WHAT’S SO FUNNY?
Falco says ‘Nurse Jackie’ is not a comedy
Five years after her portrayal of Jackie Peyton in “Nurse Jackie” won her an Emmy as best actress in a comedy series, Edie Falco has just one reser vation.
She still doesn’t think the series is a comedy. As “Nurse Jackie” launches its seventh and final season Sunday (Showtime, 9 p.m.), Falco reasons that a nurse addicted to prescription painkillers isn’t a comedy character, even if she sometimes says funny, sarcastic things.
“Humor is a necessary part of working in an ER,” Falco says. “It’s one of the ways you keep your wits about you.
“But ‘The Sopranos’ had funny moments, too, and no one called that a comedy. Comedy is ‘30 Rock.’ Not ‘Nurse Jackie.’ And at this point, they can't fire me for saying it.”
Okay, Falco isn’t going to give back the Emmy, which keeps company with the three earlier “best actress in a drama” Emmys she won for playing Carmela Soprano on HBO’s “The Sopranos.”
Falco also isn’t knocking the show. She talks about “Nurse Jackie” with affection.
But neither will she stop shaking her head that it was submitted for awards in the “comedy” category, maybe in part because she remembers how the show started. “The first script was called ‘Nurse Marie,’” she says. “It was really dark. She was angry. And there’s still some of that in it.”
Jackie’s addiction over the past six seasons has rarely affected her patients. Instead it has blown up her family and scorched many of her friends and colleagues.
Falco, who has spoken in the past about her own alcohol addiction issues, says those kinds of consequences can’t be blithely rechanneled into funny.
“I think Jackie would love to be a good person,” says Falco. “Maybe that’s why she chose this line of work. But at a certain point you’re at the mercy of your addictions. If you’re an addict, those things happen.”
One of the things she likes about “Nurse Jackie” is that she feels it handles Jackie’s addiction well.
“I asked only that addiction be true to life,” she says. “What it feels like. It’s the TV version of struggles, but it’s still struggles. People have stopped me in the street and said yeah, that’s how it is. That makes me feel good.”
For herself, the 51-year-old Falco says most of her life these days is back at home with her two adopted pre-teen children, Anderson and Macy.
“When I finish shooting, I leave it all behind,” she says. “I didn’t used to. But I don’t think it makes you a better actor to hang onto it. I want to be present for my home life. My kids are still pretty young.”
It helps to be doing a cable show, where the seasons have run 10-12 episodes, rather than a broadcast network series where the season is twice as long. “I don’t know how anyone does 26 episodes a year,” she says. “When we finish a season, I just go back home and get into my not-working lifestyle. If nothing great comes along, I can pick up a hobby.”
At the same time, she doesn’t sound like she’s about to retire, and she’s delighted that a nontraditional show like “Nurse Jackie” turned into a hit. “This is television,” she says. “I know how it works. We’d have been very happy with three years and we got seven.”
At some point, she says, she’s hoping to do more live theater. She’s done short runs in several Broadway productions, most recently winning a Drama Desk Award and a Tony nomination in 2011 for “The House of Blue Leaves.” Whatever else she does, of course, probably including “Nurse Jackie,” will always be seen by many contemporary television fans as “the other stuff” that wasn’t “The Sopranos.”
Falco says she’s aware of that, and aware how invested “Sopranos” fans became in everything up to and including the series’ controversial ending.
“I still get stopped on the street,” she says, “by someone saying, ‘What the hell was that?’”
As for her own view of the ending, she’s happy to leave it up to individual assessment. “I’m glad it was not my decision,” she says. “I think your perception changes when you step outside it.” Which she says she does. “People will refer to ‘The Sopranos’ and I almost forget I was a part of it,” she says. “It’s thrilling that I was, but no, I don’t know that I see anything in my life that comes from Carmela. Or Jackie.”
Even when she says something funny.