Michelle Forbes Wishes More People Would Watch "Durham County"

[JamesG]

Michelle Forbes Talks "Durham County" and How She Wishes More People Watched It
by Chris Jancelewicz
posted Sep 2nd 2010


Michelle Forbes is a rare breed of actor; ever the chameleon, she nomadically jumps from show to show, giving us just a taste of her ability. She then moves on to her next role to stun us once again.

Most recently, Forbes played a maenad on vampire hit "True Blood" and the icy Admiral Cain on "Battlestar Galactica".






One role that Forbes treasures is one you probably don't know her for, which is as demented psychologist Dr. Penelope Verrity in the second season of Canadian-made-and-produced "Durham County".

It's a dark, dark role in an avant-garde show, and it mostly went under the radar.




TV Squad sat down with Forbes to discuss why she wishes everyone knew about "Durham County":









I'm going to be straight with you. I'd never seen "Durham County", and many of my counterparts haven't, either.

But when I watched the second season, I was blown away. It's nothing like other Canadian TV shows; it's dark, avant-garde and definitely out of the box.

"Durham County" was a real game-changer in terms of Canadian television. It swept the Geminis [Canadian TV/Movie awards] for its first season...

And yet, no one in Canada (or the U.S. for that matter) really knows about the show. I was really quite shocked that people weren't seeing it as a show with a profound Canadian voice.




I mean, this is a show that wasn't copied from an American show – so many Canadian shows are – which usually results in a watered-down version.

That's what I think is smart about "Durham County". It's not derivative of anything American. It's more in the vein of the BBC miniseries I grew up with.











Yeah, it's too bad that most Canadians and Americans missed the first two seasons of "Durham County".

Everyone always wants to talk about "True Blood" and "BSG" – no one's even interested in "Durham County".

It blew my mind when I came to Canada and no one asked me about the show. So many people didn't even know about it. They didn't even know it was on the air!

It's very curious to me.











Your character on "Durham County", Dr. Penelope Verrity, was also really great, and quite intimidating.

Yes, she is. I always approach these characters from a different place, so I only see her as a very deeply sad individual.

She's intense, and desperate for love. She was heartbreaking to me. She did some awful things, but they all came from heartbreak.



So often in TV, when you have an antagonist who's supposed to be the "big baddie," it's so easy for them to become clichéd.

What I love about what Adrienne [Mitchell], Janis [Lundman] and Laurie [Finstad-Knizhnik] did is they tried to get viewers to understand why Pen behaved the way she did. It makes this a provocative and engaging bit of television, for sure.






Every time Pen did something, I was cringing. I wanted to yell 'Stop!'

I'm glad to hear you say that ... I wanted that to come across.

She's mentally ill and driven by her compulsions. Like any addict or alcoholic, you put a lid on it for a moment, but then you're right back into it a few seconds later. When someone is being chased by their own terrors, they slowly lose their mind. It was a devastating place to be



The core of this woman is failure. She failed as a wife, she failed as a daughter, she failed as a sister, and she failed as a mother – the one thing women are biologically "supposed" to do.

She couldn't do it. She failed on every level.






Did it mess you up at all?

It kind of did, and I'm not that kind of actor who gets all affected by things. It seeped in.

I was very isolated in Montreal. Thankfully it was an Indian summer. Anyway, the leaves were gone, the streets were bare, and there was lots of rain.

I walked Old Montreal by myself a lot.











Did you do any psychological research?

I did quite a bit.

Weirdly, there isn't a lot out there about women who kill. Women who kill their children do so for many different reasons. Andrea Yates was someone I looked at quite a bit. Susan Smith was another. Very different women, very different disorders.


I did a show called "Wonderland" a few years back, and I was fortunate enough to spend a full-on two weeks – I'm talking 13-15 hours a day – with the doctors and patients at Bellevue in New York.

That served me well for "Durham County".






How about your castmates? How was the chemistry there?
I especially liked the girl that played your daughter.

Oh, Laurence [Lebeouf]. She is a revelation.

Every once in a while you come across one of those actors and you realize you've learned so much from them. She was an absolute gem.

Everyone on this cast was just wonderful. In many ways it was great to get out of Hollywood.

http://www.tvsquad.com/2010/09/02/mi...nty-interview/