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American Morning
Interview With Edie Falco
Aired July 10, 2002 - 09:31 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
PAULA ZAHN, CNN ANCHOR: Now on to a women many of you feel like you probably know. You may know her best as the tough Mob wife Carmela Soprano. But Edie Falco has brought many rave winning characters to life, on stage and on screen. And while "The Sopranos" were away, she's been a very busy woman again. She plays a former "Weeki Watchee" mermaid in the new John Sayles film "Sunshine State."
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
EDIE FALCO, ACTRESS: you're from up north.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes. They tell me everybody on this coast is from somebody else.
FALCO: Not me, six generations on this sand pile, at least.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Wow, that's impressive.
FALCO: You go back that far, your people were either planners, slaves or fugitives.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: And yours were?
FALCO: I don't know what they were running from, but this is where they stopped.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I'm from Newport, Rhode Island.
FALCO: With the odds in the biggest states.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: My dad took care of the odds.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
ZAHN: And that's not all. Later this month, she is back on the boards in the award-winning Terrence McNally play "Frankie and Johnny in the Clair De Lune." And Edie Falco joins us this morning.
Good morning. Congratulations on all of your great success.
FALCO: Thank you. Thank you.
ZAHN: In so many different venues.
How do you do it?
FALCO: I don't know, they send me the script, and I show up at rehearsal I guess is kind of the way it's working these days.
ZAHN: The strangest things I heard about "Sunshine State" this movie that's now out that's doing well, is that John Sayles, the director, had never seen you before in "Sopranos."
FALCO: I know, which I was thrilled about, and I should have guessed when I read "Sunshine State" and saw what the character was like, I should have guessed that he hadn't seen Carmela, because it couldn't be more different.
ZAHN: Describe who this character is that you play, who happens to share the same name of your current dog. Marly?
FALCO: Marly, yes, oddly enough.
She's a local Florida girl who owns a family business and motel, and she's lived there her whole life, and her dad is Ralph Wheat (ph).
ZAHN: and the deal is the place is being besieged by real estate developers.
FALCO: Money comes into town, and it's about how the local people react to it.
ZAHN: You get to play the kind of women you play best, a very downtrodden, tough-spirited women.
FALCO: Actually, yes. Kind of sarcastic, a little smarmy, and it was actually great fun, great fun. No fingernails.
ZAHN: You've come a long way for someone who used to play clowns at weddings.
FALCO: Don't get me started. Yes, a lot of years of crazy jobs. That was just one of them. It was actually the cookie monster I played at weddings, but I'd rather not talk about it.
ZAHN: We just want to elaborate on how far this woman has come.
FALCO: Read my book, if I ever write one.
ZAHN: You will. You will. We will urge you to. "The New York Times" has featured you in its magazine over the weekend talking a lot about all of these various projects you're talking on. I like these pictures, by way.
FALCO: Oh, thank you.
ZAHN: How is this working, logistics-wise? "The Sopranos" off for a little while, then you decide to tackle a play. It takes a lot of balancing to do that.
FALCO: Thank gosh there are many people who handle that stuff. You know, my agents and stuff, because scheduling has been a bit of a nightmare. But there are so many good things that happen to be coming my way right now, there's just no way that I have found to say no to any of them, and they've just like sometimes within days they work out the schedule so that they can all happen.
ZAHN: Tell us a little bit about the challenge now of tackling this project with Stanley Tucci back in the theater and how different that median is for you than doing television or doing film.
FALCO: You know, Stanley Tucci and I are both sort of deer caught in the headlight. We're kind of like we have to talk so people can hear, like go over there, you know. We've both been doing film and television such a long time, and we both went to Sooney Purchase (ph) and were trained on stage, but have done other things for a while. So it is like a completely other animal, and one that if you go too long -- if I go too long without doing it, you really miss it. It's the immediacy of an audience every night; it's different. You get to go, beginning, middle, end. You know, the story has like an arc every night. There's really nothing like it, but we're in the rehearsal process and we're both a little nervous right now.
ZAHN: You have many weeks ahead to get prepared yet. But I guess in many ways, it must be liberating for you as a performer to get out of that box that perhaps some of your greatest fans have put you in, because they see you as Carmela Soprano.
FALCO: Right. That's certainly their prerogative. I hope to play a million roles, well, in this career. All I can do is do my job, which is to, you know, as thoroughly as possible inhabit whatever the role is I am supposed to be playing, and ideally the audience will come with me on this journey.
ZAHN: So do you want to betray family secrets about "The Sopranos" and what we might expect next year, next fall season?
FALCO: Not one, no, not even a single one.
ZAHN: Is it wrapped up now?
FALCO: We're not. I think we're doing the last week now, but people have been shot for less on my show.
ZAHN: We won't do that do you.
FALCO: Thank you.
ZAHN: When you think about the stunning success of the series, was there anything early on when you joined the project that made you believe it would have the longevity it has and the popularity?
FALCO: No. To be honest with you, no. The script was brilliant, the actors were brilliant, but truthfully, I've been involved in projects that I felt had a better shot at this kind of notoriety, and never made it to television once, not even the pilot. So I am terrible judge of that, as far as what people are going to watch. So I know we shot the pilot, and David Chase said to us, well, we had a great time, it was nice meeting all of you, too bad no one is ever going to watch this. So I mean, obviously I wasn't the only one who was expecting this kind of attention.
ZAHN: See, the audience gets it right again, don't they? God bless them. Smart people out there.
FALCO: Couldn't be happier about it.
ZAHN: Well, it's going to be fun to keep so busy watching everything you're doing, trying to keep up with you on film, and stage and on TV.
Continued good luck to you, Edie Falco.
FALCO: Thank you very much.
ZAHN: Thanks for stopping by.
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