"I try to avoid playing real people," says Edie Falco. "It's not something I enjoy."
Perhaps not, but audiences certainly enjoy watching her do it.
The first time, in the 2017 NBC limited series Law & Order True Crime: The Menendez Murders, Falco starred as Leslie Abramson, the attorney who defended Erik and Lyle Menendez, the brothers charged with killing their parents at the family's Beverly Hills home in 1989. She earned an Emmy nomination for her performance.
It was the fourteenth Emmy nom of her career; she has won four: three for the HBO drama The Sopranos, once for the Showtime comedy Nurse Jackie.
More recently, Falco has received praise for her performance as former First Lady Hillary Clinton in another limited series based on a real-life scandal, FX's Impeachment: American Crime Story. The 10-episode drama reexamines the events surrounding the affair between President Bill Clinton — played by Clive Owen — and former White House intern Monica Lewinsky — played by Beanie Feldstein — from the perspective of the women involved.
Others include Sarah Paulson as Lewinsky's duplicitous confidante Linda Tripp; Annaleigh Ashford as Paula Jones, the former Arkansas state employee who sued Bill Clinton for sexual harassment; Judith Light as Susan Carpenter-McMillan, who advised Jones and acted as her spokesperson during the legal process; Cobie Smulders as conservative pundit Ann Coulter; and Margo Martindale as literary agent Lucianne Goldberg.
While she appreciates the compliments for her work, Falco emphasizes that, however authentically she may have captured these two high-powered public figures, her performances were, well, performances.
"I'm not Leslie, and I'm not Hillary," she says. "I'm just an actress telling the story from an imagined point of view."
Emmy contributor Margy Rochlin spoke with the New York-based Falco on the Impeachment set during the show's Los Angeles shoot.
What is the entry point for women with Hillary Clinton?
I think the real Hillary is very relatable, whoever that is. The person underneath all of that. But not many of us have ever gotten to see that. Either when she was the politician's wife or when she was Secretary of State or when she was a candidate, she was all these different versions of what people told her she was supposed to be.
I think she's a woman who's smart and learned, funny, kind, spiritual. We live in a culture where all this shit with social media and every single thing one does can be documented now. I don't know if there's ever been anyone as qualified to run for the office of president. But there's so much bullshit around it, like who her husband is and the way that thing went down and people's idea of who she is or whether or not she made the right comment in regard to that. It's just such nonsense that she just didn't get, in general, a fair shake of things.
There's a fantasy where she could have come right out of the chute, right out of college as she was, with her big, round glasses and her long ponytail, and that's the woman who could have traveled through all these years and really taken this country to a spectacular place. But she's had so many voices to listen to, and she's the wife of this man, which is complicated.
Did you mostly just work with Clive?
Yes, mostly just me and Clive.
Like a two-hander.
That's it. I finally met Beanie today. These are people I don't get to work with. I keep hearing there's all these great people who worked on this project, and I'm like, "Really? Who?"
Did you do a lot of research on Hillary? Or did you feel like you already knew what you needed to know?
You mean in order to do this? No. The notion of research is a complicated one. Because I don't have a formula in regard to what I do to prepare. I try to avoid playing real people. It's not something I enjoy.
Besides Leslie Abramson?
That's it. And I have to say, I'm not crazy about it. I can, or the audience can, get caught up in whether it is an accurate portrayal from a sensory point of view, and you miss the story. If I'm telling the story of a person who doesn't actually exist outside of the imagination of the writers and me and costume people, nobody can tell me I'm doing it wrong.
So, I hope people are able to just sit and listen to the story of this woman who was married to this president.
Given that, did you think there were key things that were going to help telegraph Hillary to the viewer?
It helped a lot to listen to — not to watch so much, but to listen to — the tons of footage that's available of her online, just how her accent was sort of fluid over the years. Sometimes she'd have a really thick one. And sometimes it sounded Southern. Sometimes it sounded like Chicago, or sometimes it was nothing. It depended on what the year was. And she tended to — which is something we all do — she kind of became what she needed to be to interact with whatever group she was with. It was not changing the essence of who [she] was.
I mean, I know I do it, too. I feel like I might be able to bring a person in more fully — and this all on a deeply subconscious, unconscious level — if I talk a little differently. I talk more quickly; I make more jokes or whatever. There was a lot of that with her. She was really quite like a chameleon in that regard.
When you were cast, stories always ran with photos of you and Hillary side by side. The resemblance is striking.
Oh, gosh. Well, isn't that funny? I don't think so at all. I would look at pictures of her, and then pictures of me, and I was like, "No, I really don't look like her." (Laughs) But this is what these things are. You sort of approximate the hairstyles, the clothing of that period, of that person married to that man. The idea of doing prosthetics to look more like her was not something that was interesting to me.
There's a certain shape to your faces.
I didn't think so at all. It seemed very different.
Did you have a diction coach?
No. I think listening to the tapes was very helpful. She was to a large degree always trying to explain something, so more didactic maybe, a little more deliberate than if she was just talking to someone.
My accent is not terribly far from hers. With someone like Clive, who's from England, he had a long way to go to get to Bill. I'm always so impressed by Australians and British actors. Their American accents are so much better than Americans' English accents. I think it's just that there's so much American television everywhere in the world that they've gotten to listen to their whole lives. I'm jealous [of that].
Can you tell me about the first scene you and Clive shot?
When I first met Clive, he was done up as Bill. He was always done up as Bill. The first day we met was when we were doing still photos to put into the Oval Office. Of course, I know who Clive Owen is, but I didn't have a very specific idea of what he looked like.
At first, I thought, "Wow, I guess he looks different than my memory [of him]." Until I found out, I don't know, the fourth or fifth time we shot together, he's totally got prosthetics and that it's a wig. And I'm standing next to the guy, and I didn't know that because, I mean, the stuff is that good.
So, you met him for a still photo shoot and...
And he was funny and nice and kind and all that. What was the first scene we shot? I think it was a kind of important one. (Long pause) Oh, gosh. I remember thinking, "I wish we weren't starting with this." It's where a story appears in the paper, and he just throws it on the bed. I'm sleeping and he wakes me up with this story and she's surprised by that news.
It was a little alarming to [me to] wake up in the presidential bedroom with Bill Clinton. It was a bit of a jarring shot out of a cannon. But I've been doing this a long time. Just sort of jump right in.
In the first three episodes, your role is quite fleeting. You're the great Edie Falco. I mean, this sincerely. Did you always know the part would be small?
I knew going in that this was the Monica-Linda Tripp story. That this was not a story about Bill and Hilary, per se. So, I knew that. I'm not in the first big bunch of episodes. But partially because of Covid and other reasons, it's been spread out for a long time.
How long?
January is when I started. And I live in New York. I don't live here. And I have kids there, so it's been a bunch of going back and forth. But I knew. [Impeachment executive producer] Ryan [Murphy] sent me episode eight, where I have a lot to do. When he asked me if I wanted to do it, I said, "Yeah, sure."
I didn't see any other scripts. But I was, like, I know it's not her story. So, I can't expect that there will be more than a couple episodes where I really get to do [a lot]. None of it was surprising.
What was the thing in episode eight that jumped out at you, that made you think, "I want to do this?"
It was exactly the scenes — and this is my fantasy — that the whole world wonders about. What was it like when she found out that he really had been with Monica — even after he told her he wasn't? What did that look like? And here is an approximation of that.
The scenes, as written, were very interesting and moving. Your heart breaks for this woman trying to navigate this very public life that she has with the man that she loves. So those were the scenes that made me think, "Yeah, sure, I'll get in there and give it my best."
Was your mind changed about playing real people?
I have to say, it has been daunting throughout. It's funny, because when I first met Clive, he said to me, "Well, luckily, nobody's ever heard of these people." (Laughs hard) We both looked at each other, like, "What have we gotten into?"
I have so much respect for Hillary. She's a real role model. At the same time, from my vantage point, she really loves this guy. They really do love each other. And that plays into a lot of this too.
I heard a rumor that the Clintons had heard that this was happening, and they were not happy. And that kind of broke my heart. But of course, they're not going to be happy. Who wants to bring this shit up again? I went after this with the utmost respect for both of them.
Did you ever meet Leslie Abramson?
No, she just wanted nothing to do with it.
What do you think would happen if you saw someone you portrayed on the street?
I feel very separate from it. I'm not her. I'm not Leslie and I'm not Hillary. I'm just an actress telling the story from an imagined point of view. So, I would never claim to actually have entered into their space.
Gilda Radner told a story about meeting Barbara Walters and Walters insisting she do Baba Wawa for her.
Ooooh. That's rough. (Laughs) Well, who the hell wants to be imitated? Kate McKinnon on SNL imitated me as Carmela [Soprano] and Nurse Jackie on another episode. It was mortifying. But she was really good. I never thought I had anything distinguishable. Oh, my God. It creeped me out. I always thought I got in under the radar. But that's what she does — and she does it really well.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
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