People: Her role? She’s growing into it
On “Weeds,” Nancy Botwin knows the annoyances of modern life – like an anemic cell-phone signal when she has to make a call.
But Nancy also faces challenges that aren’t so routine: She and her cell phone are sharing the same room with five scary gangsters, each armed with a gun he’s pointing at her head.
And her hefty stash of marijuana – the main object of concern – is mysteriously missing.
That was Nancy’s plight when “Weeds,” the offbeat Showtime comedy starring Mary-Louise Parker, ended its second season last fall.
Returning tonight at 10, Nancy is right where we left her: under the gun (five, actually) as she tries to place her all-important call.
“It was a little bit tricky to find the mood again,” Parker says when asked about picking up the same scene months later. “I had to work myself up into that same kind of froth.”
A remarkable thing about “Weeds” is how funny it makes a premise that could be a real buzzkill: A newly widowed mother of two starts selling marijuana to maintain her family’s comfortable suburban lifestyle.
The series is rooted in Parker’s performance, an anxious blend of boldness and delusion. Nancy stands up to the perils she has brought on herself, while going to great lengths to pretend they aren’t there.
“I think her narcissism is offset by her naivete, to make her more palatable than she might otherwise be,” Parker muses.
“She’s kind of a less ruthless version of Scarlett O’Hara. She’s gonna survive no matter what, she’s gonna make it work, she’s gonna put on that red dress – you know, Scarlett puts it on and goes to the ball.”
Parker just turned 43, but she seems insistently a decade or two younger. She has a youngster’s face, and on this day she was clad in a youthfully fancy-free ensemble: lacy white blouse, military-camouflage-print Bermuda shorts, and retro ‘60s leather sandals with chunky high heels.
Having just wrapped her four-month “Weeds” shoot, she’s looking forward to spending time with her 3 1/2 -year-old son, Will.
Parker’s richly varied career has included films such as “Fried Green Tomatoes,” “Boys on the Side” and “The Client.”
Among her TV credits are a shimmering portrayal of 1950s pop star Phyllis McGuire in HBO’s “Sugartime,” as well as “Angels in America” and “The West Wing.”
She describes herself as “a journeyman actor. I’m always looking for work” – roles, she says, “that I can do something with.”
She means something unencumbered by dialogue and stage directions printed on a page.
“I don’t necessarily even read the stage directions,” she confesses with a saucy grin. “I black them out. Which can be bad. Sometimes, there’s something there that’s important.
“I’ll be doing a scene and someone will say, ‘Y’know, you hand the money to him now,’ and I’ll be like, ‘I hand him the money?’
“And they look at me and then turn to the director: ‘She doesn’t read the directions.’ “
The birthday bunch
Actor Pat Harrington (“One Day At A Time”) is 78. Actor Kevin Tighe (“Emergency,” “Murder One”) is 63. Actress Gretchen Corbett (“The Rockford Files”) is 60. Singer Dan Fogelberg is 56. Actor Danny Bonaduce is 48. Actress Quinn Cummings (“Family”) is 40. Country singer Andy Griggs is 34. Director Paul Greengrass is 52.