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Julianna Margulies: first time out to City Island
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Julianna Margulies might have spent years on and off in her current hometown of New York, but she hadn’t heard of City Island until she was cast as Andy Garcia’s wife in Raymond De Felitta’s comedy-drama named after the idyllic Bronx outpost. .jpg)
“My father said ‘oh yeah, City Island… when I was a boy we used to go.’” Margulies told press recently at a bar in the Village. “I was like, ‘why didn’t you ever bring me?’ He said, ‘honey, it’s the Bronx. I did everything to get out of the Bronx.’”
Q: The characters in this movie seem so authentic. Was that apparent when you read the script?
Julianna: Yes. I didn’t have a lot of time to prepare but I know those women. I’ve waitressed in this city plenty and I don’t want to generalize and be rude, but I lived in Brooklyn for a while, dated a guy in Queens… so I had an idea of who they were. I didn’t need to do a lot except figure out what she was gonna wear and how her hair should look. But the truth is, she was on the page.
Q: One of my favorite performances of yours is in A Price above Rubies, in which you’re almost unrecognizable.
Julianna: There’s a role I’m up for, and the only thing stopping them is they’re worried I’m too familiar to people. It helps and hinders. You hope someone has the vision to know if I put on a different accent, wear a wig, I can look like a different person. But you get put in a box. I understand it. I’ve done that to people too, I try not to. Unfortunately with television because it’s a character people see every week…if I had just done film I wouldn’t be in that box, but without TV I wouldn’t have been able to have the film. I’m just going to keep pursuing it, showing up in different wigs so that people don’t know who I am.
Q: And you just shot a pilot?
Julianna: It hasn’t been picked up yet, but it’s a wonderful premise and it’s called “The Good Wife.” It’s me and Chris Noth and Christine Baranski and Josh Charles, and it’s based on all those women you’ve seen standing behind those fallen politicians. I play the title character and Chris Noth plays my fallen husband. When we were talking about that casting, I said it had to be someone much more Clinton-esque than Spitzer-esque. You want to understand why she would stand on that podium. I’ve always wondered about those women. And they’re wonderful, smart…I watched every single press conference. It’s amazing to watch these women and know that they pursued very different lives before they gave up their careers…these women didn’t give up their lives because they obviously have very full lives so it’s wrong of me to say that, but it’s a very harsh reality when your world crumbles like that. We had a ball making it. If it goes it goes. It’ll shoot here, so…
Q: Do you prefer to shoot in the city?
Julianna: For me now, especially with a baby and a husband who works in New York City, my choices are limited. I’m not going to go away for sixth months at a time and break up my family. I’m in a place in TV where I can say, “you have to shoot in New York,” and they will. It’s very difficult to balance a healthy happy home life with a career if you’re constantly away. I think the hardest job in the world is raising children and raising them right. I say to all my friends, and for some reason we’re all having boys, “it’s our job to raise these boys right.” That is the most important thing.
Q: You and Andy and the actors who play your kids in City Island have great chemistry.
Julianna: Our first scene was the dinner scene, and Raymond just sat back, let the cameras roll, and allowed us to just take his words and go. It felt comfortable. The thing about this movie, it’s a comedy that makes you cry and a drama that makes you laugh. If I think that my husband’s going off and having an affair, why aren’t I talking about that? Why am I sneaking a cigarette… why is he sneaking a cigarette…my daughter’s a stripper…my son is on the internet looking at fat women? Where are we that we’re not connected?
Q: Do you think these families exist, you just usually don’t see them onscreen?
Julianna: I do. I think this was a little extreme in that he had a son who is in the jail…but it is a movie after all. There was just something this morning on the Today show, this family lost his son because he was into choking, and they had no clue. People are busy, they’re exhausted, they’re working, life’s hard. And when you’re trying to be a parent, you’re trying to juggle your marriage, juggle a career…what I love about this movie is without sex, without violence, without blood and guts, it’s completely entertainment in that we can all relate to it and sit back and laugh at it. What’s funny is, when someone’s had a cigarette, I know it. No judgment, but…when you’re all sneaking it you don’t smell it on each other. If they all just lit up at the end of dinner that might have been a very different situation.
Q: Is there a movie of yours that played in a festival – Tribeca or elsewhere – that you wish more people had seen?
Julianna: Yeah, you know, I’ll tell you, it premiered at the Sundance Film Festival, but it was a movie I did with Gurinda Chadha called What’s Cooking? And it’s me and Kyra Sedgwick and Mercedes Ruehl and Joan Chen…it’s such a great cast and it’s a great story about the American tradition of Thanksgiving. I wish more people had seen that movie. It’s a really sweet movie. It’s on Netflix. It just fell through the cracks, it got all these great reviews but it was one of those small movies that had no funding. I wish more people had seen that.
City Island has an encore screening at the Tribeca Film Festival this afternoon.
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