about her last season, but we couldn't know for sure. Based on her story this week, we know that Max is the opposite of Noah—something we caught a glimpse of last season—and as charming as he may have been at the benefit and as much as her mother fawned over him, Helen never looked like she felt comfortable in their interactions and the reasons she chose Noah suddenly became clearer. But when she returned home, she was forced to confront the empty space on her bedroom wall where the painting that Noah had removed earlier in the day once hung. It was a symbol of the fact her life with Noah—the life she spent a quarter of a century building—was no more and all that was left was a blank space. It doesn't take much work to see that Helen's story was the better, more engaging of the two halves of the episode. It had more raw emotional depth than Noah's, who's never been that deep of a character despite what he might like to think he projects to the world. And it's getting harder and harder to care about him as a person—and even more to see him as a sympathetic character in the present day, when he's waiting to be arraigned for Scotty's murder—knowing that he left Helen to care for their children while he dined and danced with Allison. It's necessary we continue to see Noah and Allison's perspectives moving forward, but they're no longer the most interesting characters in their own story. And it's possible they never were, it's just that we only ever saw what they wanted us to see. The Affair may not be a great show, and it may not even be a necessary show in this increasingly crowded landscape, but it is an interesting study in storytelling and memory and the nature of reality. The show posits the idea that there is no universal truth, that our backgrounds, emotions, and opinions color and taint our experiences and memories in unique ways, even in the most mundane of situations. But it also wants to showcase the emotional and psychological issues that occur when a family is torn apart by one person's careless actions, and that was really what drove the story here, not whether Noah murdered Scotty or whether Noah loves Allison. Whether the show's use of its particular storytelling device will continue to be an asset as the new season progresses or whether it will eventually devolve into yet another complicated mess is a question for another day, but I currently find it fascinating, especially now that the series has expanded to allow viewers to see the ramifications of Noah and Allison's affair from perspectives other than their own, because everyone looks better through the lens of their own thoughts. It's interesting to see how Helen's perspective of her soon to be ex-husband differed from how he saw himself and how Allison saw him, and it'll be interesting to see how and if Cole's perspective next week changes our opinions of his character and his relationship with Allison. Right now, it's hard to argue that these new perspectives could be anything but good news for The Affair. Let's hope that doesn't change. The Affair airs Sundays at 10pm on Showtime. www.tv.com/shows/the-affair-2014/community/post/the-affair-season-2-review-144399474617/
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Post by sissa on Oct 20, 2015 9:48:43 GMT 10
‘The Affair’ Season 2: Maura Tierney on Helen’s Questionable ChoicesOCTOBER 4, 2015 | 08:04PM PT Whitney Friedlander SPOILER: Do not read this interview unless you have seen all of Season 1 and the Season 2 premiere of Showtime’s “The Affair.” One of the main creative messages from Showtime’s “The Affair” is that we all believe we are good people … at least through our own rose-tinted view of our lives’ events. Creatored by Sarah Treem and Hagai Levi, the first season of the marital drama used the springboard of a murder investigation to allow for writer/teacher Noah Solloway (Dominic West) and waitress Alison Bailey (Ruth Wilson) to reflect on how they remember engaging in an affair and eventual relationship that dissolved both of their marriages. In the second season, their spouses Helen (Maura Tierney) and Cole (Joshua Jackson) get to show their takes on the separation as the audience still grapples with with the unsolved homicide. For Helen, this means dialing up the chill factor and being less afraid of flaunting the wealth she’s received from her successful author father, played by John Doman. She’s also more willing to experiment, be it by smoking an e-cig in public or rebounding with the closest man she can find. Here, Tierney talks to Variety about how her character is coping with her broken marriage, if she’s satisfied with the murder mystery’s big reveal and if those flashback scenes can be trusted. I’m totally Team Helen. I was Team Cole too and then he pointed a gun at a kid in the first season’s finale, at least according to the story Ruth Wilson’s character tells us.Well, we don’t know if that happened… You think even that is open to interpretation?That episode was really hard to shoot. I exempted myself because I’m not really in it, but there was lots of talk about how dramatic it was and where it went and where it was taking the characters. Although, for me, Helen’s best moment is in that scene when she says to Mare Winningham [who plays matriarch Cherry Lockhart] “OK, this is all too f–ed up for me.” We shot it twice. But I think, for me, if Alison needs to remember it in a way that she saved Noah’s life, I understand that. Maybe she did. But maybe Cole wasn’t going like this [motions like she’s waving a gun] when it happened. Do you think that there was an actual confrontation?With this show, everything is true and everything is not true. Everybody is telling the story as best as they can remember it. I don’t think there’s a lot of non-truthtelling, even though the perspectives are wildly different. Here’s what I know from a storytelling point of view: Sarah wanted to make sure that we all knew that Noah and Alison loved each other and she’s willing to literally step in front of a gun for Noah. That’s what she wanted to achieve narratively. I think what she says about live, eyewitness events is true. I think people make themselves heroes when they need to or victims when they need to. Where you excited to share Helen’s point-of-view this season?I was. I liked the episode a lot when I read it. The thing I like about Helen is, I think, she has a good sense of humor. Of the four of them, she’s the only ironic one. I was happy to see, as messed up as she is, they’re putting a lot of humor in her breakdown. That sex scene with Josh Stamberg’s Max in the first episode of Season 2 is so painful to watch.Hopefully it’s a little funny, too. I read it and he’s so cringey how he’s making love to her. Josh Stamberg was very committed to it. What I realized in rehearsal is [Helen’s] trying to do this appalling sex talk with him, so she begins by trying to connect because they’re having sex and wants to do the thing he likes to do when they’re having sex. From not rolling her eyes about it from the very top, you can see she’s attempting to give it a go. Did you and Sarah talk about why Helen chose to rebound with Max, who is her husband’s best friend?In Sarah’s mind, the three of them were together all the time and there was a question of who Helen was going to be with (which, in Helen’s mind, there was not). She’s very close with him. She’s known him for 20 years. He’s had a thing for her for 20 years. He’s a safe person who really digs her, which I think feels good when you’re feeling raw and lost and left. But she can’t fix her problems with a man, certainly not this man. I think, hopefully, we lay some track for that last year. He tells Noah [in Season 1] “don’t leave her.” I think it will be surprising, but the idea being if someone wants you and you’re alone… Were there character things you added in?I wanted her to repress or hide her money in Season 1 because it made him so uncomfortable, but once he’s gone I said, “I want a big Rolex and I want big fancy bags.” Not that this is going to lead her to happiness at all, it’s just a way of saying “f– you” to him. A part of the problem is the wage inequality in the marriage. I did want to show in her POV that she has overly flashy stuff to make up for whatever. Helen’s wardrobe has also changed considerably this season and it always changes from each person’s point of view. Tell us about the thinking behind that.Caroline Duncan is the costumer and she’s really great at her job and she has a lot to do because it’s everybody’s perspective. What she decided for Helen’s own POV is that nothing kind of fits. The pants are too tight or the shirt or dress is too tight; she’s not on her game. In Season 1, I was way more stylish in Alison’s POV with really nice designer clothes and very austere. I was much more down to earth and hippie mom in Noah’s POV. The murder mystery seems to be coming more into focus in Season 2.Yes and we’ll have more of a reveal that comes into focus. By the end of Season 2, everybody knows who did it. It won’t be dragged on and the audience won’t be forced to not know. Are you OK with who the killer is?I think the audience will be very satisfied. I wouldn’t be surprised if Helen did it and framed Noah.Wow! I didn’t even think of that. Wouldn’t that be interesting? Because then she’s like Iago. She’s too high. She smokes pot all the time — another detail that I love. ”The Affair” airs Sundays at 10 p.m. on Showtime variety.com/2015/tv/news/the-affair-season-2-premiere-helen-cole-pov-maura-tierney-1201607812/
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Post by sissa on Oct 20, 2015 10:04:25 GMT 10
Maura Tierney on the Return of The Affair and Her Big Weekend PlansOCTOBER 3, 2015 8:00 AM by JULIA FELSENTHAL When Showtime’s The Affair premiered last October, Helen Solloway, played by ER and NewsRadio alum Maura Tierney, seemed to have it all (at least by New York standards): a hot writer husband, four cute kids, a Brooklyn brownstone, oodles of family money, a lovely little lifestyle boutique, and an upcoming relaxing summer vacation hanging out with her family at her parents’ estate in Montauk. But the cracks in that facade quickly started to show. Those rich parents were less than nurturing; that Montauk idyll was riddled with emotional booby traps; those kids were growing up a tad too fast; and that hot husband, Noah (Dominic West), was about to act on his wandering eye with the darkly alluring Alison (Ruth Wilson), a local waitress unhappily married to Cole (Joshua Jackson) and grieving the tragic loss of their young son from an accident. The Affair won fans and impressed critics with its intense, psychological look at marriage and parenthood, and also with its Rashomon-like storytelling conceit. The events of each episode were related twice, once from Noah’s memory, as he explained his side of events to a police officer investigating a mysterious crime, and once from Alison’s. This weekend, the show, which was snubbed at the Emmys but won best drama series at the Golden Globes, returns for a second season, and what a difference a year makes. At the opening of season two, Helen finds that her fairy-tale life has completely crumbled: She’s in the midst of a divorce from Noah, who has shacked up with his mistress upstate. Her meddling mother has practically moved in to “help.” She’s jumped straight into a misguided new relationship, and is juggling that, single parenthood, depression, and—spoiler alert!—a blossoming weed habit. The reason we know all of this is because the show’s writers decided at long last to expand their Rashomon concept to include Helen’s point of view (as well as Cole’s). And to that we say: About time! “It’s going to be different,” Tierney says, laughing, when I get her on the phone to talk about the big new development. “I think it’s going to change the show kind of significantly. I hope people like it just as much! It opens up the storytelling. We go off on our own journeys.” Read on for more from Tierney about what to expect from Helen, plus her thoughts on full-frontal nudity, cast dance parties, monogamy in marriage, and why she’ll be spending this weekend with Elena Ferrante’s My Brilliant Friend. So The Affair is back! Can you tease anything about Helen’s development this season?Yeah, she has a really hard time. She doesn’t handle her misfortune with much grace. And what’s really nice about her arc is that she slowly comes to understand her culpability and the weakness in her marriage. She didn’t really know how to support Noah as an artist; she did bully him about money; she never quite stood up to her parents. It’s nice watching someone come to terms: When you think you’re so victimized, and maybe you’re not such a victim; maybe you’re kind of a participant. You’ve said one of the challenges of the show is that you’ve had to play two different characters: Helen as seen by Noah, and Helen as seen by Alison. Now we’re getting your perspective, and you’ll have to play three, or maybe four different Helens. Is that intimidating? Sort of! Last year I loved it. It was a good challenge. This year it was a challenge that took me longer to figure out. Getting into it, I was mostly playing Helen as Noah had perceived her. And it took me a minute to make an adjustment, to realize there were nuances that had to be brought on board that I just wasn’t thinking about. I think I sort of caught up to it, hopefully in time. Alison’s perspective is [that Helen is this] really sort of classist, hard, snobby woman. In my mind last year I was like, Helen’s nothing like this! [But] maybe she is a little like that. There are parts of that that I tried to incorporate into Helen’s point of view. Do you have to shoot in multiple headspaces in a single day?Yeah, like in this season’s first episode, there’s a mediation scene. We shot Noah’s perspective first, and then mine second, back-to-back. We get a lot of help from the hair and makeup departments. We’re always in slightly different outfits, slightly different makeup. All those small things help to put you where you’re supposed to be. That’s interesting about wardrobe. Does Helen think of her own style as different from how other people perceive it?In Helen’s point of view, she’s much less put together. When Alison sees her she’s always decked out. I’m wearing beautiful clothes when Alison sees me. When Helen sees herself, my clothes are too tight. In her memory of herself, she’s just not on it. She’s not taking care of business. So in the first episode we get to see Helen vaping in Washington Square Park and sucking on pot lozenges. Was she secretly a pothead in season one? Did I just not notice?No! It’s a new thing. I love the way it was handled. There’s no discussion about it. Helen doesn’t say, “Wow, I think I need to relax!” Time has moved forward, and this is how she’s coping. She’s fully self-medicating. She’s drinking too much too. And she’s smoking pot, like, more than once a day. She doesn’t know how to cope with the challenges. She was a really blessedly happy person until she was 45 years old. You make it sound dark, but to me it felt kind of empowered, like Helen was just saying, “f**k it, I’m going to smoke pot because it’s not that big a deal.” It felt very High Maintenance. There’s something that was very normalizing about it.I think you’re right. I’m probably jumping the gun. There are more episodes to come where her behavior has some repercussions for her. I think you’re right, there is that way to look at it. Which is also how I played it. That’s what she’s doing to take the edge off before she meets her asshole husband. That’s totally fine. You talked about this on Seth Meyers, but pretty much as soon as we enter Helen’s point of view, we also get some full-frontal male nudity . . .I know! I thought it was kind of brilliant. I liked it, too. The idea of it. It’s the truth. She’s like, “What am I doing?” Take me inside the meeting where that was discussed.It was really discussed. Jeff Reiner, one of the executive producers, was like, “I want full-frontal male nudity in this scene.” He was fighting for it. [Cocreator] Sarah Treem was not so desirous of it, and then it sort of became a crusade of Jeff’s. Then Showtime got involved. There was a lot of discussion about it. I now understand. I think it works for the scene well. Jeff was like, “Let’s get everybody naked! Why not? If that’s what we’re doing, let’s do it.” I admire that now. You mean: If women are doing it . . .Yes, exactly. Let’s have everybody show everything. What was it like to film?It was awkward! But it was really funny. Everyone has a really good sense of humor. And we closed the set. It was a closed set supposedly, but at one point I looked around, and I was like, “Everyone’s in here milling around!” It was like the most unclosed closed set ever. I’m wearing, like, a thong with no sides on it that’s glued to my body that’s flesh colored. It’s bizarre. You have to laugh. And the scene was supposed to be funny. There’s supposed to be a comic element to it, even though it’s ultimately really tragic because she’s so unhappy. You’ve said in the past that sex scenes are excruciating. Does that remain true?You know what? I feel like I made a decision last year that I wasn’t going to let them be excruciating anymore. At one point I sat up while we were doing the sex scene this year, which was the most exposed sex scene I’ve ever done on the show. It was just funny. I wasn’t uptight. I was like, “Well, I’m doing it. Who cares. It’s part of the story.” It’s a waste of time to worry about your cellulite. It’s not what the scene is about. It’s still awkward but it’s helpful to get over yourself a little bit. This show takes such a dark view of marriage. Do you think it feels different for the cast members who are married than for the ones who are not?I don’t think it really particularly affects anybody. Ruth and I are not married. Dom is married. And Josh has been with Diane [Kruger] for nine or 10 years, something like that. I can’t speak for them, but we’re all just acting. I don’t think that has so much to do with it. I don’t think the show necessarily has a dark view on marriage. I think it has a view of the darkness we are capable of, that we all have within ourselves. What happens when you go there? What happens when you want to cut yourself and walk into the ocean? What happens when you want to walk away from your children? If those are your darker impulses, what happens when you act on them? I like that the show examines that. I don’t think I would watch this with my boyfriend. Have you ever heard from anyone that watching the show has had a negative effect on their relationship?Yes, one woman. She’s not a friend; she’s an acquaintance. She told me she was watching with her boyfriend and afterward she went and checked his phone. I was like, “That’s not good!” I suppose it does have fallout for people. I think so many people are unfaithful. So many people get divorced in this country. A lot of people cheat. It’s interesting to me to have to think about it a lot. Because it does make me examine the value we put on fidelity. Should it be placed so high in importance in a relationship? I don’t know. What’s your vibe like with your costars? I feel like whenever I go out in Manhattan there’s a decent chance I’ll see at least two of The Affair cast members dining together. You’re ubiquitous!Oh no! We get to see each other so much less this season. Dom and Ruth see each other. And Ruth and Josh. I see Dom. But we all work together less. I never get to work with Ruth, and that makes me sad because she’s such a wonderful actress. And I never get to work with Josh this year, and he’s a wonderful actor. I love them. I really love them. I think they’re all incredibly smart and aware. We have a lot of fun together. When you have to take your clothes off and cry, you have to crack some jokes, because it would be too much otherwise. We went out to dinner the other night and came back to my house and had a little dance party. That was good. What were you dancing to? Whose playlist?It was really long, and it was mine. They were enslaved to my selection, which is probably unfortunate. It was probably, like, the Pixies. So what’s the one cultural thing you’d like to get done this weekend?I just started the first Elena Ferrante book [My Brilliant Friend]. I read an interview with the author in Vanity Fair and she is fascinating to me. Everyone thinks she’s a man! Or a group of men! Like, “What are you talking about? No one woman could ever do this; it must be several men!” Where will you be doing the reading?I’m going to Montauk. We shoot out there. I don’t shoot till next week but I’m going to go down early. I love it. In the fall it’s beautiful and really super quiet. Everything’s closed. I’m going to read my book. And hopefully go swimming. I rented a house so it’s easy for me to get to the beach. I’m thinking it’ll still be warm enough to swim in the ocean. It just occurred to me while you were talking about the Ferrante novel, which is about female friends, that Helen doesn’t have any female friends on the show.I know! That’s something that we’ve talked about. That’s partially why I’m reading the book. Helen also has no confidantes, so you never really get to know what she’s thinking. The rest of the characters get to talk to their friends, so you can hear what they’re thinking. You only really watch Helen. You kind of have to figure out through her actions what’s going on in her head. She doesn’t get to say it. This interview has been condensed and edited. www.vogue.com/13356475/maura-tierney-weekend-agenda/
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Post by sissa on Oct 20, 2015 10:08:06 GMT 10
Maura Tierney on sex scenes: ‘I kind of have to throw my ego out the window’By Robert Rorke and Michael StarrOctober 4, 2015 | 12:01am Maura Tierney on sex scenes: ‘I kind of have to throw my ego out the window’ Maura Tierney plays Helen Solloway, a woman betrayed by her adulterous husband, Noah (Dominic West) on "The Affair." 1. The Affair Sunday, 10 p.m., Showtime Veteran actress Maura Tierney, 50, returns Sunday night for Season 2 of “The Affair” on Showtime. Part of Sunday’s opening episode is told from the point-of-view of Tierney’s character, Helen — who has a very steamy scene with a new lover as she deals with the fallout from her shattered marriage to cheating spouse Noah (Dominic West). “The Affair” is known for its frank portrayal of sex. Are these scenes difficult for you to shoot? No. They’re my most fave! I’m kidding. Yes, they’re awkward. I kind of have to throw my ego out the window. But on our show the writers try to have the sex scenes move the story forward in terms of how the characters are communicating (or not communicating) at that point in the relationship — so hopefully they are serving a purpose in terms of revealing something besides just the bodies. In the season opener, we see Helen paying for a (very expensive) attorney to defend Noah. How will her feelings for Noah evolve over the course of the season? Helen is trying throughout the season to figure out and resolve her feelings for Noah. I’m not sure if she actually gets to that place but that struggle is interesting to play. “The Affair” received a lot of critical acclaim last season. Does this put additional pressure on the cast to “live up to expectations” in Season 2? Or do you not pay attention to that kind of “outside noise”? I don’t, really. I think maybe for the writers there’s always pressure for the second season of a show that’s done well but nobody talks about that. It doesn’t feel anxious on set in any way. You’ve been a regular presence on TV for quite a while now. Has the success of “The Affair” impacted our career in terms of opening up other doors? I guess it has. There’s some work I’ll be doing early next year [that] I’m excited about. But I feel that I’ve luckily gotten to work on great shows and each of them has led to the other in a certain way. — Michael Starr nypost.com/2015/10/04/maura-tierney-on-sex-scenes-i-kind-of-have-to-throw-my-ego-out-the-window/
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Post by sissa on Oct 20, 2015 10:15:50 GMT 10
'The Affair' Star Maura Tierney: Helen Is "Not the Victim"OCTOBER 04, 2015 8:05pm PT by Bryn Elise Sandberg "She understands that she was partially complicit in what put the cracks in the marriage," says the actress. [Warning: This article contains spoilers from the first episode of the second season of The Affair.] When The Affair premiered its second season on Sunday night, it showcased more Maura Tierney than ever before. The actress’ added screen time is a welcome consequence of the Showtime drama’s decision to expand its trademark point of view storytelling structure to include the perspectives of Tierney’s character, Helen, as well as Joshua Jackson’s Cole. Season one relied exclusively on Noah (Dominic West) and Alison (Ruth Wilson) to carry the story, but now that the couple is finally together, there are fewer opportunities for the varied accounts that drive the show, says series creator Sarah Treem. Opening up the narrative to their ex-lovers' voices allows for the same tension that permeated the first season to continue in the second installment. “It became clear that a lot of the storytelling — the paradox that is the engine of the show — was going to lie in the relationships between the estranged characters, which are now the ex-spouses,” Treem told The Hollywood Reporter ahead of the premiere. The season two opener sees Helen deal with the fallout of her marriage, navigating ugly divorce proceedings, attempting to get back into the dating game and, yes, developing a unexpected weed habit. THR caught up with Tierney to discuss the changes for her character this season, her personal views on infidelity and her take on the show’s two-sided storytelling. Were you excited when you found out the writers were going to add Helen and Cole’s point of views?I knew it was discussed at the end of last season, but I didn’t find out until the writers room started back up again in February or March. There’s a bunch of new writers this year so I met them, and they had sort of sketched out the season, which is when I found out. I think that the device of that “he said, she said” is really compelling. I do think if I had to do a whole other season — we’re doing twelve episodes this year instead of ten — of “he said, she said,” it’d be hard for the writers. I think giving four perspectives opens up the storytelling for them. It would have just been too hard to maintain the “he said, she said” for twelve more episodes. Has it been a lot more work for you?Dom and Ruth are working less because there are chunks that they’re not in, which didn’t ever happen last year. So if it’s Cole’s point of view, Dom’s not in it. So he’ll have half an episode. They are working less. I am working in a way that — I don’t know if it’s more or less — but because we work all on our own, it’s sort of like I show up and then for eight days I work a lot and then I have eight off. So it’s really much more efficient for me this year. I like it. How do you think Helen is handling the separation?I don’t find this very appealing, but the idea that her money was always something that she kind of had to hide because it made him uncomfortable that they depended on her parents for money. I thought her response to that would be like, “F— you,” and I got her a big Rolex and flashy bag. It’s not going to make her happy, but I wanted that detail to be in there, whether it’s noticed or not. What we’re trying to do is just tell a story of Helen figuring out that she’s not the victim necessarily that she thought she was. And certainly Helen got screwed, but she’s trying to figure out what happened and in doing so, understands that she was partially complicit in what put the cracks in the marriage by perhaps never standing up to her parents in defense of him and not really supporting him creatively at all, or forgetting to do that, and contributing to what allowed him to fall in love with someone else. So her culpability. When people have hard times, it’s very interesting to me if they handle it with grace and dignity or not. That’s really what life is about, right? That’s what character is: how do you handle the shitty, shitty times and she’s having a shitty time. That’s what I like about her part of the story. Wilson has told THR that part of the reason she wanted the role was to challenge the stigmas of affairs. Is that also why you were drawn to the show?Yes, Sarah said to me when I met her initially that if the show went two seasons, that Noah does leave his family and then writes a book, the book becomes very successful and he becomes very wealthy. And so opposed to it being a morality tale, it’s more like he leaves his family and everything great happens to him. I was quite intrigued by that because I liked that it wasn’t telling a story that had moralistic repercussions. That, I have not seen before. I don’t know if they’re still intending to do that, but those things do still happen. I also don’t want the character Helen to disappear, but I am rooting for that affair — the idea that they were soulmates and that they had to destroy everything to be together and did it, is very romantic to me. The concept of what is it like when you do the thing that’s going to make you the most happy and you don’t think about anybody else. Nobody hardly every does that, so doing that is really interesting to me. What’s the fallout? I do think in that way it challenges the conventional notion of affairs. Has the show changed what you think about infidelity personally?No, not at all. I mean, I still don’t want anyone to cheat on me! I really don’t. It’s happened. It really hurt. I don’t want it to happen again. It’s not going to change the pain. I’m divorced, I don’t know. The notion of — some people I guess are meant to be together in monogamy for their lives, but perhaps everyone isn’t. Perhaps some people have two or three great love affairs. But the show didn’t change my views on that. Probably getting a divorce changed my views on that. Do you think monogamy is antiquated?I’m antiquated — I tend to be fairly kind of jealous in a relationship that way. I would love to not be, but that’s how I was raised — I was raised Catholic. I would like to rail against these things, and I think some people are. I would like to have a real equanimity about people coming in and out of our lives. The show hasn’t changed any of that. It’s something I struggle with as a human, but I think a lot of people do. In terms of the show’s two-sided storytelling, do you ever get a script and feel like one account is too divergent from another?I don’t tend to do that. I come from a very strong line of very talented showrunners. So when I was on ER, there was John Wells and there was David Zabel, who was the showrunner and the main writer, and Paul Simms, who did NewsRadio, another show I did. Very, very creative talented person. So I came up in television really respecting that and not questioning it too much. So if I have an issue with the script, I don’t tend to have an issue with it in that way. Like, “Oh, these are too different. They are too wildly different.” That’s not where my concerns go. My concerns go to, “I don’t know if I would believe that Helen would do that,” or, “I feel like this line is a little expositional,” or, “I feel like she needs to talk less.” My notes tend to be much more specific about what Helen is doing, as opposed to that. If they want to make a show about a gun fight in two different ways, you know, what am I going to do? It also feels valid for the other actors to say, “This doesn’t make sense to me.” But I don’t tend to bump up against that creatively. There’s also this court case developing in what Sarah Treem calls the “future present.” How much, as an actress, do you need to know about where your character is going in the future?I don’t need to know anything. I didn’t need to know last season and I don’t really need to know this season. I know more this season — it just happened that way. But I tend to be a little bit anxious about knowing too much because I don’t want to play the end before we get to the end. And because we jump around too much, and there’s a future present, and then there’s the flashbacks, which are two years from that, there’s going to be two episodes where a year has gone by between ten or eleven, I think. So I need to just stay where I’m at, which is already a little hard to do, and not think about the future. www.hollywoodreporter.com/live-feed/affair-star-maura-tierney-helen-829320
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Post by sissa on Oct 20, 2015 10:20:26 GMT 10
The Story Behind The Affair’s Most Interesting Season 2 Perspective—Helen’sBy Mark Schafer/SHOWTIME. No offense, Noah and Alison. BY JULIE MILLER What happens when star-crossed television lovers decide to ditch their respective families after a summer of sneaky sexing and officially become a couple? If you are Dominic West’s Noah and Ruth Wilson’s Alison on Showtime’s The Affair, your coupling completely deflates the sexual tension and stakes that titillated Season 1 viewers. Realizing this predicament, and also how talented the show’s supporting actors are and how rich their characters were becoming, The Affair’s co-creator Sarah Treem expanded the show’s unique two-pronged narrative to four, so that the second season, which premiered tonight, also explores the interior lives of Noah and Alison’s jilted lovers, Helen (Maura Tierney) and Cole (Joshua Jackson). “The whole idea of the first season is that [Noah and Alison] couldn’t be together, so they were always on opposite sides of a field looking into the middle trying to understand each other,” Treem recently told The Hollywood Reporter about deciding to change the show’s structure. “But now the characters that are actually estranged from each other are no longer Noah and Alison, they are Helen and Noah. Then it became clear that a lot of the storytelling—the paradox that is the engine of the show—was going to lie in the relationships between the estranged characters, which are now the ex-spouses.” Of all four characters, Helen was the most neglected during the show’s first season—not only by her philandering husband but, in the initial episodes, by Treem as well. “Helen, in particular, was underwritten at the beginning,” Treem confessed to Deadline recently. “That was my fault. I sat with Maura and promised I would make her character worth playing. She came to me after those first episodes and said, ‘Well, where is the character you promised? She’s not there.’ She was right and I worked hard during the second half of that first season to get us into the head of her character. Maura [is] so likeable that she gives you tremendous freedom as a writer to have her character say the most horrible things, and trust that she is not going to lose the audience’s sympathy.” Straight out of the second-season gate, Treem, who wrote tonight’s episode, wastes no time in showing that Noah’s spurned wife has her own set of flaws and vices. Our first glimpse of Helen from Helen’s perspective shows the mother of four having hall-of-fame awkward hangover sex with Noah’s best friend Max (Josh Stamberg), who she appears to be spite dating. From there, we see a frazzled Helen for the first time—waking up with smudged makeup, crying in the shower, struggling to parent her distressed brood, etc., whereas she always appears maddeningly put-together in the other perspectives. Perhaps the biggest surprise about Noah’s yuppie ex, however, is her secret marijuana habit, which she pairs with some heavy drinking as a way to survive her self-destructing life. In an interview with Vogue, Tierney clarified that the pot habit is not something Helen was hiding in the first season. “It’s a new thing,” the actress said. “Time has moved forward, and this is how she’s coping. She’s fully self-medicating. She’s drinking too much too. And she’s smoking pot, like, more than once a day. She doesn’t know how to cope with the challenges. She was a really blessedly happy person until she was 45 years old.” Although exploring her character with extra screen time seems like it might be a rare gift for an actor, Tierney says that the expanded role comes with a few unique challenges. For example, in a show somewhat famous for its sex scenes, Tierney must now take part. “They’re awkward,” Tierney told the New York Post about filming those intimate moments. “I kind of have to throw my ego out the window. But on our show the writers try to have the sex scenes move the story forward in terms of how the characters are communicating (or not communicating) at that point in the relationship—so hopefully they are serving a purpose in terms of revealing something besides just the bodies.” (Another shocker in tonight’s episode: Max’s full-frontal nudity. Tierney explained that executive producer Jeff Reiner fought especially hard for the scene: “It sort of became a crusade of Jeff’s. . . . There was a lot of discussion about it. . . . Jeff was like, ‘Let’s get everybody naked! Why not? If that’s what we’re doing, let’s do it.’”) With the added perspectives, Tierney has to essentially play three characters (possibly four, if her character and Cole collide)—Helen from Helen’s perspective, Helen from Noah’s perspective, and Helen from Alison’s perspective. Of the unique acting demands, Tierney told Vogue, “This year it was a challenge that took me longer to figure out. Getting into it, I was mostly playing Helen as Noah had perceived her. And it took me a minute to make an adjustment, to realize there were nuances that had to be brought on board that I just wasn’t thinking about. I think I sort of caught up to it, hopefully in time.” Part of this challenge included finding Helen’s faults: “Alison’s perspective is [that Helen is this] really sort of classist, hard, snobby woman. In my mind last year I was like, Helen’s nothing like this! [But] maybe she is a little like that. There are parts of that that I tried to incorporate into Helen’s point of view.” Another aspect to the challenge is switching in and out of “characters” in a single day—which Tierney and West did while filming tonight’s mediation appointment. “We shot Noah’s perspective first, and then mine second, back-to-back,” Tierney tells Vogue. “We get a lot of help from the hair and makeup departments. We’re always in slightly different outfits, slightly different makeup. All those small things help to put you where you’re supposed to be.” Tierney has given a few clues about where Helen is headed in what already seems to be the juiciest, most compelling perspective this season. For one, the over-indulging doesn’t work out for Helen: “There are more episodes to come where her behavior has some repercussions for her,” Tierney teased. Also, last season’s jilted lover realizes that she wasn’t so innocent in the death of her marriage. “[W]hat’s really nice about [Helen’s] arc is that she slowly comes to understand her culpability and the weakness in her marriage,” Tierney revealed. “She didn’t really know how to support Noah as an artist; she did bully him about money; she never quite stood up to her parents. It’s nice watching someone come to terms: When you think you’re so victimized, and maybe you’re not such a victim; maybe you’re kind of a participant.” www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2015/10/the-affair-season-two-premiere-helen
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