By Christopher Wallenberg
22 Dec 2011
Griffiths' career first started to blast off with her breakthrough role as the sharp-tongued, free-spirited friend of Toni Collette's title character in the 1994 Australian indie "Muriel's Wedding," which became an international hit. A few years later, she scored critical kudos and a Best Supporting Actress Oscar nomination for the acclaimed 1998 film "Hilary and Jackie" (alongside Emily Watson). However, it was the groundbreaking HBO series "Six Feet Under," created by Alan Ball, that propelled her to wider cultural renown in the States. Centered around a family-owned funeral home and the dysfunctional yet empathetic members of its clan, the show (along with HBO stable mate "The Sopranos") was a game-changer in the world of TV drama. "We were inventing television on the far edges of what had ever been done before," says Griffiths.
Griffiths in "Muriel's Wedding."
Her trailblazing character, Brenda Chenowith, was the kind of complex, outspoken, yet enigmatic female figure that has since become a staple of the cable TV universe (the latest: Claire Danes' Carrie Mathison on the new Showtime series "Homeland"). Declared a genius at the age of 6, Brenda was placed in the care of psychiatrists who scrutinized her every move, with her early childhood at the center of a famous psychology tome titled "Charlotte Light and Dark."
Riddled by self-doubt and serious self-sabotaging tendencies, Brenda grappled with a seemingly endless torrent of personal challenges — including sex addiction, a tumultuous relationship with her parents, a manic-depressive brother, a roller-coaster love affair with her boyfriend-turned-husband Nate, and his eventual death after he unceremoniously dumped her on his deathbed.
"I think Alan Ball created a female character that had never really been seen on television before and that was completely unbound by what a female character on television was supposed to be. And we were depicting the sexual lives of women in a very candid way…I also think it was me not limiting the character based on what I thought a female character had to be on television. I approached it in a similar way to all these indie movies I'd been doing."
"Some fans couldn't stand her. I remember, Peter Krause [who played Nate] was driving across America, and he was in the middle of nowhere at some truck stop. And this guy comes up to him and is like, 'Hey! You that dude?! You that dude on that show about the dead people?'" explains Griffiths, adopting a thick backwoods-hillbilly inflection. "And Peter's like, 'Uh, yeah.' And the guy goes, 'Hey, what you gonna do about that girlfriend of yours? You gonna kill her, man?! I'd f---in' kill her! You gotta put the bullet in her!'" Griffiths continues, punctuated with a gale of bemused laughter.
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| Griffiths and Peter Krause in "Six Feet Under." |
But for Griffiths, playing Brenda proved to be a deeply fulfilling acting experience. "I just fell for her whole psychic complexity. I loved that she was complicated. I've always said: As long as I can play characters as complicated as I am — and often more complicated — then I won't be bored."
The success of "Six Feet Under" and other likeminded cable series, she thinks, is a reflection of a contemporary writing sensibility that combines the bleak and tragic with wacky or withering comedy.
"Alan [Ball] knew he couldn't go torture us longer than six minutes without the best fucking joke we'd heard. We'd laugh our asses off and just feel like we're on this roller-coaster. I think the best contemporary writing in film and TV and the theatre — and you know Robbie [Jon Robin Baitz] does it — is about laughing in the face of death," she says. "And I'm comfortable in that. I can play both edges. I think it's our generation. We want it mixed up a little bit. We don't want to feel safe in just a straight comedy, and nor do we want to put through two hours of drama without the odd relief."
A memorable moment in "Six Feet Under" that exemplified the mingling of pathos, despair, and leavening comedy was when Maggie, who slept with Nate right before he died, showed up at Brenda's house to offer an olive branch and perhaps seek forgiveness. "I brought you a quiche," said Maggie, a soft-spoken Quaker. To which a distraught Brenda, mourning Nate's death in the wake of their marital trouble, replied with a retort so withering it could've melted steel, "What is this some kind of bizarre Quaker thing? You f--- someone's husband to death, and then bring 'em a quiche?" before slamming the door in her face.
"I like big transitions, those heady moments of flipping-a-scene-on-its-head or taking an audience from a laugh to a cry," Griffiths says, snapping her fingers. "Which Stockard does in this show, too. You're laughing at the beginning of a line, and by the end of the line, the actor has taken you to a whole other place. That's exciting. It's kind of gymnastic and athletic, and it's what keeps it super-interesting."
"Brothers and Sisters" was a different kind of experience. She thoroughly enjoyed playing Sarah Walker, a more level-headed character than Brenda but one who had her own outbursts of scathing wit and brutal honesty. There were big aspirations for the show, considering the pedigree of the cast and creative team.
But Griffiths acknowledges that working on a broadcast network series was an up-and-down creative experience, especially when it came to the meddling of some executives and producers. "Working in a network environment, there were compromises and crazy shit going down that was much less negotiable [than with 'Six Feet Under']. You would be asked to do stuff that made no sense. And then people would tell you that the reason it made no sense was because they'd received a very nonsensical note from someone that made no sense. And yet there was no recourse."
Indeed, after one and a half seasons shepherding the series he created, Baitz was forced out after increasingly agitated creative differences with the network and other producers. Baitz has said he wanted to explore thorny issues of race, sexuality, and politics within a family of smart, middle-aged characters, and he lamented the show's increasing focus on the younger demographic and soapier shorelines. Still, Griffiths says that Baitz's exit from "Brothers and Sisters" was the absolute best move for him.
"I felt it was probably time for Robbie to stop, because it was costing him too much. He was still trying to do something extraordinary in an atmosphere where that was extraordinarily difficult to insist on doing. For his self-preservation as an artist, I think it was better that he stopped getting beaten up with baseball bats by a bunch of opinions," she said. "Having said that, I think it made him a better writer. You know, this play has drive. It really looks after an audience. It's so satisfying — the plotting and the unveiling of secrets."
Continued...
