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Hollywood’s creeps have had their day
Heather Graham’s married to a bigamist in her first British TV role – and says she’s no stranger to manipulative men herself
She was one of the first Hollywood actresses to speak out about Harvey Weinstein and is very vocal about sexual discrimination in the film industry. So Heather Graham’s latest role is an interesting one. Heather, who made her name in Boogie Nights and went on to appear in Austin Powers, plays the wife of a bigamist, a man she describes as ‘really creepy’, in new Sky Atlantic comedy Bliss.
She admits that the lead character Andrew, a travel writer who has two families living in Bristol who are unaware of each other, set her teeth on edge when she first read the script. Andrew, played by Episodes actor Stephen Mangan, made two girlfriends pregnant at the same time while at university and didn’t have the heart to break off with either of them. And now he manages to escape each family by pretending he’s off working on travel assignments when he leaves them.
On one side of Bristol is nervous stay-at-home mother Kim, played by Heather, and their teenage daughter Christina (Hannah Millward). On the other side of the city is his other wife, working mum Denise, played by Jo Hartley, and their teenage son Kris (Spike White). Both his wives are always thrilled to have him home, even though they struggle to understand why he needs to be away so much. And once he’s in his office, he copies travel guides to write his stories; so he’s a plagiarist as well as a bigamist. In short, he’s not the most loveable comedy hero.
‘ He has these two families who don’t know about each other, even though they live in the same city,’ says Heather, who turns 48 this month. ‘Bizarrely this does happen and men do do this. It is so creepy but when I read the script I also thought it was really funny. The soundtrack to the show is the Beach Boys song Wouldn’t It Be Nice, because in some ways he is living every guy’s dream. He’s sleeping with two women.
‘But you quickly see that he’s insane for trying to do this. He’s driving himself crazy and it seems like a miserable existence. It’s strange that men do this – and it usually is men. But it makes for hilarious comedy.
‘There is something likeable about him even though what he is doing is really terrible. It’s very dark. But in the way it’s been written he seems like a bit of an idiot while both of his wives are pretty cool. They are good loving people who are trying to do the best they can and be good mums.’
The show is written and directed by former Arrested Development actor David Cross and Heather says it was David who persuaded her to make her first ever British television show. ‘I’ve always been a big fan of David and so when he sent me the script I was excited that he thought of me,’ she says. ‘And I’m looking forward to my first British television project. In America we really look up to British TV as having the most amazing shows and being really classy – maybe because we only get the best ones, but I love comedies like The Office and dramas like Downton Abbey and Sherlock.’
She admits she’d never seen any of Stephen’s work but started catching up on his greatest hits. ‘He’s hilarious,’ she says. ‘ I watched Green Wing. I haven’t watched Episodes yet, although I hear it’s great.’
Milwaukee- born Heather, the daughter of a retired FBI agent, is best known for her role as the vulnerable porn star Roller Girl in 1997’s Boogie Nights, as well as Felicity Shagwell in the second Austin Powers movie and Jade in The Hangover. She has never married or had children but has dated some of the most famous men in Hollywood including Leonardo DiCaprio, Russell Crowe, Kyle MacLachlan, Matt Dillon and Matthew Perry. Her first love was British pop star Adam Ant, who she met in the early 1990s on an acting course and lived with for two years. She recently split from film producer Tommy Alastra and insists, ‘I’d rather be happily single than unhappily married.’
With her long strawberry blonde hair and doe eyes, she has found that proving she’s more than just her looks with challenging film roles has been difficult. In fact, she’s sometimes felt the only way to find a good part is to write it herself – hence next month’s release of Half Magic, a film she wrote, directed and also appears in. It’s a comedy about female friendship, but one of the characters works in the film industry and the story, written long before the current sexism buzz, depicts just how misogynistic Hollywood is. ‘One of the characters works for a director who is constantly sexually harassing her,’ she says. ‘She’s trying to make movies about women in Hollywood and he tells her, “Nobody cares about women’s stories, if you want to get a movie made, write about a man.” That’s what I’ve been told in the past when I’ve tried to get movies made. It makes you realise there is a degree of sexism in everything we watch.
‘So this movie was made out of my frustration and wanting to laugh at how hard it is to be a woman in the entertainment industry. The character is sexually harassed throughout the movie; that’s happened to me too and it’s ironic it’s coming out now, after all this stuff has been in the news.’
She is, of course, referring to the scandal that came to light when Harvey Weinstein’s sexual abuse and harassment of young actresses was first revealed in a New York Times article last October, triggering a landslide of similar accusations. After the news
‘I was told if you want to get a movie made, write about a man’
broke, Heather was one of the first to reveal that she too had been propositioned by the disgraced mogul. She wrote an article for the trade magazine Variety which revealed what happened when she was called to see him at his office in the early 2000s.
She wrote, ‘There was a pile of scripts sitting on his desk. “I want to put you in one of my movies,” he said, and offered to let me choose which one I liked best. Later in the conversation, he mentioned that he had an agreement with his wife. He could sleep with whomever he wanted when he was out of town. I walked out of the meeting feeling uneasy. There was no explicit mention that to star in one of those films I had to sleep with him, but the subtext was there.’
She went on to describe how she asked a friend to accompany her to a follow-up meeting, as it was to be at Weinstein’s hotel, but when the friend couldn’t come, she called him to cancel. ‘I made up an excuse — I had an early morning [meeting the next day] and would have to postpone. Harvey told me that my actress friend was already at his hotel and that both of them would be very disappointed if I didn’t show. I knew he was lying, so I politely and apologetically reiterated that I could no longer come by. That was the end of that encounter — I was never hired for one of his films, and I didn’t speak up about my experience... If I had spoken up a decade ago, would I have saved countless women from the same experience I had or worse?’
Today, she says, ‘In the past when women talked about things like this they weren’t taken seriously. But it feels like times are changing. When Harvey Weinstein was sacked I was shocked. I was surprised that people actually cared. It made me so happy!’
Lucky isn’t the right word for the fact that Heather’s movie about sexism is coming out at this particular time; she just hopes that people now have a better understanding of what she wrote about. ‘I made my movie as a comedy because I wanted to get my message in under the radar and make it funny,’ she says. ‘It’s not in-your-face feminist but it does have a feminist message about sexism.’
And while progress may be slow – even with the show of solidarity at the recent Golden Globes awards, where many actresses wore black to support the anti-harassment cause – she is positive that things will change in Hollywood. ‘Unlike in the past where people didn’t take the women, or the men, making a complaint seriously they are now. People are losing their jobs. They’re aware this isn’t acceptable behaviour and that women won’t put up with it. The jerks, the real-life creeps, need to understand that they can’t behave like this any more.’ Bliss starts on Sky One next month.
‘If I’d spoken up before, would I have saved other women?’