Nurse Jackie Edie Falco Interview

Female: There’s one woman that’s all too familiar with the Jersey style. Former Soprano’s matriarch and current star of the hit show “Nurse Jackie”, Edie Falco. We caught up with the actress to find out more about the role she plays and her latest stage endeavor.

Jackie is a top notch ER nurse that’s had an affair of her own is entangled in a web of lies and tries to keep her life manageable with the daily diet of pain medication.

Edie Falco: Things get pretty chaotic. She is finding it harder to keep the lie straight and I think finding it hard to create lives in the first place. I mean, as will happen in a life that is that complicated. It can only last for a period of time before it sorts of implodes.

Female: Now in its second season, ‘Nurse Jackie’ is the perfect anecdote for a Carmela Soprano. And Edie Falco is the perfect choice to play Jackie Payton.

Edie Falco: I don’t know, I think she’s a character that people can relate to in some regard that she wants to do a good job. She cares about what she does but she comes face to face with her own incapacity to live her life purely. And you know she has a lot of role blocks. I think her life would be a lot prettier looking if she didn’t constantly come face to face with these things. But she’s a lot like a lot of people I know.

Female: That’s what Drew heard of this role a second system.

Edie Falco: You know she kind of comes across as a mess but there is true lines from the get go of a woman who really wants things to be better. That she really wants to be a part of the solution I think. I think she wants to improve the life of these people who come into her ER. And she wants to do a good job and she wants to make sure that it’s taken cared of. I think that’s at the center of everything she does as she wants to help people.

Female: This versatile actress scrapped her scrubs to the theater, for a limited run in this wide night. A two woman show about ex cellmates coping in the outside world.

Edie Falco: I never know really the process involved in the character happen, I don’t know. All I have to start with is the same black piece of paper any actor has, you know. You read it and you see what it does to your insides and then each new element that’s added creates another piece of it.

Female: She plays opposite the talented Ellison Pill.

Edie Falco: Well she’s tremendous. She’s so tremendous since she’s so young and she’s 24. It’s hard to believe that in so few years, she has—she manifests someone far beyond that age. You know she’s very rich, very dimensional.

Female: And she feels right at home with this theater company.

Edie Falco: And here it is, all these years later when I’ve been around banging around New York as long as most to those people and the person who runs it now, Jeffrey Knox is a good friend of mine from a million years ago and I don’t know. It’s thrilling.

It’s sort of like coming to coming to fruition after so many years of being an actress. It feels like a piece of the puzzle fixing the place to be doing this show with Jeffrey’s company and you know, working with somebody like Ellison.

Female: As for what’s going to happen in season 3 of “Nurse Jackie” will all have to wait and see.

Edie Falco: I would rather not know until it’s in front of me because I know if I knew too far at advance, it affects the performance that you’re doing right now. Even if—you can't help it, it’s sort of—the information is in there and it’s going to come out in some ways. So I prefer not to know until right before we go. So I—you know, all surprises just like everybody else.