BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. _ Actress Jessie Mueller says she was numb with terror to take on her latest role. That's surprising because Mueller has been performing for more than a decade and already has a Tony Award tucked away on her mantel.
But the role was no ordinary one. Mueller is playing the legendary Loretta Lynn in the Lifetime feature movie "Patsy & Loretta," premiering Oct. 19.
The biopic tells of the friendship between successful country singer Patsy Cline and the coal miner's daughter, Loretta Lynn.
"Playing a real person, then playing a legend, then a musical icon _ so there was all of that," Mueller rolls her eyes. "And on top of that there were the technical aspects. I like rehearsal. I like research. I love that stuff, thrive on it.
"And I was one of the later people to get involved in the project so I was _ just on a technical level _ 'Will I have time to do this? Will I learn it? Will I be able to learn the guitar stuff? Will I get on top of the singing stuff that I feel confident about and the interpretation of the songs and get to know her music and her vocal stylings?'
"I was really concerned about the accent," she says.
"And I was nervous about not having enough experience in film and television. Truly I feel like God carried me through," says Mueller.
Even so, she seems born to it. Mueller, 36, comes from an acting family. Both her parents are actors, as well as her three siblings.
"I guess I thought at a very early age kind of like 4 or 5, I thought, 'Wow, if I could do that maybe that would be really cool and that would be a good thing to invest in.' So I started going to the theater when I was really tiny. I think that amount of crazy that I think any artist kinda has, it's a really interesting life," she says.
"It's always changing. It doesn't have a lot of consistency. It doesn't always have a lot of structure, sometimes it has a LOT of structure and a lot of consistency, and you go through a period of that, and then you have a period of the exact opposite. I find that the most challenging part of it," she nods.
It was during her last two years of high school that she really measured her love for performing against her more practical side. But her mother encouraged her to take the antic leap while she was young and adventurous.
That "adventure" took her to New York, where she slept on an air mattress in a friend's pad and lived on peanut butter and an apple. Finally her friend told her, "Jess, you need to upgrade. You've moved beyond a jar of peanut butter and an apple. Go buy yourself an $8 burrito, you deserve it."
She grins, "I'm a Midwestern girl, came from Chicago _ maybe I'll always feel 100 people want your job and it's always the balance of: I'm unique and I'm just like everybody else. I just want to get the work done, not all that interested in all the stuff that circulates around it. I just like the work."
Most of her efforts have been in the theater, so plunging into Hollywood and TV stardom is a new and sometimes daunting experience, she admits. An avowed perfectionist, Mueller says one of the things that helps keep her grounded is her sweetheart of almost 10 years, Andy Truschinski.
They met in the Chicago production of "A Christmas Carol" at the Goodman Theater. He played the young Scrooge and she was his love interest. "He's a writer, director and producer, but he's got the best heart I've ever come across," she quickly adds.
"I kinda feel like we are married. He's stuck with me. Our lives have changed a lot from the time we moved to New York City. He's stuck by me and held me up at times. I'm very grateful to have people in my life who just know you for who you are."
EX-NANNY STARS AS NANCY DREW
The CW is sporting a new version of the classic "Nancy Drew" mysteries arriving Wednesday. Newcomer Kennedy McMann, 22, is playing the spunky detective with some special (supernatural) additions. McMann was performing double-duty when the script came along.
"I was working as a nanny in New York for a great family," she says. "They were really awesome and super supportive, thankfully. I would always do after-school time, so usually I would be auditioning in the day every morning, and then running to go catch a train and change into my nanny outfit and go forth. And it became a thing where I would be, like, 'Hey, guys, you know what's a fun playtime? Help me learn my lines.'
"So they would sometimes help me learn some lines for auditions that were coming up, if homework was done and chores were done and things like that," she says.
"I think it's a very normal type of a lifestyle for a young actor that's trying to make it ... I had quite a long commute to work. I would read scripts and work on stuff on the train. Probably looked like a crazy person as I'm talking to myself on the train. But when I got the 'Nancy Drew' script, I was just out of my mind excited, and I was reading it as my kids were eating dinner and watching some show. And I was in the kitchen, and I was reading through everything. It's a gripping script. It's a really great script. I was just so pumped about it. So, it's a lot of multitasking, a lot of making the most out of your time."
NETFLIX CONTINUES WITH 'BREAKING BAD'
Those of us who just can't get enough of "Breaking Bad" will be happy to know it hasn't died. Netflix will start streaming the next adventures of Jesse Pinkman, the druggie from "Breaking Bad," in "El Camino: A Breaking Bad Movie," on Friday.
Starring the terrific Aaron Paul as the wayward Pinkman, this is NOT written by some underling scribe, but by Vince Gilligan, the original author of "Breaking Bad." And that makes all the difference.
Paul tells me he was only 17 when he left his home in Boise, Idaho, to come to L.A. "I was living off of Top Ramen," he says. "You could get 10 packets for $1 back then. I lived in a little studio apartment in North Hollywood at the corner of Laurel Canyon and Burbank boulevards. It took me about nine months to get my first job, but for nine months _ I guess that's pretty quick. The first few months was fine. I had money to pay the $500-a-month rent, but quickly I had a roommate move in, and one week I had the bed and the next week I had the walk-in closet. But it was great."
At the time he landed a job as an usher at the Universal City movie theater. "I did that simply because I could watch movies for free and I was on a fixed income. I got by doing commercials," he says.
"You just cross your fingers hoping you'd make the cut. I think I've probably done 30-plus commercials. Then I had my ups and downs but I was having a great time. I was somewhat fulfilling my dream, but I wanted more."
SPECIAL TRACES BLACK MARKET BABIES
It made for shocking headlines back in 1997 when it was learned that a doctor had sold 200 babies from the back door of his small Georgia clinic in the '40s, '50s and '60s. They came to be known as the "Hicks" babies because the physician behind the black market babies was Dr. Thomas Hicks. TLC is offering a three-night perspective on this subject when it premieres "Taken at Birth" on Wednesday.
"What 'Taken at Birth' is actually about are the emotional effects on the babies who were adopted out of the Hicks Clinic, where they are today, and what their perspective is of, essentially, being severed from their life history by being taken from their biological parents and given to new parents with essentially no documentation," says Chris Jacobs, one of the show's co-hosts.
Jane Blasio, a Hicks baby herself, has been investigating the subject since the story broke. "I got phone calls from a lot of people," she says. "Some of them knew they were adopted. They didn't know the black market aspect of it. Some of them didn't. One of the adoptees called me and he said, 'I have a Hicks Clinic birth certificate, does that mean that I'm adopted?' And he hadn't been told that he was adopted," she says.
"And so, once it was confirmed, I looked at the birth certificate and we did a little bit of talking to his parents, to his adopted parents, and he found out at the age of 37 that he was adopted. So I still get calls from people that aren't sure whether they are from the Hicks Clinic or not. All of them were very different in how their parents dealt with it."
The series will use DNA to analyze the connection if one is found, during the search for those long-lost babies.
