O”Donnell ”really nailed” character in ”Riding the Bus”

When Rosie O’Donnell read “Riding the Bus With My Sister,” she instantly decided she should portray the developmentally challenged character Beth in a movie version.

“I knew I could be Beth. I had to play Beth,” said O’Donnell, who stars in tonight’s CBS Hallmark Hall of Fame film (9 p.m. on KREM-2 in Spokane).

“This is not an easy movie, but her story deserves to be told,” O’Donnell said. “So often the mentally challenged are portrayed as one-dimensional innocents. But there are all kinds of anger there, a plethora of mental health challenges that they cope with every day.”

The film, directed by Anjelica Huston and inspired by Rachel Simon’s autobiographical book, offers a window into Beth’s world.

Her days are spent in transit on the city buses in her Northeastern hometown. Familiar with the routes and sweet on several drivers, the outspoken Beth takes no guff from those who treat her rudely. Her boyfriend Jesse, her orderly routine and her brightly colored, oversized T-shirts combine to bring her contentment.

“You see over the course of the movie the way her world works for her,” Huston said. “She is such a great character, completely integrated, very happy in her world and, in fact, extremely capable.”

The abrupt arrival of her sister Rachel, an intense New York fashion photographer, is an unwelcome intrusion into Beth’s universe.

Rachel, played by Andie MacDowell, visits Beth following the death of their father. The women are far from compatible, even in grief, but what began as a short visit is extended: Rachel wants to control her sister’s unorthodox existence and change almost everything about her.

“My character thinks she is superior,” MacDowell said. “And, of course, as a human, she is not.

“My character is handicapped in her concept of what being superior is and, in the end, Rachel learns beautiful lessons from this human she has put in a category. It says a lot about what we can get from other people whom we consider less than we are.”

O’Donnell gives a loud and energetic performance as Beth.

“She really nailed it,” MacDowell said. “She gave the character lots of layers, she had absorbed the material and she didn’t go over the top.”

MacDowell called her own role “unlikable, at least in the beginning.”

“I had to be very straight and tough and strong,” she said. “I couldn’t be soft and Southern, the things that are natural to me. Anjelica was very hard on me and made me do what I had to do to get it right.”

Huston called MacDowell’s character the anchor in the movie.

“She’s more the observer, and that’s a hard thing to fulfill,” Huston said. “It’s not the showier, more noticeable part.”

Huston, who had read Simon’s book and described it as “full of life,” was aware of the delicate balance needed to bring this story to the TV screen.

“You don’t want to get too sweet with it,” Huston said. “It’s a hard line to bridge, a tough part to do. You have to love this person who can occasionally be very annoying and loud and garrulous.”

O’Donnell said her chief concern was her depiction of the character and “getting it right and being true to Beth.”

“The way our society divides people is wrong,” she said. “You’ve got me and you’ve got Beth: My obsession is with show business and (Barbra) Streisand, and how is that different from Beth and her obsession with the buses?

“Whether it be Beth with the bus or Bill Gates being able to come up with a new computer, the line between autistic and genius is very thin.”