TALE OF CHURCH & ESTATE
Kim Cattrall is a God-fearing widow in ‘Filthy Rich’
Kim Cattrall found God in the Deep South.
At least her character did. The “Sex and the City” alum is returning to her roots on network TV as Margaret Monreaux in “Filthy Rich,” Tate Taylor’s Gothic drama about an uberwealthy New Orleans family reeling from the loss of their patriarch and head of their Christian TV network in a plane crash.
Margaret is left with her mansion, her jewels, her loyal TV viewers and three of her late husband’s illegitimate children whom she only learned about in his will.
“One of the questions that is so clear for Margaret that is not clear for me is faith,” Cattrall told the Daily News. “She puts all of her troubles and her challenges over to a higher power.”
In true soap opera fashion, “Filthy Rich” is loaded with secrets and scantily clad women — in this saga, strippers who work for Ginger Sweet (Melia Kreiling), one of Margaret’s new stepchildren.
Sharing the drama are Antonio (Benjamin Levy Aguilar), a single dad and boxer, and Jason (Mark L. Young), a weed dealer from Colorado with his own secrets, as well as Margaret’s two children, Rose (Aubrey Dollar), a wannabe fashion designer trapped by her mother’s expectations, and Eric (Corey Cott), the vice president of the Sunshine Network and heir apparent to his father’s empire.
“We’re very polarized as people right now and I wanted every person to be represented in the show,” Taylor, best known for directing “The Help” and “Get on Up,” told The News.
Taylor, who has worked primarily in movies, said he wanted a TV project that would give him more than two hours to “play with the characters.” c
“Filthy Rich,” with largerthan-life roles, gave him not ju ust that, but also an opportunity t to go home to the South, where he was raised in n Mississippi.
“People got big mouths down d there,” Taylor joked. “I just wanted the flavor.”
It’s a tricky balance to both honor the regional delicacies and mock them, Taylor said. It gets even trickier when religion is involved.
“All religions have some group that have hijacked them, the extremists,” Taylor, who called himself “culturally Christian but not deeply religious,” told The News. “This is for all my friends out there who are Christian, but that doesn’t mean that they’re judgy or fanatical. We’re not making fun of anybody.”
Though “Filthy Rich” survives on big hair and bigger scandals, Cattrall said she was drawn to the quieter aspects of Margaret.
“The vulnerability I wanted to show was her private side, which we all have. When Margaret is talking to God, she is herself, she is completely herself. She can cry and she can laugh and she can throw her slingbacks in the corner and scream at God,” Cattrall told The News.
“But she would never let anybody see that. To let her guard down in public is just not her way. When you get to peer underneath that in a private moment, that’s when the prayer became a relief valve.”
The series premieres Monday night on Fox.