Betsy Brandt lightens up
Betsy Brandt is happy - really, really happy. The 43-year-old, best known for portraying Walter White’s kleptomaniac sister-in-law Marie Schrader in Breaking Bad, is having the time of her life playing stay-at-home mother Heather in the comedy series Life In Pieces.
‘‘I love that Heather’s happy. She is pretty darned happy and it is so much fun to play,’’ Brandt says, from the Los Angeles home she shares with her husband of 20 years, software executive Grady Olsen, and their two children, Freddie and Josephine.
‘‘I feel like my character on Breaking Bad, it wasn’t that she didn’t appreciate things but she was never happy. She was never satisfied and I feel like Heather thinks life is really good.
‘‘Don’t get me wrong, we had a great time on Breaking Bad. I would have done that show for 20 years if I could have but there were days where it was like ‘I’m having chest pains’ because it was just so heavy.’’
Life In Pieces is the polar opposite. The series chronicles the lives of three generations of the Short family - parents John and Joan (James Brolin and Diane Wiest), their adult children Heather (Betsy Brandt), Matt (Thomas Sadoski) and Greg (Colin Hanks).
Each episode is told as four short stories, one for each branch of the Short family.
‘‘I’m wildly proud of this show,’’ says Brandt. ’’If you were to ask me honestly ‘So after Breaking Bad do you want to do a network sitcom?’ my first reaction would probably have been shock and then I would have been like ‘Yeah maybe I do, if it’s a good one’, and I feel like this really is.’’
Heather is married to Dr Tim Hughes ( Veep’s Dan Bakkedahl) and they have three children - Tyler (Niall Cunningham), Samantha (Holly Barrett) and Sophia (Giselle Eisenberg).
‘‘I feel like I completely relate to Heather in a lot of ways,’’ Brandt says. ‘‘I love that she is a devout mother and I love that she loves her kids and her husband 200 per cent.
‘‘And also I love that she’s a little bit more laidback than I am. She’s probably more forgiving of herself than I am but I also love that sometimes the love she feels for her kids will cause her to do things that will catch her offguard.
The storylines also resonate with her, particularly in the first episode when Heather and Tim’s youngest daughter discovers the truth about Santa Claus.
‘‘When I read that script, I said to my husband, ‘Oh, honey, you have to read this’,’’ Brandt says.
‘‘We had just gone through that with our daughter and it was like the whole world came down.
‘‘It happened exactly like it did in the show except in my life, my daughter was like ‘So, Santa’s not real. Wait a minute, are you the tooth fairy, and are you the Easter Bunny? What about leprechauns?’ And my husband said ‘Those are real’.
‘‘He just could not take another minute more of the loss and said leprechauns are real. My daughter then asked me and I had to come clean.’’
Brandt says her young co-stars are now part of her family.
‘‘It’s a lot of fun to do and I love, love, love this cast. Usually when you have a cast that big, there might be at least one person that you’re not crazy about but I really love working with every single person in my fake family.’’
Life In Pieces, TVNZ 2, Monday. TV Guide