Laura Linney and 'The Big C'

I read the profile of Laura Linney in this past Sunday’s New York Times Magazine and fell in love with her. Now, I must admit that I was already a Linney fan, what with her awesome depiction of Abigail Adams in the HBO mini-series John Adams, her raw performance in The Squid and the Whale, her no-nonsense turn in Kinsey and the crisp desperation of her Mrs. X in The Nanny Diaries.

Getting a tiny glimpse into how she thinks, as I did while reading this particular article, was like taking in a big gulp of fresh air given all the garbage spewed by actresses/celebrities who frequently tell the rest of us peasants how we should live our lives, how we should look, how we should act and how we should eat while they live their own pampered little lives.

Consider what the 46-year-old Linney had to say about “the privilege of aging,” a touchy subject for Hollywood actresses who seem to be largely Botoxed, surgically altered and plumped and generally messed-around-with in order to look as though they’ve discovered the antidote to aging (while the likes of George Clooney gray and wrinkle and still winds up on lists of sexy celebs). Here’s what the Times’ Frank Bruni wrote:

“As we sat in the new Jean-Georges Vongerichten restaurant ABC Kitchen, [Linney] worked her way through a curious pea-centric line-up of pea soup and pea salad and talked about aging, and about her mystification and frustration with so many people’s rebellion against it. She conceded that sagging skin, waning energy and creaky joints aren’t fun, but said that the early deaths of beloved friends had opened her eyes to the fact that growing old is the greatest of blessings. ‘A lot of people don’t get that privilege,’ she said. ‘And there’s an extreme disrespect toward that that’s cuckoo.’

I asked her how many friends had died, and who, but she waved the question away: I’d crossed into one of those no-fly zones. ‘A lot of people,’ she said. ‘And I miss them.’ She added that whenever she realizes that she’s about to complain about aging, ‘I imagine them taking me by my shoulders and shaking me: ‘Snap out of it!’”

Aging as a blessing. What a wonderfully, down-to-earth way of looking at things. That makes me just want to watch her more, especially as she takes the reins of a new, dark Showtime drama, The Big C, about a high school history teacher with a terminal case of skin cancer who, at least early on, not only refuses to tell her family about it, but decides to stop being so timid and restrained -- so very suburban about everything --and embraces life. Linney’s character, the 42-year-old wife and mother of a teen, is named Cathy (like the Cathy comic) and, based on the previews, seems as though she's going to unleash her true self in interesting ways, kind of like the opposite of the melodramatic story of Izzie Stevens'/Grey’s Anatomy skin cancer.



The Big C premieres on Monday, Aug. 16 at 10:30 after the season premiere of Weeds. Showtime has posted the pilot episode online at its web site. You can watch it here to see if Linney’s turn as a cancer patient has you as intrigued as I am.

Image credit: Hendrik Kerstens/New York Times.

Showtime Releases Promo for New Dramedy 'The Big C'

Whenever I think of Laura Linney, I envision her as either in her Emmy winning role of Abigail Adams in the fabulous HBO mini-series John Adams or as the angsty, off-beat mom in The Squid and the Whale. But based on the freshly released trailer for her upcoming Showtime dramedy The Big C -- which is slated to begin this summer -- I think that may change.

Linney's high school teacher character is, according to Showtime's web site, "a reserved suburban wife and mother whose recent cancer diagnosis forces her to shake up her life and find hope, humor and the light side of a dark situation, while managing her immature but well-meaning husband, played by Oliver Platt."

Finding humor in cancer seems like it could be a risky proposition, particularly if the writers have Linney's character's cancer be terminal, as writers have with the Breaking Bad lead character. But can cancer be funny? We'll have to see. Showtime's already managed to walk a fine line and have a show about a suburban mom struggling with multiple personalities work -- plus net its star an Emmy -- so who knows?

Showtime just released a preview -- featuring Gabourey Sidibe (from Precious) as one of her students -- what do you think, can a comedy about a cancer patient work?

SAG Awards, A Lot Like the Golden Globes

If you wanted to predict who'd win the Screen Actors Guild Awards last night, all you needed to do was to look at the list of winners from the Golden Globes and put the bulk of your money on the Globe winners, the glaring exceptions being for the leading actor/actress categories.

In the film category, Slumdog Millionaire was again crowned king. (Still haven't seen it yet, but the incessant drum beat of critical and awards acclaim is going to prompt me to do so. Only hope that the massive hype doesn't lead to disappointment.) Kate Winslet and Heath Ledger each won awards for their supporting work in the films The Reader and The Dark Knight, respectively.

In TV land, 30 Rock won for best comedy, while my beloved Mad Men won again for best drama. Tina Fey and Alec Baldwin collected more statues as the best comedic actors on TV. Paul Giamatti and Laura Linney, who played John and Abigail Adams in HBO's fabulous miniseries John Adams, won for best actors in the TV movie/miniseries categories.

However it was in the lead actor/actress categories where the actors' votes differed from those of the members of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association.

Meryl Streep won a SAG award for playing a nun in Doubt, while Sean Penn was victorious for playing gay activist Harvey Milk in Milk. (Golden Globes for actors in a dramatic film went to Mickey Rourke for The Wrestler and Kate Winslet for Revolutionary Road.)

The awards for best actors in TV dramas went to two network actors Hugh Laurie, who's a great curmudgeon as Dr. Gregory House on House, and Sally Field, who plays the matriarch on Brothers & Sisters. (The Golden Globes went to two HBO shows, Gabriel Byrne for In Treatment and Anna Paquin for True Blood.)

Emmy Noms: The Good, The Snubbed

I pick up my pom-poms and cheerlead for my favorite Emmy nominations in my latest Mommy Track'd column where I dissect how shows featuring parental storylines fared.

Among the good nominations: Of course, the ones for Mad Men (drama series and leading hottie/haunted bad boy/suburban dad Jon Hamm), Chandra Wilson for Grey's Anatomy, Julia Louis-Dreyfus for The New Adventures of Old Christine and Laura Linney for John Adams.

The snubbed: The football drama Friday Night Lights, the powerful sex therapy drama Tell Me You Love Me and Jeanne Tripplehorn's "first wife" in a three-spouse polygamist marriage in Big Love (pictured above).

The full list of the nominees can be found here.

What do you think blog readers? Who deserves to win an Emmy? Who was really robbed by not even getting a nomination? Your turn to chime in.

Image credit: HBO.

What Do You Get for a 232-Year Anniversary?

I know that the first anniversary is paper. The 25th anniversary is silver. The 50th gold. But what about the 232nd? Friday will mark the 232nd anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence . . . provided I did my grade school math correctly. Given the recent attention paid to the critically acclaimed HBO miniseries John Adams (great series, though not for young kids, pretty brutal tar and feathering scene, among others) people's interest in all things Revolutionary have been rekindled. (Programming note: HBO is running a marathon of the Adams series all day on July 4.)

I live in Massachusetts, therefore my view of the Revolutionary War may be skewed because, as one might expect, the Colonial era gets lots of play here. We have, count 'em, not one, but two tricornered hats in our house, including one that my husband bought our boys when they got up in the wee hours of the morning this spring to go to Lexington to see the reenactment of the battle on the Lexington green, preceded by Paul Revere's famous ride, on Patriots Day, a day off for public employees in Massachusetts. (My daughter and I slept late and watched the early Boston Red Sox game on TV.)

But what gets lost during the modern American celebration of July 4 -- particularly this year because it falls on a Friday, which means it'll be a three-day weekend filled with barbecue bonanzas across the fruited plain -- is the actual document whose approval we're commemorating. Now I'm the first to admit that I'm a tad bit of a history/politics geek who really admires documents like the Declaration of Independence and am fond of reading it aloud to my three kids when it's published in the Boston Globe each year . . . even if the kids do lose interest by the second paragraph.

However this year is an election year, some consider it an historic election year. We have the summer Olympics coming up soon. And, lest we forget, we have active duty troops fighting and dying on behalf of our nation in multiple fronts overseas. So why not -- just for a moment before your barbecue, ballgame, fireworks or celebratory beverage(s) of your choice -- recall the reason for the day:

We hold these truths to be self-evident: That all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; that, to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed; that whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute a new government, laying its foundation on such principles, and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.

There endeth the history lesson. Go forth (no pun intended) and glory in your American freedoms and be thankful we don't live in a country where armed militias come to your house and force you at gunpoint to go and vote for someone who you do not support under penalty of injury or death, as happened in another corner of the globe just a few days ago. Voting in America, circa 2008, is a walk in the park by comparison.

Image credit: History Channel.