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Post by sissa on Oct 20, 2015 10:29:28 GMT 10
The Affair Season 2 premiere recap: A Brewing StormBy Lori Acken | Monday, October 5, 2015 12:00 pm If you are a Maura Tierney fan (and if you aren’t, we should talk and set you right) Showtime’s The Affair Season 2 promises to be, er, a splendid affair if last night’s season premiere is any indication. Instead of adulterous couple Noah’s (Dominic West) and Alison’s (Ruth Wilson) dueling perspectives, this time we examined a stretch of time somewhere in between last season’s calamitous showdown at the Lockhart ranch and the unceremonious end to Noah and Alison’s happily ever after — from the points of view of the unfaithful dad and his beleaguered estranged wife Helen. (Tierney). To remind us of the muscular storytelling world we are reentering after a 10-month hiatus, we begin with Noah, passed out at his desk in some artsy little waterside dwelling, and dreaming of a car speeding down the roadway on a foggy, moonless night, hitting its brakes too late to avoid a young woman in the road. It sure looked like a female, even though our Season 1 murder victim, who died under similar circumstances, was Alison’s brother-in-law, Scotty. Ah well. It’s a dream. Our sleeping minds sort things differently, right? Wherever Noah is, he must catch the train into New York City, where his nonplussed agent Harry (Steven Kunken) is having none of his proposed new ending for his sure-bet novel. Too subtle, says Harry. Suggests an unimaginable secret between the lovers, counters Noah. Much more compelling than a run-of-the-mill murder. Which is pretty much the thesis statement for this series. Harry tells him to reference Of Mice and Men and take another shot at that ending. Also, how much of this “novel” was actually based on what happened with him and …what’s her name? This is fiction, Noah growls. Well, whatever it is, says Harry, just say it. It’s powerful as it is. Where we are in the chronology of things — given the show’s signature and sometimes puzzling non-linear nature — gets a bit clearer when, on the walk to the Brooklyn townhouse he once shared with Helen, Noah runs into his neighbor, who says they and their wives must get together soon. And when Noah reaches “home,” there are movers waiting to haul his things away. There won’t be much to take. Noah rings the bell and finds the pugnacious Margaret (Kathleen Chalfant, who I super-love in this thankless/priceless role) there instead in place of Helen. She fibs to him that the kids are out of the house and tells him that he can fetch his things from the basement. There’s barely enough to fill the backseat of a Subaru, much less the truck that waits outside. Where’s the rest of it, asks Noah. He can come for it — what ever might remain — after the divorce is finalized and all the couples’ possessions appraised, says Helen. Or they can write him a check. Let’s be honest. Money is what he really needs, correct? Margaret. Margaret, Margaret. Instead, Noah grabs a laundry basket and begins filling it. Books. Kitchen stuff. A painting made by his dad. Margaret flips her shit, in her signature Margaret way. Noah says she can step aside or he will push her down the stairs and tell the coroner it was an accident. Except that there’s a witness. Martin (Jake Sicilano). Would a Yankees game make him feel better, asks his contrite dad. Martin’s double booked: Grandma made him a psychologist appointment instead, which leads Noah and Margaret to exchange some energetic “How the f**k do you face yourself in the mirror each morning.” It’s a fairly solid question on both sides. And series does a more effortless job of getting its actors to swear like sailors and make it sound just the way we all do when daily conversations require it. Which is often. Even its littlest ones. Trevor (Jadon Sand) races up as Noah is leaving. The Solloway’s younger boy bolted theater camp — too much movement, and you know … ticks — so he is perfectly available to hang out with dad. Noah says he has a meeting with Trevor’s mom, which the boy takes as a sign of reconciliation. Noah asks what his mom has been saying about the situation and Trevor informs his dad that mom says he’ll be home just as soon as he gets his head out of his ass. That’s a quote. Noah sets his son straight: He loves someone else more than mom. It happens. How much he loves Trevor and his siblings will never ever change. Trevor bloodies his dad’s nose at the news. This is where we get to the point in the episode where we get Noah’s and Helen’s very different takes on a very memorable situation — their first meeting with divorce mediator Jeremy (Jeremy Shamos, Better Call Saul’s Craig Kettleman). In both recollections, he is a real piece of work. In Noah’s, he’s worthy of a sitcom. “I love rookies!” Jeremy chortles when he finds out this the first divorce for both Solloways. Then he tells them they are putting their marriage “humanely to sleep” and for that they should congratulate themselves. And yet they stay in the room. If this is actually how the day went down. Jeremy says if they can agree on how to divvy up their stuff, this will all be over in no time. Helen says the house was bought with her trust, so it’s hers. Noah has no objection. She can have her store, too. Noah just wants joint custody and a clear, irrevocable visitation schedule — which results in an argument about Martin’s psychology appointment versus the Yankees game. Then the advance and ensuing profits from Noah’s book come up. Helen looks at Noah with amusement. “Somehow the word ‘profits’ strikes me as funny for some reason in this context,” she smirks, enjoying his wounded look. “He can keep the profits.” The mediator rejoices — if this keeps humming along just so, he might be home in time to score some afternoon nookie. Or … not. Helen wants to know, should joint custody be granted, where Noah plans to cram all four of the kids in his little upstate writer’s cabin (which we find out Harry secured for him). Noah says he’ll get a bigger apartment in the city using the book’s $400,000 advance. Looks like that ending may go Harry’s way after all. On the way out of Jeremy’s office, Helen says she’ll talk Whitney into returning Noah’s cause. Oh, and one more thing — she doesn’t want Alison anywhere near her kids. That’s her sole demand. When Noah arrives back at the little cabin on the lake, there is Alison making his dinner. When she tells him she could be happy here, Noah beams and asks her to dance right there on the deck, even though there is no music. Thankfully, we viewers get some (the oh so fitting Damien Rice ballad “Delicate” because this show does its music exceptionally, too). And frankly watching other people dance to no music is just weird. As Noah ends his day alone on the dock with a beer, a storm is brewing on the horizon. Just like that, he comes to in his cell mere hours away from his arraignment hearing. An adamant Detective Jeffries (Victor Williams) tells him the judge in the case is a real SOB. Take a plea — might get him a year’s probation, since nothing can be proven. Plus the laws are about to get tougher. Noah looks at him. “I want. A f**king. Lawyer,” he snarls. And he will get one — in the most surprising of ways. Come time for Helen’s take on the day, we see her in bed with Max in his new hotel. That Max (Josh Stamberg). He is a talker. A sexual narrator, whose enthusiasm for the job almost makes up for the cringeworthiness of his banter. Afterward — and after a lingering look at Max’s junk — Helen is mortified by the state in which they left the hotel room on the way to the bed. This is Noah and Alison’s messy territory, not hers. Max is mortified by the idea of the room service fruit plate being padded with honeydew. Helen also laments the idea of going to her mother’s benefit alone. Max tells her she doesn’t have to go to it. She says she does. “Helen,” says Max. “You’re too nice.” “I know,” Helen sighs. Then she cries in the shower. And vapes some pot while watching the world go by. Cut to mediation — Helen’s take on the proceedings. Jeremy the mediator is now a flip, snarky prick (a far more realistic version of the truth, to my thinking) who slouches, fiddles with his phone and hates his job and the people who make him necessary. Present company included. In Helen’s version, the book and any resulting money don’t come up — it is she who offers to help Noah afford a kid-appropriate apartment in the city. No thanks, says Noah — he will not take another effing cent from her parents. When he finishes the book and collects the cash, there will be an apartment. For now they will make do. Not if Alison is a part of that, says Helen. That much remains unchanged And Helen’s day doesn’t go much better from there. Arriving late at Stacey’s ballet class and slipping into a seat at the back, she overhears two other moms gossiping about the state of her family. After class, one of the mothers comes up with a quick apology and a long inquisition about how she knew Noah was unfaithful. Helen handles it just as she should — “a rainbow shot out of his penis.” She and Stacey arrive home in time to catch the aftermath of Trevor and Noah’s chat on the porch. Also, Whitney (Juliana Goldani Telles) wants to write her college entrance essay about the very unique experience of having Cole holding a gun to her head. Margaret says if the girl insists on exploiting the family’s private shame for her own gain, grandma isn’t about to fund anything that comes of it. Too much self-expression going on everywhere for Helen. And she’s about to get another dose. Pouring herself a glass of wine, while Margaret pulls something beige and casserole-ish from the oven, Helen is treated to her mother’s opinion on the “too humane” nature of mediation. Too bad/ Helen says that after a quarter century with Noah, humane is what she wants. Also, instead of arriving with Margaret, Helen believes she’ll have (a wildly awkward) dinner with the kids and then she’ll come to to the fundraiser. She sits outside in her royal blue gown and smokes awhile instead. It’s an impossibly gorgeous shot, punctuated by Mazzy Star’s aching “Bells Ring.” If you DVR’d the episode, just freeze that sucker and look. When Helen finally gets to her table — her blue gown standing out amongst the black-tie crowd — Max is seated beside her. (Oh, Margaret!) In this situation, too, Max is a talker. So is Margaret. Poor, poor Helen. But Max isn’t entirely obtuse. He reaches under the table and hands Helen a pot lozenge. “For later,” he whispers. And when his car drops Helen and Margaret off at their door, Helen affords him a little make-out session on her stoop as a storm rolls in. And again we are back at Noah’s holding cell, where no-nonsense attorney Jon Gottlief (Richard Schiff) appears, a suit for Noah in hand. He tells Detective Jeffries to take his leave, along with any notion of bringing up in the arraignment a word Noah uttered sans counsel. Gottlief is not alone. Helen is there, too, a look of … what … compassion? … pity? … love? … eat it, Margaret? … I can buy you and you don’t even realize it? … on her face. Noah looks at her, then back at the attorney. “I can’t afford you, Jon,” he says quietly. “I’m paying,” says Helen. the-affair-season-2-episode-1-helen-gottlief Maura Tierney as Helen and Richard Schiff as Jon Gottlief in The Affair Photo: Mark Schafer/SHOWTIME I’m not sure if I’m more stunned that Helen offered or that Noah accepted. But accept he does, a look of gratitude on his face. At least in Helen’s version of the tale. New episodes of The Affair premiere Sunday nights at 10/9CT. www.channelguidemagblog.com/index.php/2015/10/05/the-affair-season-2-premiere-recap-a-brewing-storm/
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Post by sissa on Oct 20, 2015 10:33:46 GMT 10
‘The Affair,’ in stagesBy Matthew Gilbert GLOBE STAFF OCTOBER 03, 2015 Ruth Wilson and Dominic West in “The Affair.” MARK SCHAFER/SHOWTIME Stage 1: Anticipation. Last year, “The Affair” was one of the most thrilling new prospects on TV. Not boldly thrilling like “Lost” during its first four action-filled seasons, when it promised to be TV’s most elaborate homegrown mythology ever. But quietly and psychologically thrilling like “In Treatment,” the series that turned the evasions and revelations of therapy into brilliant theater. The idea of “The Affair” was to chronicle an extramarital love story from two points of view, the distinct and often contradictory perspectives of its forbidden lovers. A half-hour of he-said coupled with a half-hour of she-said, the Showtime drama promised to become a fascinating portrait of the inevitability and the trickiness of subjectivity. Does love equal mutual delusion? While he — Noah (Dominic West), part of a wealthy family — saw himself as seduced by a kind of femme fatale, the working-class Alison (Ruth Wilson) saw herself as a passive and despairing wreck falling into his arms. Ultimately, without objective facts, left only with the perceptions of a pair of unreliable narrators, viewers would need to construct their own version of the story — yet another level of subjectivity lurking in “The Affair.” Stage 2: Disappointment. Compared to the formulaic dramas all over the networks, an ambitious show such as “The Affair” was a gift. The lack of omniscience was a gimmick, to some extent, but a gimmick with the potential to shed light on the barriers between people, even people in love, and the barriers between storytellers and audiences. And then, across the first season, the show seemed to abandon its clever approach and simply tell the story of two ruined extended families. The toggling back and forth between his and her take on the same events was no longer the central point of the scripts. Instead, one somewhat reliable story seemed to be unfolding, as knowledge of the affair spread and a murder plot emerged. The tension was less about the conflicting truths and more about the mystery, about who dun what and when. The murder investigation in “The Affair,” previewed all season in flash-forwards (unless, of course, the bulk of the series is a flashback) was engaging enough. So were the plotlines involving drug dealing and Noah’s daughter’s pregnancy. But it all added up to a swoony, addictive soap opera set in an ocean town, along the lines of “Bloodline” and even “Revenge,” rather than a more reflective exploration of the ways our unique histories determine our understanding. “The Affair” became more conventional — entertaining, but familiar. Stage 3: Reversal. The show returns on Sunday night at 10, and once again, it’s making promises. “The Affair” is still going to be a melodrama with pretty people having big feelings, but the potential to transcend that genre is happily in play. The first two episodes of Season 2 are rich, as series creators Sarah Treem and Hagai Levi (both of “In Treatment”) expand the points of view to include those of Alison’s ex, Cole (Joshua Jackson), and Noah’s ex, Helen (Maura Tierney). The story is now being told by four people, each with his or her own angle, and the writing of this quartet is again zeroing in on the disparities in all of the characters’ interpretations. We get more information, in a way, with the two new perspectives, and yet we know less for sure than ever. I enjoyed the first two episodes of Season 2 as much as the series pilot, which is saying a lot. The addition of Helen’s perspective is particularly exciting. The way she sees Noah, the circumstances of her life that we didn’t know before, are revelatory. Last season, she came off as a class-conscious mother and bitter wife; now she is also a poignant figure, vaping alone in the park, mixed up about who she wants to be. Also pleasing: We get to see more of Tierney, who is extraordinary in the role as she circles through anger, grief, terror, numbness, and back around again. Stage 4: Fingers crossed. I’m hoping “The Affair” will continue on track, becoming another one of those series worth recommending for years to come. But I’m fearful because I know that TV writers too often lean on more obvious devices such as courtroom histrionics as a crutch. I also know that — not including “Nurse Jackie” and “Shameless” — Showtime often lets its shows decline and wander; “Homeland” and “Dexter” both began on top before falling into serious unevenness. Or at least, that’s my perspective. Matthew Gilbert can be reached at gilbert@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter @matthewgilbert. www.bostonglobe.com/arts/television/2015/10/03/the-affair-stages/lX1hZwN8H2l8LBg6wbFtHP/story.html
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Post by sissa on Oct 20, 2015 10:42:30 GMT 10
The Affair Season 2 Premiere: 201 ReviewReview Daniel Kurland 10/4/2015 at 11:01PM The season premiere of The Affair shows us that perspective is a tricky thing… This review of The Affair contains spoilers... The Affair Season 2 Episode 1 “But would you take half of nothing?” The Affair was a complicated show last season. It was a competent, emotional adult drama that took the reasonably relatable concept of infidelity and explored it through the inspired device of presenting both sides of the affair. While it handled a lot of this relationship drama and the unreliable narrative device very well, it also threw in a murder mystery and flash forwards into a broken timeline. That’s a lot to undertake, especially when your show is all about perspective. Thankfully, as this season kicks off, this feels like a more focused, confident version of the show that has learned from its first season. In fact, it almost feels like Noah’s publisher telling him that the murder at the end of his story felt forced and lacking motivation is a sly way for the show to critique itself in response to the murder mystery that many viewers seemed to think was unnecessary, or at the least, jarring. I wasn’t entirely against it (although I admit that Scotty being the victim, when we’ve barely been given an opportunity to care about him might not have been the best idea), but to see that the show is perhaps more self-aware and rebalanced is certainly encouraging (and we definitely get the sparsest inclusion of the murder business this week). After all, this isn’t Of Mice and Men. Even if the show seemingly learned from its previous mistakes, have its characters? Right from the start, we see Noah is now suffering from nightmares. Just like how the bifurcated perspective structure of the series is an escape from reality as the truth invades, the same thing is happening as Noah’s subconscious refuses to let him have peace. As much as he wants to be comfortable or hide behind rationalization, the truth won’t let him be. The first few scenes of the episode pointedly show Noah alone. He’s dominated by wide shots and plenty of empty space in the framing to show how powerless and small he’s become. The fact that these shots that cinematically “talk down” to Noah are then followed by him being scolded and turned down by his publisher is no coincidence. The show wants you to understand that Noah is starting out at his bottom here. Noah’s side of the premiere is about him trying to find his voice and then figure out how to move forward in life with that. The ending of his novel is struggling to land, he’s emotionally in stasis, and he doesn’t know how to stake a claim with what’s left of his family. This is perhaps best personified when Noah tries to move out of Helen’s home, which becomes all about him being voiceless or speaking to deaf ears. The moving scene is kind of a master class in subtext and escalation. “Is this all your stuff?” Noah’s movers ask him, and you can see him feeling condescended to—like he’s been slapped in the face—and then funneling this into alpha behavior towards his inconsequential items while he tries to be heard. It’s brutal, and Dominic West sells the hell out of it. The scene is one big pissing contest between Helen’s mother, Margaret, and Noah and quickly turns into an example of just how damaged his family seems to be by his actions. As despicable of a set piece as this is, Margaret is simply clinging onto a narrative for support just like Noah is (and is echoed again in his son, Ben, and the story that he’s held on to for safety). As the scene ends with Noah and the grandmother of his children as mirror versions of each other, we’re left with the message of how deluded we can become when we only listen to ourselves. Noah and Helen’s divorce mediation meeting is a truly bizarre scene unlike anything that the first season of the show offered up, mostly due to the beyond-chipper official that’s mitigating between the two of them. The scene starts off innocently enough with a deep vein of dark humor coursing through it, but by the end this jovial middleman has only highlighted how bleak things are between Noah and Helen now. They keep getting told to congratulate each other on being so swift and sterile through everything, but they’re simply removing every piece of themselves. The only thing Noah wants is his children, and naturally Helen’s only request in their divorce is equally concerned with their kids—the one possession of theirs that they’re physically unable to remove the other one from. Of course though, like everything else in this show, nothing is as it initially appears. After Noah has been completely dressed down by life itself and had a sufficiently awful day, he returns home to Alison and simply glows. He’s anything but alone, and even if he has nothing—or half of nothing—that’s enough for him if it means it’s with her. Then again, the shots of Noah looking content and finally satisfied with his life serenely pan over to a troubled sky that show a huge storm is very much brewing. At this point, it might be an on-the-nose transition to shift into our “future” timeline depicting Noah in jail and this “storm” in full swing, but in spite of its heavy-handedness it’s still an effective segue. As the episode’s trademark shift to the other side of the story occurs, it almost feels like there’s a new playfulness to it. They hold back from telling you whose story this is for a few moments before ultimately revealing that we’re getting Helen’s side of the day now, rather than immediately going to Alison like in the past. And boy is the change nice, because as talented as Ruth Wilson is, Maura Tierney simply crushes this material. Never getting enough of her (and Cole) last season was one of my biggest grievances with the show, so to see that immediately getting remedied and how completely Tierney is diving into the material is super encouraging. Helen’s first scene almost depicts as lonely of an existence for her as the one that Noah seems to initially have. In spite of us seeing Helen literally connecting her body with her fancy new lover, Max, it’s completely one-sided. Helen too, is voiceless, and it’s painful to see her face clearly show how out of body and unconnected she is with Max during their sex as she grimaces through his bedroom talk. As his manhood later dominates her point of view, she can’t even stand to look at it, resorting to turn away from it as some sort of escape. He throws the word “love” around at her constantly and Helen struggles to figure out how she actually feels about this guy. She wants her damaged, messed up ex-husband, as wrong as that is. Just like Noah not wanting her is its own kind of wrong, too.More than anything, Helen just seems exhausted by all of this. She seems fed up to be having to deal with the rigmaroles of dating once more as she tries to move on and accept the life that the world (and her mother) are pushing on her. Only it’s not what she wants at all. She wants her damaged, messed up ex-husband, as wrong as that is. Just like Noah not wanting her is its own kind of wrong, too. In spite of the rough introduction of Max, by the end of everything he does seem to understand her. He relieves her tension and makes her feel less alone, and he knows when to slip her a pot lozenge when the time calls for it. This would be more than capable of working if Helen were only able to truly move on and accept this life for herself. Watching how the divorce mediation scene plays out from Helen’s perspective is exactly the sort of switch that you’d expect from this show. In the moments that Helen shares with him before Noah arrives, we see a bitter, discouraged man who hates his job and is drowning in apathy, rather than the happy-go-lucky individual that Noah presents to us. This pivotal scene essentially acts as the centerpiece of the episode in terms of how perspective is utilized. The scene almost operates in the complete opposite manner, with this time Helen as the one who’s concerned about maintaining her children’s relationship with their father. Considering how raw and damaged Helen is at the moment, it makes sense to see this scene being filtered this way. It’s also worth mentioning that in her version of things, Noah says he’s seeing his publisher after the meeting, whereas in his version of events, not only has he already been there and been chewed out, he brings up the $400,000 he’s receiving for it, whereas money is nowhere to be mentioned here. Someone wants to forget about this large sum of money, or make sure that we’re very much aware of it. However, after Noah’s bad day, his processing of this moment in a much lighter way is certainly revealing. Perhaps it’s because he knows he has someone he loves that he’s returning to at the end of the day, whereas Helen doesn’t know what she’s doing with her love life. We perhaps should be led to believe that not everything from Helen’s perspective should be taken at face value. The scene in her daughter’s ballet class where two mothers are outright discussing Noah’s infidelity and her divorce in front of her is a bit much. Likewise for when she tries to swallow her pride and go to this benefit for her mother and the hostess highlights how she’s without Mr. Solloway. That’s not to say that the hostess doesn’t actually bring this up, but Helen’s focus on it and how it informs the rest of her behavior is no doubt significant. This is a good way to get into the larger conversation about the nature of perspective, and how hindsight is a major component this season too. Helen snipes at Noah that she never realized how selfish he was through all of these years. There’s not only different recollections of the present that are going on now, but even the past is getting reconstructed due to the damage that’s been done here. There’s a beautiful moment where Whitney is discussing what to write her college essay on. She wants to write about the events of last season’s finale that involved her being held at gunpoint. Her grandmother shouts at her to not write about when her father pointed a gun at her, when she quickly shouts back, “He didn’t put a gun to my head, Cole did!” It seems that the show is intentionally trying to play with our recollection of events that we’ve seen, trying to inject even more perspectives into what we’re familiar with. Even if we think we know what we’ve seen and chiseled it out of Noah and Alison’s perspectives, we’re now left reeling that there are countless other renditions of what happened even if we didn’t focus on them at the time (seeing what Margaret’s version of the finale would look like, could be truly flummoxing stuff…). When Noah and Alison reunite after a long day, they share the exchange: “How was your day?” “It was awful… How was your day?” “It was good.” The show never wants this duality to leave our minds. Similarly, it’s absolutely important that Helen and Margaret discuss how she’s 70 years old, and yet a few scenes later when she’s with Max, she tells him that she’s 62. These sorts of things are constantly happening and it feels like the show more than ever wants you to be questioning everything that you see. It was revealed rather early on that this season of The Affair would be including four perspectives rather than how its first season was made up of two. I initially had reservations about this as it could lead to less story being spread out, or more storylines dividing our screen time. This could end up being a messy, repetitive season, but if that’s the case, this premiere certainly isn’t indicative of that. There’s wonderful balance demonstrated here, but I’m just concerned that when we shift into stories from Alison and Cole’s perspective, it might begin to get a lot more convoluted. As Helen’s half of things begin to conclude, it too is met with the same brutal storm that ends Noah’s version, however here we actually see the storm raging. While Noah’s story cuts away before the damage is done, Helen wallows in it here. Even if her life seems to be getting back together, she’s feeling the chaos and damage that’s thundering down atop of her. The episode ends, predictably with another “future scene,” but they still managed to genuinely hook me back in. Seeing that Helen and Noah are somehow working together in the future, or have somehow put their animosity aside is very interesting to me. There’s also pangs of some sort of long con going on with this perhaps being Helen’s plan to take down Alison (or Cole), using Noah as an ally. This narrative is sure to be shaken up more than a gimpy Etch-A-Sketch in the coming weeks, but this premiere does a wonderful job of not only resetting the table, but also focusing on what’s important to tell this story. Not featuring Cole, and the briefest tease of Alison is the right move here rather than overcrowding the first episode (you have no idea how frustrated I’d have been if the episode began with Noah and Alison’s new fancy life that we saw teased in last year’s finale), and the new positions that our characters seem to be inhabiting has me eager for more. While The Affair certainly became problematic towards the end of its last season, it feels like much course correction has been done, with the show ready to put its best foot forward. Now the fun is just in watching whose foot it’s going to put forward, first. www.denofgeek.us/tv/the-affair/249542/the-affair-season-2-premiere-201-review
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Post by sissa on Oct 20, 2015 10:52:58 GMT 10
Actors talk about their ‘Affair’By: Ruben V. Nepales @inquirerdotnet Philippine Daily Inquirer 12:30 AM October 2nd, 2015 LOS ANGELES—Equal-opportunity nudity, sexual positions and actors being bored doing sex scenes for the nth time were among the topics that inevitably came up in our recent separate interviews with the four leads of Showtime’s drama series, “The Affair”: Ruth Wilson (Alison Bailey), Dominic West (Noah Solloway), Joshua Jackson (Cole Lockhart) and Maura Tierney (Helen Solloway). Winner of two 2015 Golden Globe Awards—best TV series-drama and best actress-TV drama series (Ruth)—“The Affair” tackles the emotional effects of an affair between a waitress (Alison) and a teacher-novelist (Noah), who are both married. We begin our two-part series with Ruth and Dominic. The following are excerpts from our interviews in The London Hotel in New York. Ruth Wilson What’s more challenging—the dramatic scenes or the nudity? They’re all hard, really. This show does require you to dig deep and to be emotionally vulnerable and open. It does that on a week-to-week basis. It’s not just one episode. It’s every episode that you’re in. You have to go somewhere, which feels like a risk, or it feels very exposing in some respects, whether it’s nudity or it’s emotional. So it’s been hard but essentially gratifying. We have an amazing cast there to support us during that. You have spoken up about why there’s more emphasis on female nudity. There should be equal opportunity for nudity, definitely. And how are things on the show in that regard? WILSON (left) says she and costar West easily got along because they’re “theatrical Brits.” WILSON (left) says West brings lightness to bed scenes, which she describes as “completely absurd.” It was a major challenge for me having to face sex scenes every week. I had only done one sex scene before this show. I feel that sex scenes are often the least interesting. There’s only so much you can keep playing with in a way. So when we have sex scenes, I always ask, “Is it necessary and why is this in here? Is it moving the story forward? Or is it just titillation in some form?” I’m not interested in being part of something that’s just titillation. Both Dominic and I and everyone else who had to be involved were quite insistent upon it. It doesn’t mean it’s any easier, to be honest. I kept saying, “Let’s put the camera on his (Dominic’s) face for the orgasm.” That’s equal-opportunity orgasm face (laughs). If women are uncomfortable with it, then they should say so. It’s one thing to do a sex scene in a movie and walk away but this is for a series with the same partner so you’ll have sex scenes as the story develops. It’s very hard because Dominic and I are like, “Well, what position do we do now (laughs)?” We’re like, “Oh, I don’t know.” It’s like in a real relationship—getting bored of each other (laughs). You are lucky that you and Dominic trust each other. We’re incredibly lucky. The four of us get on so well. It’s a real relief because those (sex) scenes are vulnerable. They’re not enjoyable to do. Of course, they’re not real time. All sex scenes are kind of odd and completely unbelievable in some respects. To have trust with the other actor and to be able to laugh about it—that’s what Dom’s great at—making light of the fact that what we’re doing is ridiculous (laughs)—and completely absurd. He brings lightness to it which is necessary in those scenes. I’m so thankful. We got on instantly partly probably because we’re both Brits. Not similar background but we’re both theatrical Brits. We also have similar work ethic. It’s the same with Maura and Josh. We all get on incredibly well. But it does get to a point—what are we going to do now? Aren’t people bored of this? We’re bored and it’s almost like, I’m too old for this… On the kitchen table again… On the kitchen table again. It’s like, on the couch again. I’m hoping the showrunners are getting bored as well. I leave it to the new characters to come in and bring some fresh blood into the show (laughs). Have you had any experiences with angry followers of the show? Well, no (laughs). No one’s attacked me yet or threatened to kill me for being the image of infidelity. But I have come outside of a play—I used to get people screaming at me, shouting as I exited the theater. They (the show’s viewers) will say, “Who killed Scotty (Lockhart, a character played by Colin Donnell)?” There’s this obsession with who? The only thing I hear is that couples find it interesting. Do you think an affair is excusable? As an actor, you have to empathize with every character you play. So with Alison, I understood exactly why she had an affair. I understood why she met this man and needed to escape from her life. I don’t judge her actions. If someone told me he had an affair, I wouldn’t judge him. We can judge and you can stigmatize it but really, if you go in and ask the questions then you often understand why people have affairs. It’s not necessarily excusable but I myself wouldn’t judge it. If you had an affair, what’s the best way of not getting caught? I’ve got no idea. Well, yeah, deny it. If I’m going by the characters, they’ve failed enormously in trying to keep anything quiet. Don’t write anything down because the note gets found. That’s how she got found out. He (Noah) wrote a note so perhaps don’t write anything down. DOMINIC West says he took a revealing transcript from the writers’ room. Dominic West Can you talk about working with your two leading ladies, Ruth and Maura? Maura is endlessly great. I get to do a lot more with her this (second) season which is nice. She has an extraordinary style. My acting seems so jittery and superficial compared to hers. She has a great way of anchoring you down into a scene. She takes her time and she knows how to absorb a moment. So I love acting with her. She’s also really funny and cynical.Ruth and I have a great rapport. We’re getting very good at having sex with each other (laughs). That’s always a good way to get to know someone. Ruth mentioned that she’s getting bored with the sex scenes. Do you guys make suggestions to the director? Yeah, we do. A lot of the sex is quite detailed—worked out in quite a lot of detail by the writers. God knows what the writers think about all day and night. But we seem to have done most things by now. So it’s mainly with me and Ruth—it is a battle as to who’s on top because I always want to be on the bottom. But I always end up on top so that’s the first battle. Then the second battle is what position have we not done yet (laughs). We’re getting really good at it—we should be porn stars, really. I think porn is calling. Ruth wants the show to have equal-opportunity nudity. Yeah, it would be me, wouldn’t it, that gets the equal-opportunity show? It always was an issue. You watch some shows and see actresses who are doing their first job and they’re being made to do everything. I don’t think that’s a very good development. There should be as much responsibility on the man or on me (to be nude) basically which is a real shame for me. But it’s probably good for the show. I know I’m never going to have to go totally nude, whereas a female actor doesn’t know that. So I’m doing my bit for feminism (laughs). Why do you think men cheat more than women? One of the people we were talking to about the show said women get bored of marital sex much quicker than men. She said that in her research, women are bored of a marriage just as much, if not quicker, than men. But I don’t know. How do the show’s writers come up with story ideas? Don’t tell anybody (laughs) but at the start of this season, I happened to be in the writers’ room for another reason. They weren’t there. There was a transcript of one of their meetings when they talked about an episode. I thought, oh, that’ll be interesting so I took the transcript and read it in the car. It was this thick and it was what everyone had said in the meeting. God, it’s torture what they talk about but they talk very frankly about their own experiences, love lives, marriages and everything. That absolutely feeds what they write. I’m glad I don’t have to be in that room (laughs). Most of the time, when we have an issue with a scene, it’s always resolved and we play pretty much what the writers write. They don’t change very much. Usually, we cut a few lines. But it’s just so that we can find a way to play these scenes which very often—for me, anyway—I find it difficult to understand why he would behave like that. I’m always persuaded or the most persuasive thing is when they come up with a story from their own lives. We had it the other day. One of the writers said, well, actually this happened with my husband last night. WILSON (left) says she and costar West easily got along because they’re “theatrical Brits.” WILSON (left) says she and costar West easily got along because they’re “theatrical Brits.” If you had an affair, what’s the best way of not getting caught? I think if you do have an affair, very often you want to get caught. It’s a way of saying, I am not happy with the marriage. That’s probably true of Noah. Outwardly, everything was fine but inwardly, he was feeling suffocated. You can resolve that in mediation and talking but very often you can’t. You may feel the need to do something more drastic or more reckless. I think guilt—what’s destructive about affairs is what it does to the person having the affair. It destroys a lot in the person who does it, the dishonesty. Like a friend of mine had one—he broke up with his wife recently. It was because he’d had an affair. She’d forgiven him and they got back together but his guilt turned into incredible jealousy and paranoia. He was convinced she was having an affair and it destroyed their marriage. Ultimately, it’s the person having the affair who suffers—which is why it’s interesting playing Noah. Joshua Jackson Season 2 expands the show’s points of view. Will we see more of your character? While Cole is occasionally still seen through other people’s eyes, now you’re presented with the opportunity to get inside him. This man who was seen by Noah as a brute more than anything else and by his wife (Alison) as this slightly manipulative, a bit emotionally distant but ultimately solid man with whom she just couldn’t bridge the gap of a tragedy—now you go inside of his life. He sees himself as essentially a waste at that point. You just see a man totally undone. That to me was interesting, both from a physical standpoint of himself presenting to the world as this strong, confident, almost Marlboro man riding up on the horse in the first year. Now, he has let himself go. His beard is crazy and he looks not great. The joy of Season 2 is getting inside of this man and seeing his frailties and how your self-perception is so often very far away from how you’re perceived on the outside. That is kind of an actor’s life, honestly. What do you think of the hacking scandal involving Ashley Madison, a site for people looking to have extramarital affairs? I think there were 37 million uncomfortable phone calls that day. “The Affair” trades on this as well. There is some prurient desire that we have to publicly shame and scold. A large part of the initial reaction to the scandal is exactly that. Like, you got what you deserved because you were doing something bad, right? To me, what’s more upsetting about it is that in many ways, it’s the same as those poor girls, the actresses whose private photos were leaked to the Internet. Obviously, if I was in one of those relationships, I would be very upset with my partner if I found her on that list. However, that’s their personal business. We live in an era where the private and the public have become blended. That’s a dangerous thing. “The Affair” is exactly the examination of that—the private lives of these people are totally discreet, unique and can only be lived by them. If we were all called to account for the private thoughts that we have, none of us would have very many friends (laughs). The real story of the Ashley Madison thing is this disintegration of the idea of an internal or a private life. That, to me, is a troubling place. In one episode, your cab driver character has an interesting experience with a female passenger. Yes. What kind of crazy adventures have you had inside a car? I’ve been with the same woman (Diane Kruger) for nine years so if I told you about any crazy adventures I’ve had in my previous life, I would be looking for those new adventures again (laughs). If you can imagine it, I probably did it in my 20s but it’s been a long time now. Speaking of Diane, what’s it like to be living with a fashionista? Honestly, I don’t understand why the gowns are still so complicated. I don’t understand why half of high fashion clothes need to be like medieval torture devices to fit a woman. I don’t get it (laughs). It’s constantly surprising to me. It has taken me years to figure out how this thing is supposed to go to that thing and then you snap something over here which means you have to lace up on the side. I don’t think I’ll ever quite understand high fashion. Do you find yourself sweating after helping Diane fit into her red carpet attires? I find myself getting guilty. I don’t know about you but when we have to go to these fancy dress things and I have to put on a tuxedo, that’s a 25-minute process, right? You have to shower. That’s important. Then you dry yourself off. If you have to tie your own bow tie that maybe takes a little bit longer. But it’s pretty simple like pants, shirt, jacket and you’re out the door. That is not the way for a woman (laughs). So that drives her absolutely insane. So as she’s going through the process of getting ready and the whole squad has to come in with the gown and everything, I can watch an entire football game before we leave. And drink a couple of beers, yeah. It’s not fair, I agree, but it works out well for me. Maura TierneyWhat’s more challenging for you—the nudity or the emotional scenes? They’re both challenging. In the nude scenes, I don’t have to get so naked. I only get a little bit naked. There’s only been one sex scene [so far]…and it’s been fairly comedic. So that’s easier to do when you know you’re doing it for laughs. You don’t have to be sexy. So this year, that hasn’t been too much of a challenge for me. But the character is a little bit losing her mind, at least in the first half so that’s been very challenging but in a good way because in further episodes, she really does sort of lose it. That has been challenging but the writing’s really good. When the writing’s good, it’s easier to meet the challenge. Are you glad that there seems to be equal-opportunity nudity in the show?Yeah, for sure. Especially in that scene.No kidding. Did they leave the full (male) frontal in? I haven’t seen it. Oh, they did. CAPTION: MAURA Tierney admits she also had a hard time after her divorce, like her TV alter ego.And your reaction, too.I forgot about that (laughs). Yeah, it’s definitely equal-opportunity nudity. They try hard in this show to not make the sex gratuitous. I think Ruth and Dom (Dominic) are very vigilant about it. That sex scene also told the story of how Helen is trying to move on and she just can’t. Her goal is to become less uptight and she’s working on that. What’s going on in your character’s mind when she looks at her lover’s organ in that scene?(Laughs) I think what’s going on with her is not so much about the genitals at that moment but it’s his whole manner on the phone when he’s like, “blah-blah-blah, I want the fruit bowl and don’t give me a bad fruit bowl.” And he’s talking about money. It’s depressing for her that she does not love this guy that she just had sex with. It’s oppressive and sad. She doesn’t want him to know. His manner and demeanor are not something that she likes. That’s what I think is going on in that moment. You mentioned that your character is losing it a bit. When do you lose it in real life?I had a hard time after I got divorced. That was not fun. I did sort of lose it because it wasn’t my call. It wasn’t similar because my ex-husband didn’t have an affair. But that was not easy. That was a difficult time. How did you find yourself again?It took a long time. I met someone else that I fell in love with, which helped. It’s difficult to reconcile that I spent many years with this person. There are many photographs I have of us and things we did. You can’t put them on the wall so it’s like that part of your life gets erased a bit. Because there’s no evidence of those 15 years or something like that. So that’s difficult but in meeting someone else, I experienced love in a totally new, different way. I’m not trying to say that a guy made everything OK but it did help to feel loved again. Is an affair excusable?Probably never, right, because you should just tell someone you’re unhappy. I think there’s no reason why you can’t say to your partner, I’m having feelings for somebody else. But it’s just not easy. Look at that website, Ashley Madison. It’s a cheating website. People who are married can go on it and find someone to cheat with. Somebody hacked in and there’s like 37 million (members). It’s crazy. So people cheat. Maybe some people have open marriages. Since you also experienced divorce, were some of the “separation” scenes painful to shoot?Not painful but perhaps I was more emotionally accessible because I have been there. When you are left, no matter how you’re left, you feel for a while like, I am the most alone person in the world. Even if you have lots of friends, family and support, there’s an aloneness that happens. I understood what Helen’s going through so it wasn’t more painful. It was perhaps more understandable to me to be able to play her. I hope. Read more: entertainment.inquirer.net/180158/actors-talk-about-their-affair-conclusion#ixzz3p47v0tHQ Follow us: @inquirerdotnet on Twitter | inquirerdotnet on Facebook
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Post by sissa on Oct 20, 2015 11:10:33 GMT 10
Maura Tierney Talks The Affair and Surviving Breast Cancer OCTOBER 16, 2015 – 11:59 AM – 1 COMMENT Paulette Cohn By PAULETTE COHN @paulette49 Maura Tierney as Helen in The Affair.(Photo: Mark Schafer/SHOWTIME -) In its second season, The Affair broadens its horizons and tells the story from the point of view of all four central characters — Noah (Dominic West), Alison (Ruth Wilson), Helen (Maura Tierney) and Cole (Joshua Jackson) — instead of just Noah and Alison — as the series explores the emotional and psychological effects their affair has on their two marriages. And the points of view couldn’t be more different. Noah has left Helen, who wants him back, and lost his teaching position, so he is holed up in a borrowed home writing his next novel. He and Alison are very much in love, but trying to adapt to their new circumstances. She is trying to find something meaningful to do with her life. And her ex, Cole, is a mess. His family lost their farm and he is driving a taxi. But each of them see the situation in their own way, as once again, there will be a major event that changes all their lives. Parade.com had the chance to speak to Tierney about her character’s shocking sex scene, how much she feels Helen contributed to the breakup of her marriage, who she is rooting for Noah to be with, and on a more personal level, she talks about surviving breast cancer. Your sex scene in that first episode was pretty wild. Are you comfortable with something like that? I don’t show up to work dying to take my clothes off. But the intent of the scene was comedic. It’s important that it looks like they were having sex. The character is having sex with this other person (Josh Stamberg) who’s not her husband. He’s abandoned, and I just felt like we needed it to feel real because it’s important for Helen. It’s a big step. I tried to go with it. I had the feeling that the night before, she might have been really into the sex, but that morning when she wakes up in Episode 1, maybe not so much. Exactly. That’s totally the intent. What’s new for this season is that Helen’s perspective is being introduced. How do you like that? Do you think it’s time somebody told her story? I do. It’s fun; it’s very exciting. It’s challenging because we got the first script and it was nice to see what happens to Helen after her life has been basically dismantled. The thing that’s a little tricky about it is you saw Helen really specifically from Alison’s point of view and then you saw her in a different way from Noah’s point of view. Then when it got to be Helen’s point of view, it was tricky in terms of not just playing how she was depicted in Noah’s POV and trying to find things that were more specific that we hadn’t seen before, which I’m still trying to figure out. How different are the two perspectives? In Alison’s POV, Helen is always very, very put together, very chic and very intimidating. In Noah’s point of view, it’s more of the down-to-earth stylish mom. In Helen’s point of view, we tried to make her a little bit falling apart. Her clothes were a little too tight. She’s trying a little bit too hard. Stylistically, she’s not on top of it. In the finale of the first season, Helen actually tells Noah she doesn’t want a divorce, she wants him back. Has she changed her mind about that? She told the kids that it was a mid-life crisis. I think the feeling the writers were hoping to leave the audience with after the finale last year was that these two people, Noah and Alison, were going to be together, that they loved each other. I think Helen didn’t want to divorce him but he chose to leave. I don’t think she’s changed her mind. There’s the scene from Noah’s point of view when they’re negotiating their divorce, where she puts down his writing. Does she believe in his writing? Maybe if he hadn’t had the affair he wouldn’t have been able to create this book that now people are interested in? I think unconsciously in their marriage, she did not support him creatively. She didn’t get it and lost patience and didn’t take the time to understand. I don’t think it was her fault. I think it’s one of the things that fell through the cracks in their long-term relationship with having so many children and working. She just, I think, stopped trying to help or support him creatively, and that’s really dangerous in a relationship. I think she contributed as much as anything, to the trouble the marriage was in. And her parents, oh, my God! Her mother, especially, has no respect for Noah whatsoever. No, that’s a journey that the character goes on this season, too. That’s, I think, going to be very satisfying. She comes to terms with the fact that she never stood up to her parents in defense of her husband. That’s a big mistake, too. As the cheated on wife, do you feel like you’re getting sympathy from people? That they are supporting you? Or do you think people are loving the affair? I think both. I think you can have sympathy for Helen and love the affair. A reporter asked yesterday, “Do you think married people are rooting for the marriages to last and single people are rooting for the affair?” I’m sort of rooting for the affair. In my mind, it was these two people, they are soul mates, and they had to destroy their lives to come together. It’s sort of beautiful. But I’m not married, so maybe that’s why. October is Breast Cancer Awareness month. As a survivor, do you have special plans? Obviously, you look like you’re in perfect health. The charity that I work for is the Johnson Cancer Research Foundation at UCLA. I also do work with Stand Up To Cancer. I attend their events, I’ve participated with them in the making of the film Cancer: The Making of All Maladies. Stand Up To Cancer is a wonderful organization. After you were diagnosed with breast cancer, you went and played a woman with breast cancer on Rescue Me. That must have been so difficult. I don’t know, I felt like I had to do it. It was quite liberating actually. I felt very safe there and they really listened to me talking about the script. I felt like I had to do it. I’ve never watched it. It was an experience. parade.com/430220/paulettecohn/maura-tierney-talks-the-affair-and-surviving-breast-cancer/
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Post by sissa on Oct 20, 2015 11:14:02 GMT 10
‘The Affair’: Maura Tierney Defends Noah — He Was ‘Brave’ To Leave His FamilyFri, October 16, 2015 5:28pm EDT by Emily Longeretta 2 Comments The Affair Noah Cheating Allison Image Courtesy of Showtime On season two of ‘The Affair,’ Maura Tierney’s Helen is doing anything and everything she can to move on from her husband after he had an affair. However, in real life, Maura’s reaction may to the situation may surprise you. Even though she’s having pretty steamy sex with a fling from her past, Helen is not happy. So, how does Maura Tierney feel when she’s watching The Affair? HollywoodLife.com caught up with the actress at PaleyFest in New York to hear about how Helen will “find a peaceful place with her ex-husband.” But seeing him happy with another woman probably isn’t the easiest. So, why was she “rootiing for the affair?” “When the show was pitched to me by Sarah Treem, I liked the idea that he had an affair and then everything opposite happens — he becomes wildly successful, rich, famous, all of his dreams come true once he walks away from this family,” she told us exclusively at before The Affair panel in NYC. But her tone wasn’t out of anger — but admiration. “He’s also brave; he has courage and he’s finding his truth which I like.” She also went on to say that maybe others should take some life tips from Noah (Dominic West). “I think it’s really interesting to choose your own happiness over anybody else’s. People never do that and if people did do that, it might be a less angry world,” she said. “So I sort of like the idea that [Noah and Alison] were soulmates — that they met and had to be together.” During the show, we also see flash forwards to the future, where Noah is actually heading to trial for the murder of Scotty. It came as a surprise to us when we saw that it was his ex, Helen, paying for his lawyer. “I don’t know if she thinks he did it, but I think she does not want the father of her children to go to jail,” she said. “She’s already kind of raising four kids on her own, but if he’s in jail, she’s really raising four kids on her own. I think she loves him still. I don’t know if she’s still in love with him.” Catch up on The Affair for free on Amazon Prime. Tune in to The Affair every Sunday night at 9pm, and let us know — do you see Maura’s side? Were you rooting for the affair? Let us know! hollywoodlife.com/2015/10/16/the-affair-noah-cheating-alison-maura-tierney-interview/
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Post by sissa on Oct 20, 2015 11:20:10 GMT 10
Everybody Loves Helen—But Will The Affair Change That?by CHRIS HARNICK Fri., Oct. 16, 2015 9:00 AM PDT The Affair, Maura TierneyThe Affair, Maura Tierney Showtime The Affair is full of moving parts, shifting views and sometimes drastically different versions of your favorite characters. But one thing remains the same: Maura Tierney's Helen is basically the best. "Yeah, Helen's probably the best character on the show," Ruth Wilson told E! News when asked if there was another character on the show she'd like to play. She also cited Oscar and Scotty as interesting characters. "I think all the baddies...but probably Maura's. It's a strong female role, it's interesting." Ask any fan of The Affair and nine times out of 10 they'll respond that Helen is their favorite character, but that prospect isn't really daunting for Tierney, who has experience playing fan-favorite characters on hits like ER and NewsRadio. Plus, she said this season will change people's views on Helen, the jilted wife of Dominic West's Noah. CLICK: Let Joshua Jackson explain how to enjoy The Affair "This season's going to change that a little bit. I mean, Helen was sort of like St. Helen last season, but I'm starting to think that—this is all evolving. We're figuring out who Helen is. I was wondering if she is so perfect in Noah's memory of her…if there's some sort of guilt involved in his memory of her, that he elevates her to this place because he has a lot of guilt about his actions. So she's a lot less—you'll see some flaws, for sure," she told us. The premiere, which featured Helen's point of view for the first time, saw the character vaping pot in the park, having sex with her old college pal (who is also Noah's friend) and dealing with her new life. The Emmy-nominated actress said she "loved it." "I think the writers did a really good job and I think they had a lot of fun because Helen does have a good sense of humor," she said. "That character has some humor in her and they've really expanded that…It's like that sex scene, just comedically tragic sex that's just so like, 'Oh my god!' Even though she's struggling, there's still humor." www.eonline.com/news/707196/everybody-loves-helen-but-will-the-affair-change-that
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Post by sissa on Oct 20, 2015 11:25:25 GMT 10
Maura Tierney on her love of Veep and being influenced by Police WomanBy Will Harris@NonStopPop Sep 28, 2015 12:00 AM Before our intrepid TV Club correspondents traveled to this summer’s Television Critics Association press tour, we asked readers to submit questions that we could pose to the TV pros attending the event. (And we made one up ourselves.) With those questions and the answers they prompted, we bring you the TV Club Questionnaire. Maura Tierney arrived on most viewers’ radar as a result of spending five seasons as Lisa Miller on NewsRadio, but she confirmed that her chops weren’t limited solely to comedy during her lengthy stint on ER. At present, Tierney remains firmly ensconced in the dramatic world, offering one of the many perspectives on Showtime’s The Affair. If you could be working on any other television series currently on the air, which one would it be, and why? Maura Tierney: I would like to be on Denis Leary’s Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll, because I had the greatest time on Rescue Me, and that would be fun for me. And I’d like to be on Veep. A.V. Club: What sort of character would you want to play? MT: I don’t know. I just think Veep is the funniest show on TV. I’d just love to be able to do that. Whatever they would want me for, I would do. What are your earliest memories of TV, and did they have any bearing on you wanting to have a career in TV? MT: Oh, my God, how long do you have? [Laughs.] Yeah, I watched so much TV, I practically could’ve eaten my television set when I was a kid. I mean, I watched all of that stuff like The Brady Bunch, The Partridge Family, Gilligan’s Island… All those reruns. But I watched everything. You know, in the ’70s, there wasn’t the Disney Channel and Nickelodeon. We had to watch grown-up shows. I remember watching Baretta with my dad. And Columbo and Police Woman. I remember watching Angie Dickinson in Police Woman, and I loved that she got to dress up and be different things as a policewoman. Like, she got to go undercover. So that might’ve been part of what I liked. Oh, and I loved Mary Tyler Moore and Rhoda. So those ladies shows were probably formative in me wanting to do [TV]. What efforts do you take to promote diverse viewpoints, and how do you think that has affected storytelling, either on your show or the television medium as a whole? MT: I’ll never be Miss America, so this is my only chance to answer a question like this, and I will respect it and value it. [Laughs.] But in terms of diversity, I guess I try, but… I don’t really have any power! So I’m probably not very effective any which way. I don’t feel that I have much of a voice in that arena, because, you know, I’ve been an actor for hire. But perhaps I should explore that. Maybe that might not be true. If you could add something to the show you’re working on, without anyone knowing about it beforehand and free from any consequences from upset coworkers/networks/viewers, what would it be? MT: Diversity. [Laughs.] AVC: Nice callback. MT: Seriously, though, how about that for an answer? Because I would do that! If any character from your show could be given a spin-off, who would it be and what would be the premise of the new show? MT: Oh, my goodness. I think it should be Jadon [Sand], who plays Trevor, and I think he should become a teenage banjo-playing YouTube sensation…but with a heart of gold! [Laughs.] www.avclub.com/article/maura-tierney-her-love-veep-and-being-influenced-p-225285
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Post by sissa on Oct 20, 2015 11:29:23 GMT 10
Josh Stamberg on going full frontal on The Affair: 'It's a weird day at work'BY SARA VILKOMERSON • @vilkomerson Posted October 4 2015 — 11:00 PM EDT If you haven’t seen Sunday night’s episode of The Affair, you should stop reading this right now. If you have seen the season 2 opener, then you’ve seen a lot of Josh Stamberg, who plays Max, and who gets awfully naked for a sex scene with Maura Tierney’s Helen. EW got a chance to catch up with Stamberg a few days before the show aired. ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: When did you find out about this scene? Did you have any hesitation about getting so naked? JOSH STANBERG: Much. [Laughs.] There was a lot of discussion. I hadn’t read the episode yet when it was mentioned. The important question to me, as a theater actor or really any actor is: what is the pertinence? Does this move the story and why? I had a lot of qualms about how this helped and wanted to be sure it wasn’t just a gimmick or a bit. [Director] Jeff Reiner and [creator/writer] Sarah Treem had really good answers. I think it all plays and makes sense. It certainly shows a lot of Max’s personality. Yeah, he has this utter comfort with himself. He’s feeling his power with this woman he’s always wanted. But I also think he would do that anyway: Max is the guy who always walks naked around his house. [Laughs.] It’s a lot, this scene. For her, she hasn’t been with anyone else since college. What is it like for her to see someone else’s body? And a person who is your husband’s best friend and been a big part of your life? It’s a very deep and challenging and wildly intimate moment. Previously Helen’s sex scenes have all sort of been in the dark. This was very bright daylight. And we were both concerned about that. [Laughs.] I’ve done lots of sex scenes but I hadn’t done a lot of that type of nudity. It’s a weird day at work. It’s choreographed like, your leg goes here and my arm goes there. But when you start going it’s different. And then it’s really awkward immediately after. Not with the other actor but with everyone else in the room who has been watching you do this. Suddenly the dude behind the monitor can’t look at you. You and Maura Tierney have known each other for a long time. Surely that helped? It helped hugely. There’s already trust in place and respect that goes both ways. It helps ‘cause we can talk about the scene before shooting it and how we want it to be, and make sure it’s good. And, also, just share in the awkwardness of it and not pretend it’s not weird. Were you nervous the night before? I wasn’t nervous. I look forward to scenes that are a challenge. And it really was a great scene. It does feel epic in the scope of how much information there is about these two people. So I wasn’t nervous, but it was tough in the work leading up to get in shape. Like, trying not to eat or drink [alcohol]. You know, like a couple of months of kale and I want to kill myself. [Laughs.] Where’s the tequila and pizza? Did you eat a burger straight after? We all went out that night: Maura and Jeff and I and ate a ton of sushi and drank a lot. It was really fun. The next day it was the full pizza. [Laughs.] But I was really happy because after the scene Sarah — and she’s not one for platitudes — told me that it was her favorite scene on the show ever. She was really happy. That made me happy because I think she’s the bee’s knees. Her mind is amazing. Where will you watch this episode when it airs? I’m going to my hometown of D.C. this weekend and my mother [NPR’s Susan Stamberg] has a friend from NPR hosting a barbeque on Sunday. She told me he wanted to turn it into a premire party for me and he has this huge television and everyone will be there to cheer me on! I mean, what could possibly be worse? It’s the worst idea ever so no, that is not where I will be watching. www.ew.com/article/2015/10/04/the-affair-josh-stamberg-full-frontal
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Post by sissa on Oct 20, 2015 11:38:37 GMT 10
The Affair: Was that full-frontal scene necessary?BY MELISSA MAERZ • @msmelissamaerz ENLARGE PHOTO (Mark Schafer/Showtime) The Affair Posted October 5 2015 — 11:26 AM EDT Whoa. That was my out-loud response to the full-frontal male nudity in Sunday night’s season 2 premiere of The Affair. And judging by social media’s response to the moment when Max (Josh Stamberg) bared everything for the camera after a hotel room hook-up with Helen (Maura Tierney), it was the whoa heard ‘round Twitter, too. Maybe full-frontal nudity shouldn’t be surprising. At a time when even the fancy, award-winning “golden age of television” dramas make regular visits to brothels or strip clubs (Game of Thrones, Deadwood, Boardwalk Empire, True Detective, The Sopranos, True Blood, The Knick, even Twin Peaks … the list goes on!), maybe it should be more shocking for a cable series not to flash some skin. (It makes me think of that College Humor video where the woman tells HBO, “After watching an hour of your shows, seeing my own boobs is like, Really?”) And since the vast majority of that nudity involves anonymous women swinging around a pole or quietly writhing around on some velveteen furniture in the background, there are no doubt viewers out there who welcome Max’s nudity as a sign of gender equality —a relatively respectful one, too, since it was made under the best possible circumstances. After all, this character has a name. He has a significant story line. We got to know him last season before we saw him naked. So why was I so scandalized? In my defense, Stamberg admits that he, too, was skeptical about whether the scene was necessary, at least initially. In an interview with EW, he said he didn’t use a body double, so before he signed the nudity rider, The Affair’s creator, Sarah Treem, had to convince him that she wasn’t just using the scene as a gimmick to get people to watch. Treem argued that Helen had recently split from her husband Noah (Dominic West), and Helen hadn’t slept with anyone else since college, when she and Noah were close friends with Max. “What is it like for her to see someone else’s body?” Stamberg said. “And a person who is your husband’s best friend and been a big part of your life? It’s very deep and challenging and wildly intimate moment.” After reading that interview with Stamberg, I went back and rewatched the episode. And I discovered something I didn’t expect: This was the most thoughtful use of nudity I’ve seen on television in a very long time. The scene opens with a very tender shot of Max. Helen is lying in bed next to him, studying his face — which means that viewers also get to study his face before we get up close and personal with other parts — and the room is bathed in sunlight. The look on her face is a mix of a bemused Oh my God, I just did that! and a disgusted Oh my God, what did I just do? They have sex, and he awkwardly narrates the whole thing as it’s happening, until it’s over, and he confesses, “I’ve literally never had that much fun having sex with someone.” Everything from the look on her face to her deadpan response (“Literally?”) implies Helen wasn’t having quite as much fun. Afterward, Max gets up, walks around the hotel room naked with the curtains pulled wide open, and orders room service, making sure to inform the person taking the order that he’s the guy who just bought the hotel. When the camera zooms in for the full-frontal shot, it’s framed with Helen’s face in the foreground, looking right at Max’s lap, then very consciously looking away. We hear Max tell room service that he’s in Penthouse D — “like dog.” Only three minutes pass between the beginning of the scene and the full-frontal shot. And yet, you learn so much about these characters in that short amount of time. Max is supremely confident, maybe even arrogant, the kind of guy who enjoys the idea that people might be staring at him through the curtainless windows. He’s the kind of guy who’s used to getting what he wants, and Helen is part of that. Usually, when the camera shows a guy standing up naked, with a woman lying prone before him, her face directed at his lap, it suggests that the man is the one in control. You get the sense that even Max sees things that way, viewing himself as the “dog” (as he puts it) who just scored in Penthouse D. But this scene is shot from Helen’s perspective, and director Jeffrey Reiner flips the power dynamic. When Helen really considers what Max means to her, she’s not thinking about him as a full human being. She’s thinking of him as a disembodied crotch, cut off from his brain. (When she questions his use of the word “literally,” it’s obvious that she doesn’t think he’s very smart.) Later in the episode, we learn that, having come from a high-society family, Helen once looked down upon her parents’ obsession with wealth, but here, she’s just as materialistic as Max. He brags about buying the hotel, but she fetishizes her belongings, too — it’s just that Max is one of them. He’s exactly the kind of trophy that a woman who pretends that money doesn’t matter would like to own. That’s true in theory, anyway. In practice, judging by the way she quickly averts her gaze from his naked body, it seems that she doesn’t want him too close to her. And with her face inches away from his groin, she’s just about as close as she can get. The full-frontal shot isn’t meant to be sexy. It’s positively claustrophobic. The scene is meant for viewers to experience exactly what Helen is experiencing: It’s all too much, too soon, too in-your-face. And it’s over before there was time to figure out what was really happening. It’s over before there was time to get excited about it. I admire Treem, Reiner, and Stamberg for elevating what could’ve otherwise been a cheap, exploitative late-night-cable-TV shot into a much deeper moment. According to Stamberg, Treem called it her favorite scene in the history of the show. And even if the filming was awkward for Stamberg (“Suddenly, the dude behind the monitor won’t look at you,” he says), he felt that it was a natural moment for his character. That’s just about as dignified as the crotch shot gets. www.ew.com/article/2015/10/05/affair-full-frontal-scene
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Post by sissa on Oct 20, 2015 11:55:59 GMT 10
Watch The Affair's Pretty Hilarious Full-Frontal Peen Scene109,7599 Julianne Escobedo Shepherd Filed to: NSFW10/05/15 10:15am The Affair, an excellent show about the nuances and complications of infidelity and self-identity interspersed with f**kloads of sex scenes, commenced its second season last night, expanding its two-person perspective to four by including the viewpoints of spurned spouses Helen and Cole. Showtime's The Affair Reflects Real Marriages More Than You Think On Showtime’s hit series The Affair, premiering October 4th for a second season, Dominic West plays … Read more With this perspective, the show also brought us its first dick shot, a banner moment in a show that is actually fairly conservative with total nudity for the amount of boning that goes on, usually showing mostly the lovely sculpted derriere of Noah Solloway (Dominic West). Sir West, have you been taking barre classes, my friend? For the Season 2 premiere, Helen (Maura Tierney) finally got her chance to have a little fun. [SPOILERS COMMENCE NOW.] At this point in the show’s meandering timeline, Helen and Noah are mid-divorce and she has taken up with Noah’s best friend Max (Josh Stamberg [son of Susan!]), the business magnate who was clearly obsessed with her last season. After some very no-chill sex in a hotel that looks like the Standard, Max orders up some breakfast, demanding Helen’s fruit plate is to his liking cause his hotel group just bought this particular holding. The dick shot comes when he drops the cheeky line that they’re in “Penthouse D, like dog.” Then he pulls the kind of James Cameron “I’m the King of the World” move that I imagine all very rich white businessmen in their mid-40s do every single day, gazing nude out onto the city in which they own so much and gloating in their own power. (We all have aspirations; doing this during a staycation one day is mine.) Maura Tierney explained to E! how the scene came about—and it was unscripted, with executive producer Jeff Reiner pushing for it “more than Sarah Treem”: “It’s a big jump ahead for the character. What’s she doing—does it have a revenge element to it or is this person really just a comfort to her and has clearly loved her for a long time? I like that they skipped right to that sex, so you don’t really know what’s going on.” Josh Stamberg stans can probably relax a little though—that wasn’t actually his pénet, according to Dominic West: “Do you know how they shot that? It’s f**king funny... I don’t know why they decided they wanted a full-frontal male, but I thought it was so funny. He gets up out of bed, with his ass to camera and he crosses the camera... and then the stand-in just steps in. This completely different guy who had to have his dick inspected. [Laughs.]” Thank you, penile stand-in and dick inspector. Your presence takes us just a little further in nudie equality on prestige television, and also projects a vulnerability in the The Affair that articulates its message of human messiness and grey-area morality. themuse.jezebel.com/watch-the-affairs-pretty-hilarious-full-frontal-peen-sc-1734671448
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Post by sissa on Oct 20, 2015 13:26:48 GMT 10
Filming love scenes not sexy, actors sayTELEVISION NEWS By Luaine Lee TRIBUNE NEWS SERVICE • Tuesday August 18, 2015 6:31 AM CRAIG BLANKENHORN/SHOWTIME Maura Tierney (right) plays the jilted wife in Showtime's "The Affair." Dominic West plays her husband. Tierney says the love scenes changed as the series went on. PASADENA, Calif. — Actors have little trouble handcuffing the villains, outrunning a zombie or executing a death scene. A love scene, though, is only for the brave. Once upon a time, an on-screen married couple was required to have twin beds, lovemaking was limited to a glancing kiss, and deep-dipping decolletage was considered censoring material. With the ascent of cable television, however, almost anything goes. Series such as The Sopranos, Shameless and The Affair have pushed the envelope so far that even the broadcast networks are inspired to offer raunchy comedies and heavy-breathing dramas. Cable dramas have more in mind than titillation, said Emmy Rossum, who plays the oldest sibling on Shameless. “Showing sexuality as part of art is no different from showing any other part of life to inform the art,” she said. “Sometimes you do have sex for a reason that has nothing to do with sex. Maybe it’s about power. Maybe it’s about insecurity. Maybe it’s about just wanting to connect. Maybe it’s about just wanting to feel good. . . . And sometimes it’s just that we get the chance to do something great to show the audience something deeper about a character. “It really has nothing to do with sex and everything about emotion.” Michelle Ashford, a producer and writer for Masters of Sex on Showtime, was already fortified when the show began because the series centers on Masters and Johnson, and their studies of human sexuality — which began in the late 1950s. “We had an interesting sort of dilemma or a challenge or a lucky thing on our show — which was that our show was about sex,” she said. “So we came out of the gate knowing that we were going to have to tackle sex all the time. And one of the things that was very appealing to me is they came at it through their work initially — which was, of course, science. “So we had that built into our show, and that allowed us to look at sex almost in the polar-opposite way to how it has been approached, I think, for many years — which is: How do you make sex look sexy? “Our job was: How do you make it look as unsexy as is humanly possible? Because what it was was a piece of science for us. So that was an interesting way to come at sex.” Maura Tierney, who stars as the jilted wife in The Affair, recalled being eager at first to approach the steamy love scenes. “I found myself super-super-game for everything before we started. And you’re a little more anxious. But I feel like I grew with the season. It got easier for me to risk things as we shot it and as I understood who I was playing, and I got a little more confident. So it was really exciting and different.” She realized, she said, that the intimate scenes compel her to explore new depths. She told herself, “I, Maura Tierney, have to be different, and I’m required to call upon different parts of me to get through the scene and to communicate what needs to be communicated through the script.” Dominic West, who plays Tierney’s husband, has spicy scenes with both Tierney and Ruth Wilson, who portrays his lover. “The nature of acting is to have to become very, very into it with strangers very quickly, whether you’re doing a play or this show,” West said. “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.” Sarah Jessica Parker, who had romps with Mr. Big on Sex and the City, has a non-nudity clause in her contract, she said, but not for moral reasons. “It’s not about some sort of judgment about people who do it,” she said, “because I think it’s great if you feel comfortable and feel you’re not being exploited and it’s something you want to do. I think it’s grand. “It’s just not for me. I’ve always been modest and nervous about that experience, so I’ve just never done it.” Jane Seymour, who has been involved in portraying some juicy trysts, insists that creating them is no fun. “The angle at which you have to pose, you really have to be a contortionist, you know. If your leading man or you have any makeup on, that sort of slides from one person to another. God forbid you’re wearing red lipstick, and, of course, the hair — it’s in the way. There’s nothing sexy about it at all. You try and make it be. Actually, the sexiest part is what happens before; it’s the tension before.” Torrey DeVitto, who participated in a smoldering scene for Army Wives on Lifetime, said: “Love scenes, they’re never not awkward. First of all, just as a woman, I like manly men. I don’t want to kiss a guy and smell makeup on his face. It’s always awkward. . . . It’s always uncomfortable. I don’t do nudity. I’m not saying it’s wrong; I have friends who do it. Maybe if Johnny Depp called me tomorrow and offered me a job that required nudity, I might do it.” www.dispatch.com/content/stories/life_and_entertainment/2015/08/18/1-filming-love-scenes-not-sexy-actors-say.html
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Post by sissa on Oct 20, 2015 13:44:51 GMT 10
Maura Tierney on her new 'Affair' POV, almost being Sarah Braverman, and moreWHY WON'T ANYONE CAST THE 'NEWSRADIO' ALUM IN ANOTHER SITCOM? By Alan Sepinwall @sepinwall | WEDNESDAY, SEP 30, 2015 1:41 PM Before she signed onto Showtime's "The Affair," Maura Tierney had done practically everything it's possible for an actor to do in television. Her first regular series role (on "The Van d**e Show") was opposite no less than Dick Van d**e; her second ("704 Hauser") was working for Norman Lear, on the same set where "All in the Family" took place. She's been the leading woman on a classic (if underappreciated in its time) sitcom in "NewsRadio," helped carry an enormous hit drama ("ER") as it transitioned away from its original cast, been the lead on a legal procedural ("The Whole Truth"), and was one of the original stars of "Parenthood" before a bout with breast cancer forced her to drop out of the role of Sarah Braverman. She had done all of those things on one broadcast network or another, which is why she agreed to play Helen Solloway, the wife Dominic West's Noah cheats on in "The Affair." (Last summer, she told critics, "There’s just a little more freedom (on cable), and I really wanted to experience that.") It wasn't a huge role in the first season, but it was also really two roles in one, since Tierney had to play Helen both as Noah saw her, and then as Noah's lover Alison did. This year, though, things get more interesting for her, since the series' two points of view now become four, giving us the perspectives of the spouses Noah and Alison left behind as well. (I've seen the first two episodes of the new season, which debuts Sunday at 10; the first is split between Noah and Helen POVs, the second between Alison and Cole.) Back at summer press tour, I sat down with Tierney to talk about the challenges and freedoms that come with her current job, revisit past roles (including why she never came back to "Parenthood" after her cancer went into remission), why she has only done dramas since "NewsRadio" ended, and a lot more. So when you took the job, did ("The Affair" creator) Sarah (Treem) talk about the idea that down the road, we were going to get Helen’s story, or was that something that came to you later?Maura Tierney: We didn’t talk about that. I don’t know if that was always her plan or not. I think towards the end of last season, the writers decided to give Helen a point of view as well. I don’t know how long it was in the works. You talked a year ago about how you were interested in doing this because you’ve done almost everything in TV, but you’d never done a premium cable drama before. Over the course of doing that first season, did you find yourself wishing you had a point of view, or was there enough meat there?Maura Tierney: I felt it was fun because you’re essentially playing two characters. I was happy with the work last year. I mean I’m happy this year, too, but I was happy last year. In terms of the two characters and the two different versions, how long did it take you to figure out a consistency and what’s different about Helen when he sees her versus when she sees her?Maura Tierney: That was quite clear. How Noah sees Helen and how Alison sees Helen are quite clearly drawn in two very different women. And I’m much colder and a bigger snob and way more class conscious in Alison’s POV. When we got to Helen’s point of view, it was a little tricky because the instinct is to just fall into playing it sort of how Noah saw her. And I’m still trying to figure out what unique aspects can be revealed when it’s Helen seeing herself. So I’m still working at it. But do you think that there is any sort of fundamental truth of Helen in Alison’s point of view?Maura Tierney: I do. I mean, I think there’s fundamental truth in all of the points of views, and there’s fundamental untruths. But yes, I think one of the things that the character has to come to terms with is her wealth and her privilege and her lack of ever coming up against any real serious challenges. So I don’t think Helen is a cold bitch, but I think there’s an aspect of privilege to her life that she has been unaware of. The show can have these extreme discrepancies, not just in characterization, but sometimes in terms of incident. Like when Cole draws the gun in Noah’s version, it’s dramatically different in terms of the details than in Alison’s version in the finale. Did you and the other actors talk about that at all?Maura Tierney: That was talked about for hours and hours. Not so much me, because I’m a bystander in that scene. Except in that scene, Helen had my favorite line in the whole show when she says to Mare Winningham, “All right, this is way too f**ked up for me.” Because she’s the only one in the room that is saying what is going on which is way too f**ked up. Before the gun even comes out. It wasn’t really my scene, but the other three actors talked about it quite a bit because, it was a really dramatic turn and all of a sudden Cole has a gun and we haven’t seen anything like that before. So there was a lot of discussion between Sarah and the actors about how best to do it. How has the cable drama experience been for you a season and a half into it?Maura Tierney: I love it. It’s really nice to have the freedom language wise that I have and topic wise that we have. The time is great. Were there times, whether on "ER" or some of the other network shows you did, where you found yourself wishing you could curse?Maura Tierney: Yeah, of course you just wanted to be able to say "shit" once. That’s how people talk. And we would always have to say "damn it," and someone’s dying. Anthony Edwards did get to say "shit" in his death episode.Maura Tierney: You’re right. He got to say it, but he earned it. I didn’t really say it. I did give the finger to Sally Field one time though, and it stayed on the show, which was great. Listen, I loved my character in "ER" and that was a great eight years of my life. But this is nice, and the pace is a little bit slower. And there’s less script so the writers are less stressed out. "Parenthood" came to an end earlier this year, and I think back to that original pilot with you in it. Maura Tierney: Did you see it? Yeah I did. It’s funny, because you were by far the best thing in that version of the pilot.Maura Tierney: Oh, thanks. But them having to reshoot it forced Jason Katims to figure some other stuff out, and that version overall is better.Maura Tierney: Yes, my diagnosis was a gift to them to rethink the show. Did you and Jason ever talk down the road about coming in as a Braverman cousin or something?Maura Tierney: He did. I love him very much as a writer. I have great respect for his work. And he had emailed me a while back to do a little part on the show, and I had a feeling, and I was like, "Does the character have breast cancer?" And he was like, "Yes." And I was like, "Oh, f**k you!" (laughs) I was like, "Make me something else and I’ll do it." But that just didn’t feel right to me, doing a bit on that show. It just felt, I don’t know, forced or something. You and Lauren Graham did "NewsRadio" for a while together. It’s funny that she wound up coming into that role.Maura Tierney: It’s really funny. And now they’re together, right? Her and Peter (Krause). I made a love match, too. So all these good things came out of that, and you’re okay.Maura Tierney: Well knock on (wood), but yes. You said you didn’t want to play a breast cancer character. You did that on "Rescue Me." Did you feel like you got that out of your system?Maura Tierney: Yeah, and also that was really different. I mean that was a much more raw was very visceral. Peter Tolan, I would work with him any day of the week. Also Denis Leary. I email Denis to tell him I want to be on his new show. I want to do an episode. They were really cautious and interested to have my input. I don’t know. It was just — I felt very safe to do that there to go back to (acting). And "Parenthood," that many years later, it didn’t feel organic, that’s all. Norman Lear was here when press tour started. And I don’t know if you heard the quote, but he said the one that got away from him was "704 Hauser." As a young actress starting out, you’re working with him over a year in the Archie Bunker house.Maura Tierney: Can you imagine? What was that like for you?Maura Tierney: It was awesome. Norman is a lovely man. He’s incredibly intelligent and insightful and he’s kind. I think it was my second real job I ever had, and he just knows a lot about comedy. It felt lucky. You know, I worked with Normal Lear. I worked with Grant Tinker. I worked with Dick Van d**e. I worked with Jay Sandrich. Like these people were television in the '70s and the '80s. I had a cool beginning; none of those shows succeeded, but I worked with TV greats. "NewsRadio" ran five years and was great. But since then, your career has pivoted away and it’s been largely dramatic. Was that by choice?Maura Tierney: No. No one will freaking hire me to be in a comedy! When "The Whole Truth" ended, I really was looking to do something funny. I think multicameras can still be funny. I don’t know why that’s out of fashion. They’ll probably come back into fashion. Either way, I really wanted to do a half-hour comedy, but I don’t know what people thought. They got out of the fashion of thinking that I’m funny. I don’t know why. I think Helen has a sense of humor, too. Have you ever watched the "NewsRadio" DVDs?Maura Tierney: No. The reason I bring it up, is because with the commentaries, it’s almost a running gag: Anytime a new person comes on the commentaries, almost all men doing it, the second you walk on screen, the conversation stops so that the new person can say, "Oh wow, look how hot Maura is."Maura Tierney: It’s too bad. I was so self-conscious and had no confidence. It was 20 years ago this year, and I'm like, "What the hell was my problem?" I had so much insecurity and did not feel hot at all. But that’s nice. Is that true? I’m not making it up. I believe even Warren Littlefield says it.Maura Tierney: What? Maybe he should be my future ex-husband. Alan Sepinwall may be reached at sepinwall@hitfix.com Read more at www.hitfix.com/whats-alan-watching/maura-tierney-on-her-new-affair-pov-almost-being-sarah-braverman-and-more#xTYi5mK7kIeRfID7.99
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Post by sissa on Oct 20, 2015 13:51:36 GMT 10
Who Would The Affair‘s Maura Tierney Have an Affair With?The TV vet swoons over the Golden Globe–winning hit show with Briony Smith Oct 9, 2015 Briony Smith The Affair was last year’s hottest drama, intriguing everyone by showing the titular tryst from the two lovers’ very different perspecives. This season (Showtime), we see the nasty fallout from the POV of all four leads, including that of ER vet Maura Tierney, who plays the jilted ex-wife. How hard is it to play heavy, emotional scenes?I’ve been in a situation where someone has cheated on me, so that’s going to feed the experience; then you find yourself stuck in that place, and that’s not always fun, but it was mostly really well-written. I just wanted to do justice to the words. Sarah Treem co-created the show. Any benefits to working with a female showrunner?In that last scene of season one, I get really upset and beg [Dominic West’s character] Noah to stay. And then the two of us kinda have sex, which is just weird because it’s like, ‘Why is she doing that?’ The two guys didn’t like it. Dom and the director felt that it made my character too humiliated, and I was, like, “Well, yeah.” I mean, that’s what should happen. She starts out up here and she ends up down here. And Sarah and I both had no problem with it, but the guys did. I was glad to have a woman there, because we’re the women, so if we think it’s OK—that’s nice. If you could have an affair with anyone, who would it be?Wouldn’t it be great if I’d had an affair with Jesus Christ? I would have learned a lot; I could debunk a lot of myths. He has a nice beard. Anyone else you would have an affair with?Christoph Waltz is amazing. I did have a really embarrassing moment at the Golden Globes where I touched him, and he turned around, and I said, “I’m just a really big fan.” And then, the other day, he was next to me on a plane, and I was like, Oh, shit. I touched you at the Golden Globes. I didn’t say anything, though; we didn’t talk. But I love him. I’d have an affair with him. So how did you and Dominic West establish the rapport of a long-married couple?Well, during the first table read, he called me “Laura.” He claims he didn’t, but I think he did. It’s like the show, ’cause he says it didn’t happen and I say it did. But we just got along. He’s really charming. He’s super-super-charming, and I think I’m pretty easygoing. Did the different wardrobes for each perspective help you adjust your performance accordingly?The stuff I wear in [the memories of side-piece] Alison is great; that stuff is so expensive, like it’s couture. You do behave differently when you know you’re wearing an $8,000 gown. Your character comes from an extremely privileged background. How did you portray that but also make her accessible and human?She’s this very lucky woman who has not really encountered major obstacles: She grew up wealthy and was popular and got the handsome husband and has her kids, and she can work and have her kids. It’s not her fault she hasn’t come up against any struggles, so that’s why I think she can still be a nice person. There are people like that who are annoying, but they’re still nice and you still like them. But what’s going to be interesting to me next year is what you do when you’re a person that has encountered no strife and, like, all of a sudden, the rug gets fully ripped out from under you. It’s easy to be fun and likeable when everything’s going your way, so what’s going to happen to her when it’s not? It was refreshing to see her teenage daughter’s abortion handled in a relatively neutral, matter-of-fact manner. How did that come together?On ER, we just couldn’t have done that. There was once a scene where a character who was something like three or four weeks pregnant got an injury, and they wanted to give her a CAT scan. And one doctor was like, “You can’t—she’s pregnant.” Then one of the other characters said, “It’s not even a baby yet.” That was the sentence. That had to be cut because of Broadcast Standards and Practices, and, like, that’s just somebody’s opinion. I’m not saying it’s the right one. [By comparison], this scene felt very mature. www.flare.com/celebrity/who-would-the-affairs-maura-tierney-have-an-affair-with/
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Post by sissa on Oct 20, 2015 14:23:07 GMT 10
The Affair's Maura Tierney on Season 2 and Helen's Share of the Blame: Perfect Women "Do Exist. And They're Annoying"By Megan Angelo October 1, 2015 Showtime's The Affair specializes in debunking the concept of absolute truth. But if there's one thing everyone can agree on, it's this: Maura Tierney's Helen—soon-to-be-ex-wife of broody author Noah—is cool, and likable, and the epitome of a girl who doesn't deserve a cad for a husband. At least, that's what season one left us thinking. Tierney is here to warn us that we might want to at least throw a sweater over our #TeamHelen T-shirts as season two unfolds. And to let us know that she doesn't think Noah's as bad as you think he is. I spoke with Tierney by phone ahead of this Sunday's premiere. What was your reaction when you learned that Helen would get to share in the storytelling this season?I was excited, because I love the writers, and I thought it would be fun to explore her world outside of Noah's box. They're trying to show Helen's culpability this season. She was sort of perfect-ish last season and very much a victim. This season we're exploring how she might have contributed to the end of the marriage. She's sort of this super lucky woman who's never come up against difficulty until now. Helen definitely does have that air of the perfect, good girl—the woman who's got it all together, the woman we look at and say, "I want to be her."Yeah, I mean, I don't have kids, so I can't really know that component of it. But I remember talking to Sarah [Treem, creator of The Affair] last season about women like Helen, who manage to put themselves together great, who have great jewelry, who are great moms, who work, who are funny and smart. They do exist. And they're annoying. Again, Helen has never encountered real hardship. It's probably easier to put yourself together cheerily when you're walking the earth with a vast lack of experience in pain and loss. When we talk about Helen's culpability in her breakup with Noah—how do you think she helped to destroy the marriage?She wasn't always supporting him as an artist. She was emasculating him a bit with her wealth. She would never say to her parents, "F—ing leave him alone." This season we're really exploring her staunch refusal to stick up to her parents. Where does that come from? Is it that Helen is afraid to live without money?Yeah, but not because she wants nice stuff. It's a status quo thing—Helen wants to keep everything at a status quo. She's not a materialistic woman, but she was raised in privilege and thinks "Well, why not have it?" But she's a grownup. It's a long time to be dependent on your parents. Helen is such a sympathetic character in season one. Even though the show does a wonderful job of showing all perspectives, we feel for her so hard. So it's strange to think about seeing blame in her in season two.Definitely—because in terms of [deliberately hurting Noah], Helen didn't really do anything wrong. And she's so honest to him about being hurt. I think that allows people to connect with her, the fact that she says, "You broke my heart." She's really not full of shit. And that makes her very appealing. What do fans of the show and Helen say to you when you encounter them?A lot of women on the street will say, "I love your show. I'm sorry he's such an asshole." I don't really think that, though. As a viewer, I think Noah fell in love with someone and couldn't help it. That happens. To me the interesting question is: What if you choose your own happiness over everybody else's? People rarely do. It's considered wrong. But maybe it's not so wrong. When I talked with your costar Joshua Jackson before season one began, he told me that there's a therapist on set to help you guys unpack heavy questions like that. How do you cope with the emotional exhaustion that comes along with this material?Sometimes it's hard. The last two episodes of season one, especially, were so dark and sad. But it makes us a very tight cast. We're required to do a lot in front of each other—we cry a lot, we take our clothes off. We have each other's backs. And we have a lot of fun. It's crazy to imagine the quartet we see only as tense with each other cutting loose and kicking back together.You have to have a sense of humor about this stuff. I'm actually sad because I don't see [the rest of the cast] as often this season, now that we have the four perspectives. I'm shooting on my own more. I miss them. We all went out this weekend—well, Josh was sick, but the rest of us—and before that, I hadn't seen Ruth in a month. We count The Affair among the shows that are leading a golden age for women in television—there are these fabulous, complex roles for actresses of all ages. But at the same time, a lot of famous actresses, many of whom work primarily in film, are speaking up about how being a woman who's not 29 has cost them. Where does your experience fall within this conversation?I feel lucky that I am working still. Longevity is a very tough thing in this business, and I'm grateful every day for it — I'm not kidding you. I've been wanting to work in cable for a while now. The reason it's hard to work on network TV is that they do so many episodes, and the writers get exhausted—anyone would. On cable, you can do what Fran [Frances McDormand] just did with Olive Kitteridge and do six hours of programming. We do ten hours on our show. When the writers have more time, they can come up with quality material and relax into creating these characters. I'm 50, and I'm playing a complex person who is a wife and mother and daughter, and who's also a sexual being and grappling with that. I feel like I got on board something that is special. I'm very grateful. www.glamour.com/entertainment/blogs/obsessed/2015/10/maura-tierney-the-affair-seaso?mbid=twitter_glamourdotcom
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