‘Best acting moments’ of Cox’s career in show
‘Shining Vale’ gave star opportunity to challenge herself
Courteney Cox starred in one of television’s most popular sitcoms and another that became a cult favorite. But she will be the first to tell you that, these days, people haven’t exactly been clamoring to get her to do their TV shows. About five years ago, she was tapped to star in and executive produce a Fox comedy called “Charity Case” that fizzled. It was the first time she’d done a TV pilot that didn’t go to series, and, she says, it made her cautious — maybe too cautious — about pursuing another.
So when she got her hands on a script for a new TV show about a woman in her 50s trying to rediscover herself, the “Friends” star, 57, picked up the phone to pitch the perfect actor for the role: Courteney Cox. The show’s co-creator, Jeff Astrof, who had worked on NBC’s beloved sitcom but hadn’t much kept in touch with Cox, remembers the actor declaring, “It’s the only thing I’ve ever done that has been written for me” — even though it wasn’t actually written for her.
On the page, “Shining Vale’s” central figure, Pat Phelps, is a former wild child and an author who gained notoriety with a bestselling romance novel. Seventeen years later, she’s feeling unfulfilled: in a creative rut and struggling to complete her second novel; her marriage on the rocks since cheating on her husband with a handyman; connecting with her two teenage kids seemingly futile. In an attempt to fix things, her family moves from Brooklyn to an old house in the suburbs of Connecticut. (Greg Kinnear plays Pat’s husband, Terry, and Mira Sorvino plays a ghost only Pat can see.)
The Starz series, debuting March 6, is both a horror and a comedy in which Pat isn’t quite sure whether she’s depressed, possessed or both. The emotional tenor felt familiar to Cox — and pushed her as an actor in ways she hadn’t explored before.
“To play someone who’s going through all this emotional stuff gave me so many opportunities,” Cox says. “Going through a midlife crisis — I understand that. Being at that stage in life where, we don’t want to say the word ‘menopause,’ but that’s what she’s dealing with. And what else ... marriage and how it’s work, man. A lot of work. And what it’s like to be a mom to a teenager — that it’s not easy. Some of the best acting moments of my whole career came from this show.”
Raised in Mountain Brook, Alabama, a suburb of Birmingham, it was hard for Cox to fathom a career as an actor. She studied architecture at Mount Vernon College in Washington, D.C., before dropping out and moving to New York, where she worked at a music agency and did some modeling and the occasional commercial spot. She landed early roles in “The Love Boat” and “Ace Ventura,” but what stands out about that time, she says, is that she “didn’t know what kind of actor I wanted to be.”
“I didn’t have the confidence to stretch myself, to push myself,” she says. “I didn’t try for things, and that’s something I really regret. I’m not a lazy person at all, but I also didn’t want to put myself in a position where I felt out of my depth . ... When I was starting out, I just wanted to get a job. Now, I want to be respected. And I want to be seen as somebody who has been around for a long time and is challenging themselves ... as opposed to we know her.”
Cox has been famous for nearly four decades, after all, garnering attention with her appearance in Bruce Springsteen’s 1984 “Dancing in the Dark” music video and a run on “Family Ties” before her career took off with her starring role as uptight, cleanfreak chef Monica Geller on “Friends,” which catapulted the cast into dizzying fame. But with the megahit sitcom’s continued popularity, first in syndication and then in streaming, and the longevity of the “Scream” franchise, carving out a new niche has required Cox to get creative.
Three years after “Friends” ended, she executive produced and starred in FX’s two-season drama “Dirt,” where she played the editor-in-chief of a glossy tabloid magazine — a role reversal for Cox, whose life often provided fodder for the supermarket checkout line. She had a longer run as divorced single mother Jules Cobb in “Cougar Town,” an ABC-turned-TBS sitcom that tackled sex, aging and parenting with its cul-de-sac clan over a six-season run; she also executive produced and directed several of its episodes. And she recently executive produced three seasons of the Facebook Watch docuseries “9 Months With Courteney Cox.”
But, Cox says of “Shining Vale”: “It’s been a while since I acted (on this scale). This role has helped me find a new excitement in it.”
Though it’s built on two genres she’s intimately familiar with, her role in “Shining Vale” forced her to take a new approach: To prepare, Cox worked with an acting coach, Nancy Banks. Cox credits Banks with helping her find new depth at this stage in her career, achieved through intense script analysis that Banks calls “detective work.”
“That was a game-changer as far as reinvigorating my love for acting,” Cox says. “Now, I would never do an episode or scene without running things by her or talking it through. Nancy just makes things more interesting — things that I wouldn’t see it that way. And so it really brought a lot of joy to this part, for sure.”
“Shining Vale” co-creator Sharon Horgan, who has become known for crafting complicated women protagonists in shows like “Divorce” and “Catastrophe,” says that spark comes through on-screen, conjuring a character that Cox says felt most like herself yet transforms what we’ve known her to be.
“The greatest thing was how much she connected with the character,” Horgan says. “And when someone really wants to play something, it’s just so infectious and exciting. But we couldn’t have guessed that she would have brought it to the extent that she did. It’s not her. She’s not playing herself in any way. It’s a real transformation — and exciting, I think, for people to see her playing that kind of character.”
It’s clear Cox has found — or perhaps is still finding — a certain balance, embracing the legacy of “Friends” without being constrained by it.
“I want to be remembered as Monica,” she says. “But I’d also like to have something else . ... I want to make a mark not just as one character but as other characters and other successes. I have a lot more to do. I have a lot more to show.”