PASADENA, Calif. _ The beginning seemed so promising for actress Jessie Buckley. The Irish performer trekked to London when she was just 17 and soon landed a role in a play. When the run ended, she was contacted by the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts and was offered a free four-month course in Shakespeare. She snapped at the chance, though Buckley was primarily a musical performer.
"I went and my mind was like kewwwww!," she shakes her head. "I all of a sudden felt completely unnerved and enlivened and awake to something that I'd never even thought would be a thing for me. And that kind of challenge of words and of making words belong to people ... that first course was the first time I felt really alive and challenged," she pauses.
"Then I got drunk in a bar and became a jazz singer for two years."
Buckley explains that turn of events in her lilting Irish accent. "From the play I was doing at the West End we got this free membership to the Ivy Club. It was at the time it was just starting up.
"There was an awesome jazz piano player called Joe Thompson there and genuinely, I got drunk one night and started singing. He was like, 'I'd love to work with you.' So over the course of two, three months _ it was so mad _ we got a residency at Annabel's, which is this weird private club in Mayfair. And nobody listened to me (sing) because it was all Russian Mafioso and odd jobs, so I learned my repertoire over three months. And we just toured around different jazz venues in London and outside. It was completely magical," she laughs.
Magical is the word for Buckley's journey so far. Although she suffered from severe depression when she was a teenager, her career trajectory has been supersonic.
It reaches its zenith next Monday when she costars in HBO's five-part miniseries on the catastrophic nuclear disaster, "Chernobyl." Buckley plays Lyudmilla, the wife of a firefighter who finds herself snared in one of the worst man-made disasters in history.
"When I was growing up in Ireland, every year families would foster Chernobyl children," says Buckley.
"So when I got sent the script and Lyudmilla's story and read the humanity behind it, I was terrified, scared. You have to be as honest and tell the story as honestly as possible. So I went in and read and they seemed to like me," she shrugs.
People have always liked her. A London lawyer saw her in her first play and came backstage offering to pay her tuition at RADA, pony up her rent and cover singing and acting lessons. "And he never asked anything in return," she says.
"He is literally an angel," she sighs. "I wouldn't be doing what I am today if it hadn't been for him."
The oldest of five, Buckley attended Catholic school and says she has a faith, "but it's not proscriptive." Her mother is a singer and actress; her father ran a guest house and is a poet. She may owe part of her rebellious spirit to him.
When she forsook her studies to hit the jazz trail, she says, "He was delighted that I was cavorting around the UK. And when I went back to college at RADA, he said, 'Burn your bras! Cause havoc!'"
While she shares that carefree spirit, she's also suffered some dark days. "In the middle of that (jazz tour) I was suffering from a bad depression from when I was young," she confesses. "So I think that singing and acting was a complete escape and actually a survival kit for me to actually get out.
"And I was afraid of myself in lots of ways. I think I was trying to learn about myself by going out. You begin to know what you value and what is important to you so at that point I think I was kind of effervescently like a spinning top, just bulldozing through adventures and life and feckless and had no boundaries _ but they felt real at the time and I'm a human person who sometimes gets sad. That's very real."
She left her studies at RADA early because she snagged the role of Miranda in "The Tempest" at Shakespeare's famous Globe Theatre. "That was just magic and I was just terrified," she says.
"But working there is like being a rock star in Shakespeare's land. The experience of telling a story like that to a crowd that just wants to be told stories so much is just thrilling. And it was such a fun summer. I did that, then another Shakespeare after that."
Her first significant part on television was another Russian woman _ she played the sympathetic daughter, Marya, in "War & Peace." "I felt she was completely opposite to my ballsy Irishness," says Buckley, 29. "She was just so delicate, like a porcelain vase, and had this beacon of hope in her heart against the odds."
In spite of her success so far, acting can be difficult, she says. "It's a struggle sometimes, and sometimes you have massive panic attacks. You think, 'I can't do this. I'm not going to do this justice.' Or, 'I haven't done enough research.' If I ever felt sure I think I probably didn't care enough. I'd be more afraid of that."
THE ESTEFANS ARE HONORED ON PBS
They've been working and living together for 40 years and, though they're very different personalities, it somehow works, says Gloria Estefan of her relationship with her husband, Emilio.
The pair is being honored with the Library of Congress' Gershwin Prize for Popular Song. PBS will air the event Friday.
Both of them were born in Cuba, and Emilio explains how they met. "I went to see her because she was singing in a church. I saw her, and I loved her voice. I said, 'What a beautiful voice.' . . And then, like probably six months later, I was playing a wedding, and she come in. I say, 'Why don't you play one song with us?' And I really loved the whole thing ...
"I was putting an ensemble (together) that was really the Miami Latin Boys that became the Miami Sound Machine, because I believe we had a sound that was totally different. I mean, at the beginning it was really difficult because we was bringing a different last name, we was bringing a different sound, and no label wanted to sign us because they said, 'People won't like it,'" he says.
" ... Combining the base of rhythm, a band growing up in Miami, being born in Cuba, we found this fusion of sounds. And then with a girl singing, I think it was something totally new. I think it was something fresh. And I remember we did the first album and we got lucky enough, and with a small label we became No. 1 on the charts. And we did the first bilingual album. So I really loved the way she sang, and then I loved her. We've been married 40 years. So, you know, it was a great thing."
Gloria Estefan says the unique music still persists in Cuba. "The thing that was able to flourish still under Castro was jazz, because it didn't have lyrics. And they really clamped down on any opportunity for artists to express any antigovernment sentiment," she says.
"There is a very rich musical tradition in Cuba, with very deep African roots ... I think music continues to thrive in Cuba. It's how people get by. Even in neighborhoods, you hear amazing music. It's just that they really clamp down with censorship, and that, of course, is going to squash anything. The relations between Cuba and the United States is not the problem," she says.
"It's the Cuban government that is squashing the creativity. So until that changes somehow and expands, you're still going to have a lot of artists that can't express themselves like they'd like to."
DRAMA REVEALED IN 10-MINUTE SEGMENTS
It's a unique concept: Tell a TV story in 10-minute segments. But that's what Sundance TV is doing with "State of the Union," premiering next Monday. Starring Rosamund Pike and Chris O'Dowd, the series is written by Nick Hornby ("About a Boy"), who's so adept at creating relationships that don't quite work. The 10-part series is about a couple whose marriage is disintegrating in spite of their therapy efforts.
"I think it's a look at what we feel about love and how it changes, and whether if you're not feeling that first flush, is it still love and can you still recall what it was when everything was electric, and you fell for each other," says Pike.
"And then maybe each one of you has a different recollection of quite how that happened, and then as you start to untangle it, does the whole thing unravel or is actually that a truth that you want to stand by and is that, on its own, worth fighting for? I think Nick is very brilliant at creating the kind of delicate, complicatedness of a true, adult marriage. You know, it's not easy. And it's not simple. And it's not the same thing as it was when you were 25."
NETFLIX RECLAIMS 'DESIGNATED SURVIVOR'
Netflix has resurrected the drama "Designated Survivor" and will premiere its third season June 7. ABC canceled the well-liked show last May after two seasons. The tale is about the innocent Secretary of Housing and Urban Development who's catapulted to the office of president when all the king's men in line before him have been killed in an explosion.
Kiefer Sutherland plays the president and will be back for 10 more episodes in the Netflix series. Sutherland had just tied up nine years with Fox's hit "24" and had no intention of returning to television when he first read the script for "Designated Survivor."
"I was doing a small film in New York. Very busy ... I had no intention of doing a television show. And I was very busy, but I felt I needed to give this script a cursory read so that I could at least respond with some intelligence and explain why I couldn't do it. And I found myself on page 22, and I remember saying, 'S _.'
"The script was so beautifully structured. It had the thriller aspect of trying to find out who had done this. It had a family drama. What happens when, overnight, you go from a very structured life to the life of the president of the United States and the first lady? What happens to your children? What sacrifices are made there? And then it also allowed itself the format, on a political level, to have discussions that I think we need to have in this country in a rational way, not so divisive, but hear really important and respectable points of view from the left and the right.
"And I felt that this script afforded every opportunity to create a landscape that was so vast that being able to do many years of a show would be possible. And that was very exciting for me, and so that's how I came to be a part of the show."
