Emmy winner Anne Heche has been working non-stop for over 20 years. The actress who has been through A LOT over those years, is now mom of two young boys and lives with sexy partner James Tupper her co-star in ABC’s 2006 dramedy ‘Men in Trees’.
The funny girl now stars in NBC’s new sitcom ‘Save Me’ about a not so ordinary Midwestern family. After she chokes on a hero sandwich in her kitchen and suffers a dramatic near-death experience, Beth – an absentee wife and mother –is revived and claims she can now talk to God. Well, all–right-y then.
Despite everyone’s initial hesitancy, Beth begins to win people over with her new positive attitude, cheerful optimism and unbridled love.
The goofy and endearing Anne got on the phone and did a Q&A with us reporters..
So you started your career with drama, but more recently the roles you’ve taken, like this and HBO’s ‘Hung’, are comedy. Is that because it’s a better schedule for a mom or is there another reason that you want to do comedy now.
Anne Heche: “You know what, nobody saw my bad soap acting. I think a lot of people laughed at that when I was 17. But I think I’ve always been drawn to, you know, making people giggle. I’ve been lucky because I’ve been able to do so many different things in so many different mediums, you know? And I guess when I went to Broadway with Alec Baldwin and I was – I did 20th Century, I just fell in love with physical comedy.
You cannot get more pleasure, I don’t think, then throwing yourself up against a wall and listening to an audience just cackle with laughter. And I guess I kind of set out to make more of those opportunities happen for myself, for sure. And Save Me has fallen into that, just you know, desire to make people giggle.
I do like the schedule though, that is – that’s for sure. but it’s not necessarily about schedule, it’s just that the joy of my life kind of, you know, it’s funner probably for people to hang out with me when I’m making them laugh than when I’m making them cry. So it gets addictive.”
For those that do not remember, in 1991, Heche played twins in ‘Another World’ and received a Daytime Emmy Award for Outstanding Younger Actress in a Drama Series. Soon after she made her prime-time TV debut in ‘Murphy Brown‘ and then her TV-movie debut the following year in ‘Hallmark Hall of Fame’s O Pioneers”. The rest shall we say is history.
Did you ever imagine that you would work consistently like you have?
Anne Heche: “Oh my gosh, no. I mean no. I tried to quit acting after I stopped that job, and go to – I wanted to go to Parsons School of Design. I never thought in a million years that anybody would continue to hire me as an actress. And when I was getting ready to go I paid my, you know, first tuition and everything and then I got a call asking if I wanted to go and audition for O Pioneers!, a Hallmark Hall of Fame movie.
And I got it and then was like, “Well” – and this is so funny because it does dovetail kind of perfectly into Save Me, because I thought, “I must be getting a message from God. I must be – I mean come on. Somebody’s hiring me to go work with Jessica Lange? I better do this.” And so I didn’t go to Parsons School of Design and I haven’t stopped working since. So you know, God does dictate some things in our life I guess.”
So you believe in messages from God then, like in the show?
Anne Heche: “Well you know, I think we all get messages. I think sometimes we’re more in tune to it than others. And like Beth in my show, I probably misinterpret messages often. And I’m going down, you know, trippy, windy roads trying to find out if the messages are actually – if I’ve interpreted them correctly. And I’m sure we all do that. It’s part of what I love about the show. I – you know, we look for signs, we look for messages. Sometimes it comes in a book, sometimes it comes in the stars, and you know, we try to figure out how to make our lives work. And that’s all Beth has really tried to do. And you know, she doesn’t always do it elegantly, and certainly neither have I so I relate.”
So what was it that really attracted you to the script in the first place? What made you say, you know, you had to do this?
Anne Heche: “Well I think I mean it goes along the lines of what I’ve been saying. You know, I believe that we get second chances in life. And Beth, my character, is in a situation; she’s an Ohio housewife, I’m from Ohio. That’s not – that’s kind of the first of many things that Beth and I have in common.
But you know, she’s a housewife and she hasn’t done it very well. She’s not a great mom, she’s not a great wife, she drinks too much, she plays too hard, and she hasn’t really been responsible. And by the time we come in to meet her and she’s choking on a hoagie, her life isn’t great. And she gets this – she gets a second chance to do it again.
And I love that because I’ve been so blessed with many chances in my life that I’m really – I get really excited by being able to play women that get to do it all again, you know? Because we don’t – I’m so sorry that I am on a cell phone, I don’t – I no longer have a land line in my life. Is that – does that mean I’m a modern woman? Forgive me for those.
Am I now modern? So you know, I like that. I also like that we – I think that we do come to points in our life where we need something to believe in. And whether or not we believe – or wherever we get our strength from, I think we have so much courage, everybody, to walk through this life and try to make it right.
And that’s really all Beth is trying to do. She wants to do it right and she wants to make people happy along the way. And I like that. She’s a really positive person. And this message that these – this connection that she has with God has filled her with the joy of life. And she wants to give it to everybody like a gift.
And sometimes when you have that big of a gift, sometimes people don’t want it. So it’s not always – it doesn’t always work out perfectly for her, but she is really trying to figure it out in a positive way. And I love all that about her. And she’s a goofball. She’s a total goofball, and so am I, so I love that I get to make people giggle.”
‘Save Me‘ premieres Thursday, May 23rd at 8pm ET on NBC. Co-stars include Madison Davenport, Michael Landes, and Alexandra Breckenridge.