A Gifted Man’s Leading Lady
Jennifer Ehle, best known for playing Elizabeth Bennet in BBC’s ‘Pride & Prejudice,’ co-stars in a new CBS drama. She talks to Jace Lacob about ghost sex and Mr. Darcy.
Many viewers will forever associate Jennifer Ehle with her career-making role as Elizabeth Bennet in the BBC’s Pride & Prejudice, the sumptuous adaptation of Jane Austen’s classic novel. But the 41-year old actress, the daughter of the actress Rosemary Harris and the writer John Ehle and now a mother of two, has been producing a steady body of work for both the stage and film, since she first donned a curly black wig to play Austen’s outspoken romantic heroine back in 1995. On Broadway, she won a Tony award in 2000 for The Real Thing and another in 2007 for The Coast of Utopia.
Recently, Ehle starred alongside her Darcy, Colin Firth, in The King’s Speech, though the two only shared one brief scene together; she played Lady Catelyn Stark in the original pilot for HBO’s Game of Thrones, but departed the role before it went to series. This month, she’s in Steven Soderbergh’s big-budget germaphobe’s-worst-nightmare flick, Contagion, in which she plays a CDC scientist, and next month she’ll appear as the wife of George Clooney’s politician character in The Ides of March.
Ehle also stars in CBS’s new supernatural/medical/personal journey drama, A Gifted Man, created by Susannah Grant (Erin Brockovich) and launching tonight. She plays Anna Paul, the ghost of a free clinic doctor on a mission to improve the character of her arrogant ex-husband, Michael (Patrick Wilson), a brilliant neurosurgeon who has lost his way.
The Daily Beast sat down with Ehle, and in these excerpts we discussed A Gifted Man, why she left Game of Thrones, attachment parenting, why she’s never recognized on the street, and ghost sex.
Why did you decide to do a weekly series now?
Jennifer Ehle: I never thought in a million years that I would do a weekly series. One of my closest friends is [creator] Susannah Grant, and I know how dedicated she is and how hard she works. I met Jonathan Demme when I’d auditioned for him for Rachel Getting Married. It hadn’t worked out, but I knew he liked me. Without Patrick being attached to this and Jonathan directing it I don’t think I would have even read it or looked at it. Then I just sort of started taking baby steps because if they’re both seeing something in this then maybe what I see is not an illusion.
Your character, Anna, seems almost saintly, but she does have flaws.
Ehle: She does have flaws. My kids don’t really know what I do. They kind of do, but it’s just always been “We help to tell stories,” and that’s what we’ve always said that we do as a family. It’s kind of hard to tell a story when you don’t know where it’s going to end so, it’s a steep learning curve. The way that I’ve adjusted it in my head to kind of make sense for me is that Anna, she is a new fresh spirit in the pilot: like in a photograph, she’s not fully developed yet. Then she begins to come into focus as we’re all discovering who she is along with the audience. It’s very important to me that she not be someone who ever wants him to just be good solely because he should be good or just for his own sake, because I know that’s not somebody that I would particularly want to watch. Her objective is to continue the work that she was doing and she was so passionate about since she finds herself here. She didn’t choose this.
I think that’s an important distinction to make.
Ehle: They are being given a sort of odd second chance. They’re not quite ready to let go of each other now that they’ve found each other, even though it’s not all roses and Champagne, one of them happens to be dead, and also they still have the same clashes personality-wise and ethics-wise that is perhaps what ended their relationship.
You were in the original pilot for HBO’s Game of Thrones, but opted not to return for the series. (The part is now played by Michelle Fairley.) Why did you ultimately decided to not stick with the show?
Ehle: Well, it was entirely personal. My daughter was seven months old when we did the pilot. It was too soon for me to be working, emotionally and bonding-wise, but I needed to do it and I was also passionate about the books. I loved the idea of telling that story. I finished the first book when I was in the hospital getting ready to have my daughter. My husband actually went out and got the second book for me. I handed the first book to the midwife and started the second one. When I went back for my six-week checkup with the midwife, she had started the second book.
No comments:
Post a Comment