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Julianna Margulies
The Well Rounded Interview
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MARCH 1998 - Julianna Margulies is as pale as a bleached ghost and full of spirit.
Meeting the exotic looking actress, who stars in TV's top rated show "ER" as dedicated nurse Carole Hathaway, reminds me again how she is hardly beautiful in any sort of conventional way. When I first saw her on the tube, in fact, she kind of spooked me. But as I continued watching, addicted like most of America to what goes on in her fictional Chicago hospital, Margulies gradually won me over. Probably at first because Hathaway's character qualities – smarts, independence, a good sense of humor, compassion, a trifle unbalanced and unpredictable – are personal preferences, but also because I noticed she's one hell of a terrific actress.
So far, she's the only "ER" cast member to win an Emmy, as Best Supporting Actress during the show's debut season in 1995. Taking note, the producers smartly bumped her up the food chain, and last year she was nominated in the Best Actress category (losing to  another smart and unconventionally attractive woman, Gillian Anderson of "The X-Files"). Hollywood noticed, and starting last year she began getting film roles. So far they've been the types of movies that get good reviews and make no money (Traveller and Paradise Road for example), but that's okay. I dig her best as Carole Hathaway anyway.
When she breezes into the room at the 4 Seasons Hotel in Beverly Hills, she's even more porcelain-skinned than she appears on TV, as white as Casper and just as animated. With her jet-black and kinky-curled hair bouncing freely around her face and wearing a pitch-black sweater and pants, she makes an eye-catching contrast in colorlessness.
Of course she has me eating out of her hand in no time. Smiling broadly, the first thing she says upon meeting me as we shake hands is "Oh, hey! At last I get interviewed by somebody cool!"
She says it with such cavalier straightforwardness that for some reason I never even think this might be horseshit. "Really! How can you tell?" I ask.
She motions with her hands, which are stubby and masculine, toward my clothes as we both sit down. "Dressed in black. Long hair. Aren't you cool?" Touching my shoulder, she laughs an easy laugh and looks at me with dark but very pleasant twinkling eyes. I immediately love her.
But I also know I've only got a half an hour and she doesn't love me back. She's here to promote a career that's trying to make the jump from TV to movies, and flirting is only a means to an end. After a few more words of small talk, we cut to the chase. "As 'ER' gets more and more popular, we're seeing more of the cast pop up in the movies. How does that sit with the producers and the crew, with you guys doing all this other stuff? Does it cause many problems?" I ask.
 "They've always been accommodating," Margulies says, nodding. "They kind of have to be with the original cast members, because we have bent over backwards for George Clooney's career. Especially my character, because all of my stuff is with him, you know?" The nurse and the hunky doc have had their ups and downs, but this year they started shacking up on the show. "So he really has paved the way for the rest of us. They can't really let him go off for two months and do a film and then when I come and say, 'look, I just need three weeks off in the middle of blah-blah-blah,' and they say no, then you kind of go 'uh, okay…' and I could make a big…" she catches herself. "I mean I've been so nice about everything, why would they do that? Then everybody would be miserable. It's not a problem I've had."
I want to talk about TV, but I stroke her movie career a little longer because I know that's what she wants. "You've been in two movies in two months: The Newton Boys and A Price Above Rubies. How hard is it to work around the 'ER' schedule?"
"Well, it wasn't for The Newton Boys, except for rehearsals a little bit, when we were first getting started," Margulies says. "But rehearsal was the only time that was a little tricky because they started in early April and I didn't finish 'ER' until April 15. Then I shot 'Newton Boys' completely during my hiatus. I finished 'ER' and went straight to Texas."
Margulies is good in The Newton Boys as the moral girlfriend of bank robber Matthew McConaughey, but she's completely convincing as strict Hasidic Jewish wife and mother in A Price Above Rubies. The character is a complete one-eighty from the free-minded Hathaway, but Margulies was shooting both simultaneously, one in L.A. and one in New York. How rough was that?
"A Price Above Rubies was tough," she admits. "I was doing a lot of red-eye flying and they were generous enough at 'ER' to give me 3 days off in a row, then quickly fly back and do a show and then fly back to New York. That's when it gets tricky."
"How tricky?" I ask. "Did it compromise you physically? Emotionally? Psychologically? It didn't seem to affect either of your performances." I pucker up to kiss her black-clad ass. "I mean, you were absolutely phenomenal in A Price Above Rubies."
She's very pleased. "Thank you!" she says, placing her hand on mine, letting it linger for a moment. "But at one point I flew back to NY and just lost it. At one point on A Price Above Rubies, I just couldn't…I was just so tired I couldn't move. I was really thinking, 'It's just not worth this.' But that just lasted for five minutes and then I put on my Chadel and I went out and I felt great."
"Will that change next year? With the new contract all you guys have for the series?" I ask.
"Well, actually there is no new contract for me," Margulies says. "Not as of yet. I re-signed my third year. It kind of works in television where you don't get a raise unless you sign on for an extra year. So I went like, 'Uh, okay,' and I signed for a sixth year. So I have two years left. And then that's kind of it. I'm not planning, at this point in my 'ER' career, on signing on for a seventh year. But I don't know. You know? You never know. I'm not there yet."
"Clooney's been slammed pretty hard in the press," I say sympathetically, even though I know I've been one of the folks doing the slamming. "Do you think it's impossible to manage both careers at the same time, TV and movies?"
"I think it can be," she admits. "I've been pretty careful with not doing stuff…well, with not doing stuff that's been seen!" She laughs, and it's a nice sound, a little husky but genuine. "Ummm, no one really saw Traveller, so I shouldn't really favor that. Or Paradise Road…"
"But they were decent movies!" I protest honestly.
"Thank you!" she exclaims, touching my hand again, letting it linger for one extra moment and my face starts to flush. "The critics loved them."
"And they're not supposed to be Batman and Robin," I say. "They're not supposed to be out there with these huge opening weekends…"
She cuts me off. "But I'm also in a different place than George. You know? George is under a lot more scrutiny than I am. He's a leading man and I'm just sort of paving my way into films when there aren't a lot of great women's roles out there."
"So how do you find them?"
 "I just take a script and if a character stands out by itself, no matter the size of…like in Paradise Road, some people were telling me 'it's just a glorified extra role, what are you doing?'" This little-seen gem is about a group of WWII women who form a symphonic chorus in a Japanese POW camp, with Margulies as one of the lesser players. "I loved that character! I loved the piece! I realize my choices might be on the smaller side, but they're characters so far away from what I play every day that it's important to me. I'm trying to open up people's eyes to what my possibilities can be, and it's weird to hear the film people talking about roles I'm up for that I was never considered for before because they saw me in these different films."
"How ironic is that?" I ask, knowing her history. "At the beginning of 'ER' the producers and the network didn't even really want you on the show, did they?"
"No," she admits. "I really feel blessed about how that turned out. I feel very lucky."
"You get a nice sense of revenge out of it?"
"Nah. It's not that," she says, giving a dismissive glance backwards. "I think that everything happens for a reason and I just feel very lucky. I'm glad I'm not where I was 4 years ago, trying to feel like I fit in somewhere. Because they didn't know whether I was alive or dead on 'ER,' so I wasn't a part of the cast when they did all the publicity and all of the pictures. I felt so left out!"
The first season's script outlines had Hathaway attempting suicide, and it was up in the air whether she would pull out of it or take a permanent dirt nap. "How tough was it dealing with all that?"
"Well, I was out here in LA by myself, and I didn't know anyone," she says. "I'm not an LA person and I felt very out of it. You know, they'd do that news flash, the cast of 'ER,' and I wouldn't be in it. NBC news actually did a piece on the cast of 'ER' and what they did before the show and I was not included. It just killed me. I just felt so hurt by it."
"Then you won the Emmy," I say.
"The best thing about winning that Emmy was that I was recognized as a cast member," Margulies says flatly. "I mean, it was great and I really appreciate it and all, but it absolutely put me on the map with the rest of the cast, instead of being an outsider. It helped in many more ways than as an award."
"So did you get that million buck bonus like all the original stars got from the production company when they signed that new contract this year?" I ask.
"Well, yeah, I did," she says reluctantly. "I am one of those stars." She looks at me like she doesn't want to talk about this.
I love her, but you often hurt the ones you love. "I can tell that talking about the money bugs you."
"I feel like we've gotten a little distracted this year with all this stupid money talk," she complains. "I'm so afraid it's going to take away from the show. I don't think it's  anyone's business. If you know that Hathaway just got a million dollar bonus, are you really going to believe that she can't afford to paint her house? It's a weird thing in Hollywood, everyone knowing what everyone makes. It takes away from the characters. The actor, the star, becomes more important than the character. It's like me not wanting to talk about my love life. When people go to see Newton Boys, I want you to believe that I'm madly in love with Matthew McConaughey; when you watch 'ER,' I want you to believe I love George Clooney."
"Aren't you madly in love with Matthew McConaughey and George Clooney?" I ask, feigning shock.
"Absolutely. Madly," she says, deadpan, and then laughs.
"So let's talk about believability for a second," I say. "Do you think there have been any false steps taken this year with Carole Hathaway? She finally gets Clooney's swinging bachelor to commit, and then she has this romantic kiss with one of the hospital paramedics," in one of this season's least convincing 'ER' subplots. "The next day everybody I know who watches the show was like, 'wow, we just didn't buy that at all.' Not because of you, but because the story didn't ring true."
Margulies is nodding before I'm even finished talking. "Yeah, I was opposed to that. But they said, 'You've gotta trust us on this. You don't have sex with him or anything. It's a moment.' So when it happens, I played it like he kissed me and I don't stop him. I played it with my eyes open, like 'okay, what am I doing? This is wrong.' And the director convinced me to do just one take with my eyes closed. Of course that's the one they used. I'll never do THAT again."
"The show deviates from soap opera so much, and this was the one case where it was like, ugh, we've deviated into 'Melrose Place,'" I say.
"I agree," she says. "I'd really like to see Hathaway get into a relationship that is actually working. You never see that. It's always like, when are they going to get married, when are they…whatever. Why don't you just do it and get it over with and have audiences stay tuned to see if a married couple works. Or don't have them married, have her get pregnant and keep them together. Relationships are hard. Show the hard parts, show the good parts."
"How about the married relationship of your character in A Price Above Rubies? The movie seems to take a pretty dim view of the Hasidic Jewish life, but you're Jewish yourself, aren't you?" I ask. "Any problems with that in your family?
"I wasn't raised Jewish," she contradicts. "My parents are Jewish, but my mother had herself baptized when I was five years old. She took a Christian path – not born again, but Christian spiritual. But I was fascinated to find out about the Jewish Hasidic life, through research. And you know, it's a very sexist religion and a very sexist community. And I can't imagine why anyone would want to be in it."
"Yikes!" I say. "That's a pretty strong statement."
Undeterred, she presses on. "The purpose of a Hasidic wife is to stay at home, keep the house clean, have children and support her husband. I couldn't do it. I find it really hypocritical and horrible. I would feel like I was in jail. I think it's a very strange religion. The Hasidic now, I'm saying, not the Jewish religion. It's hypocritical that they're wearing wigs that are more beautiful than your own hair. Where's the spirituality in that?"
"So where's your spirituality?" I ask.
"I don't feel religious at all, but I understand it," Margulies says. "I understand why people go to church, why they attend temple, why they go to gurus. I get it. But I don't think I need to go outside myself to find it. I remember when I was in college,  I was searching for something and I went to St. Patrick's Cathedral. It was so beautiful that I thought there must be something in there that would guide me, and I walk in on a Sunday morning service and the first thing out of the guy's mouth is 'You have all sinned,' and I got up and left. He doesn't know me. I'm a bit too rebellious for all that. But maybe I'll change."
Her handler has appeared and my time with the lady is done. One last shot: "You're working so hard, do you have any concerns about burning out?"
"No…Well…You know, that's a good question," Margulies says. She was getting up, but now flips a hand backwards at the handler and sits back down. "God. I'm really battling this year, the fourth year of 'ER,' but not in the way you ask. I feel like I'm getting lazy." Her eyes meet mine and it feels like she's confiding in me. I'm surely kidding myself, but I don't care.
"I was talking to a friend of mine and told her I feel like this is the first time I'm not really preparing. But she said, 'you've been preparing for this role for four years. You don't need to do the homework anymore,' because it's a role I'm so familiar with. So I'm battling, but it's to maintain an excitement in playing Carole Hathaway. Because, really, I love playing her. I don't want to phone in a performance. Ever. But you do 22 episodes 4 years in a row, and you're going to lose sight of the first thing that made you excited. You know," she says, placing her hand lightly on my knee and smiling, "it's like any relationship with anything."
Without losing eye contact, Margulies gets up, lifting her hand from my leg. Stepping back, she maintains eye contact for one last instant before turning and walking nonchalantly out. She doesn't look back. I know because I never took my eyes off of her.
T.W. Siebert
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