HBO.COM: - Thank you
for joining us today. What have you been up to since last season?
RACHEL GRIFFITHS - I went back to Australia after we wrapped last
year. And I did the Australian premier of Proof, the play that Mary Louise
Parker did on Broadway and Gwyneth Paltrow did in London, which was great. And
then the last few months I've just taken a break. I went on a shark hunting
expedition in Queensland in the barrier reef of Australia for about ten days.
This amazing diving trip was probably the highlight of my hiatus. Diving with
twenty-four hammerhead sharks was pretty wild.
HBO.COM: - That's
awesome. Do you think the show has influenced you to take more risks like that
or have you always been an adventurer?
RACHEL GRIFFITHS - No.
Actually, I've wanted to do some riskier things for a long time and I'm always
under contract and in our contracts we're not allowed to do things like sky
diving and diving with hammerhead sharks. So this last hiatus I wanted to knock
off at least one of those things. I've actually always felt a strong obligation
to a production, that if I got eaten it would be inconvenient to someone. But I
figured that with last season, Brenda goes and disappears so if I got eaten on
my holidays it would make headlines but it really wouldn't put anyone out.
HBO.COM: - Over the hiatus the show received a lot of attention
and a lot of great reviews. Has that affected your approach to your work?
RACHEL GRIFFITHS - I've not been here. As I said, I got on a
plane the day after I wrapped and I arrived yesterday to start the new season.
I've been fortunate that I've not been in America when it's screened, which I'm
quite happy about. Then I come back and all the fuss has died down a little bit.
I love hearing that it's really rating well, and x,y, z loves it. It's great to
hear but it's also very nice to just be living my quiet little Australian
life...with my hammerhead sharks. [LAUGHS]
HBO.COM: - Are you
ever surprised by the show? Did you ever think it would become so popular?
RACHEL GRIFFITHS - Well I think I should be surprised because it
sounds so conceited or complacent to say I wasn't. I really was surprised that
American Beauty made two hundred million dollars, but it was great. And I think
that taught me that there is an un-satiated appetite for really good product
that deals with relationships and character driven drama. But it also was very
clear that Alan Ball had an ability to deliver some pretty extraordinary themes
to an audience in a way that didn't make us feel like we had swallowed a bitter
pill. And that is an exceptionally rare talent. But I think to me, American
Beauty's success proved both those things to be true. And I would have been
surprised if no one saw it because his ability was so shining. Just watching an
audience on the roller coaster of American Beauty, where people were prepared to
go way out and then come back again, was amazing. He's got a talent for taking
you places. And people really want to go on the trip if they feel safe. And for
all the dangerous places that the show goes, there's something an audience
knows, that it's going to be safe, and I think that's because Alan always makes
you laugh. He always surprises and he's never earnest, nor is he nihilistic. All
the pain in the end isn't for nothing, it's always for something. I think he has
this redemptive quality to his work that draws an audience in.
HBO.COM: - As an actress, is there anything about the show, the
scripts that you particularly like?
RACHEL GRIFFITHS - Oh yeah. I
am regularly on the point of tears in script read-throughs. It's the first
moment where everyone's around and it's a very powerful cast. And even though
people aren't really peaking at the read through, often the guest actors come in
with a little more. It can get pretty emotional.
HBO.COM: - Last
season was quite a ride. Sex. Drugs. Death.
RACHEL GRIFFITHS -
Sex?
HBO.COM: - Sex.
RACHEL GRIFFITHS - Oh yeah
that's right. [LAUGHS]
HBO.COM: - How do you top that in the
third season?
RACHEL GRIFFITHS - Well I think the great thing
about everyone on the show is we've just never tried to do that topping thing.
We're never trying to be more shocking. I think Alan follows a natural
trajectory, and that doesn't necessarily mean being bigger and badder or better.
It just is what it is. We just keep our eye on each other and those on-screen
relationships, and keep them developing in a truthful and hopefully realistic,
exciting way. But we're not out to beat anyone.
HBO.COM: - Can
you give us any hints about the new season?
RACHEL GRIFFITHS -
Well, Brenda has a sex change...but really, I'm not meant to tell anybody.
HBO.COM: - Mm-hmm.
RACHEL GRIFFITHS - Because she
discovered last season that she's a gay man. It was hard to come to grips with
that on hiatus but the implants are really quite effective. [LAUGHS] Really, I
can't tell you anything. [LAUGHS] The word redemption comes to mind. But I'm
only one day back at work and know nothing.
HBO.COM: - While Nate
was on the brink of death, Brenda seemed to be on the brink of something else.
What was that?
RACHEL GRIFFITHS - I didn't really experience the
brink thing. I guess you can't play to brink. I brink. You brink. Today I'll
brink. I think it's like the first season. I think Brenda had this huge weight
on her, which was really the weight of her whole life, the weight of having a
dependent sibling with a mental illness. She felt a huge responsibility because
her parents didn't really seem to look after either of them that well. And when
that weight was removed, learning to live without it took awhile. So I think she
left the ground, and was suddenly out of control. It's like if she was a car,
one of her like major steering systems broke down. So I think it was about her
discovering limitations, where before they'd always been imposed on her.
HBO.COM: - Where did Brenda drive off to at the end of last year?
RACHEL GRIFFITHS - She went to Australia and she went on a shark
hunting expedition. And she dived with hammerhead sharks and tiger sharks.
[LAUGHS] So that's where Brenda went. She had a really good time. She got
engaged to her - oh no that's me. I'm really confused now. [LAUGHS] It gets
really confusing.
HBO.COM: - Are there any similarities between
you and your character?
RACHEL GRIFFITHS - I think there's a loop
that feeds in television that probably doesn't in films. In a film, you can
create a character and contain it for two months or six. You contain the
character and you know the arc, where the character starts and where she ends
up. Whereas television is much more open ended, and I think the writers pick up
things from the way you play the character and write that back into the story. I
feel a lot of what Brenda feels but I act differently. There's very little about
the way we act that's the same. Except for the truck driving thing but I can't
talk about that.
HBO.COM: - Is it difficult to play the role of a
person who causes and experiences so much grief?
RACHEL GRIFFITHS
- Yeah, over a long period of time it's kind of tough. I've played characters
that carry a lot of pain for shorter amounts of time, in Hillary and Jackie, for
instance. That shoot was nine weeks and it was like carrying a big burden of
hurt for a nine week period, and I remember when we wrapped I just went mental.
I just had to break out. I was like, "Where is the bar? Where is the good time?"
But to sustain a character over six months, it gets you down after a while.
Especially because this is not my hometown so I don't go home at the end of the
day, and my Mom can't come around for a chat and I can't drop in on a lot of
people who have known me for a long time so yeah, it is kind of tough. But I
would find it tougher to play a shallow character, locked into some twelve year
bad series with bad writing and bad directors. That's more likely to make me
suicidal than actually playing a very rich-feeling character.
