Actress Rebecca Wisocky never thought of herself as beautiful. And, for her, that’s a good thing. “I don’t believe that I was ever perceived as a great beauty in this business, and I think it’s been a boon and a strength for me because I always played older than I was,” she says.
“I looked like I was 40 since I was 12 years old, and that’s not really an exaggeration. And I never had to suffer the fate of being an aging ingenue because I’ve always played older. And I was able to do things that were, to me, just much more interesting.”
What’s interesting her now is playing the spectral grande dame of the haunted mansion on CBS’ comedy, “Ghosts.” Wisocky describes her character as the woman “who built the house where the story takes place and she lived and died during the Gilded Age in upstate New York, and was the wife of a robber baron. So she is representative of the decadence and excess and hypocrisy of that point in America history. I said, ‘YES, please.’”
Wisocky has been saying, ‘Yes, please’ for nearly 30 years. She started in the theater and earned roles on a dizzying array of TV series like “The Young and the Restless,” “Devious Maids,” “The Mentalist,” “Criminal Minds” and “Dopesick,” which is streaming on Hulu.
But the part that stirred everybody’s attention was the role of a drug-addled mom who enlisted her son in her crimes on “Law & Order: Criminal Intent.” “People still stop me on the street for that one,” she laughs.
“And I think I only got the role because no one famous wanted to be as downtrodden and unattractive as the role required me to be. I played a hustling drug addict who had her son rob jewelry stores. She was just a terrible person. But I think I managed to imbue a little bit of pathos in her. I think that was maybe my first big guest star role. In our business those things tend to snowball. When you prove that you can do it, more people are going to want you to.”
An adoptee, Wisocky credits her parents with allowing her to express herself in a way that was completely foreign to them. Her dad worked for a mineral processing company and her mom was an X-ray technician in York, Pennsylvania, where she grew up. “I was raised by parents who were genuinely curious about who I was and it was just such a wonderful gift,” she sighs.
“I didn’t grow up in an artistic family at all, but they just had a really lovely way of being curious about who this creature was and how they could help them become whatever that was going to be. I'm in a moment in my life right now where I'm very grateful for the parents I was raised by. My parents drove me countless hours back and forth to the theater. They drove me when I was high school up to New York every weekend to go take classes. They were devoted and very generous and are still my biggest fans.”
Another big fan is her husband, Lap Chi Chu, a lighting designer. Though they both worked in the theater and knew the same people, they’d never met. “We went on this first date which was a terrible first date,” she recalls.
“We didn’t seem to speak the same language at that point in time, but the thing that was remarkable about it was we couldn’t stay away from each other after that. We hung out the next night and the night after that. We fell in love as friends, and then fell in love,” she says.
“We were living as though we were in a relationship without really being in one,” she recalls. “We would talk about buying a house, and when we could do this or that and travel together. And I think we eventually said, ‘Listen, we should actually TRY this or set each other free.’ And we tried it, and it was instantly, effortlessly perfect. We got engaged four months later.
Wisocky admits to being a perfectionist in her work and wishes she were less critical of herself. “I would (like) to have more patience with myself and would’ve have fallen in love with my husband years before I actually did,” she says.
“Part of how I approach what I do, is I seek as much structure as possible so I can feel free inside of it – whether it be research that I do or being incredibly prepared or having a very musical relationship to how I believe a line was written and intended to be played. And then, only in that structure, do I find a sense of freedom in the role.”
Wrangler wangles deal with 'Yellowstone'
Wrangler has roped in a deal with ViacomCBS to feature clothing worn on the popular series, “Yellowstone.” Carrying on the heritage of farming and ranching, the company is offering work shirts, T-shirts, jackets, hoodies emblazoned with the “Y” brand as seen on the fictional Dutton Ranch in the series.
The Wrangler patch has been glimpsed on rough-tough clothing in the past three seasons of the Kevin Costner show, but with the arrival (just in time for Christmas) of the Wrangler X Yellowstone Collection things are about to get downhome serious.
The show’s costume designer, Johnetta Boone is all for it. “Wrangler caters to everyone, and while each character has their own look and style, I could effortlessly find pieces that worked for the entire Dutton family and full cast,” she has said.
“I even had several actors who wanted to emulate their own personal pieces of clothing to pair with Wrangler, so I can tell you that I truly see the brand continuing on with these characters in future seasons.”
As for Costner, who’s an executive producer on the series, he likes to keep things straightforward, just like his character John Dutton. “I have faith in my own choices about what I do and I have the measure of what I do — maybe not the measure of how other people perceive my work — but I take a long time in deciding what I’m going to do and work really hard on what I’m doing while I’m making it, and work it to the point where I like it and respect it as a piece of work. And then I let it go.”
He says the measure of projects “is how well they do at the box office or how well critics receive it or don't. And I think those are false gods, for me.”
Season 4 of “Yellowstone” can be viewed on the Paramount Network, or on some of the streaming sites.
The ‘Doc’ is in at Ovation
Those who missed the hilarious “Doc Martin” series, can tune into Ovation TV Dec. 9, where the network will begin airing all five seasons of the wry British import. The series is about a physician who’s terrified of blood and transfers himself to a picturesque village perched on England’s coast to avoid these bloody encounters. Only the doctor’s brusque and asocial ways don’t suit the warm-hearted citizens of bucolic Portwenn.
The show stars Martin Clunes as the doc who’s reluctantly making house calls and calling the residents out on their ways of life. One of the producers on the show is Clunes’ wife, Philippa Braithwaite. That’s a bonus, says Clunes. “I'm really really lucky Philippa and I talk about a five-year plan to maybe retire because we have so many things that aren’t work that we want to do but we haven’t yet started the five years ... We don’t do the same job so there’s no conflict. We don’t operate in a hierarchical sort of way.”
‘Trafficked’ prowls the black market
That intrepid journalist Mariana van Zeller returns to National Geographic’s “Trafficked” series on Wednesday where she will be infiltrating and investigating the plastic surgery black market. While we don’t usually think of cosmetic surgery as as a source of illegal operations, it actually is. Van Zeller will penetrate Miami’s surgery center, where she will remove the bandages on an illicit trade.
On Dec. 8 she attempts to put the kiss of death on internet romance scammers who pried $600 million out of would-be Cyranos last year. The quest takes van Zeller to far-off Ghana where she learns the secrets of the scammers who feed on innocent victims who just want a little love in their lives.
On Dec. 15 she tries to learn why the black market marijuana trade in California is three times larger than the legal one. And on Dec. 22 there’s no Christmas vacation for van Zeller, as she prowls the ominous secrets of biker gangs.
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