Lynette Scavo was once best known as a tough, savvy businesswoman. In the working world she was an over-achiever who could accomplish any task. But those days came to an end when she and her husband, Tom, decided to have kids...five kids to be exact. Since then, Lynette has tirelessly struggled to find the perfect balance between marriage, motherhood, and career.
Over the last ten years, Lynette battled her wild children, her prescription drug dependency, her crazy boss, her husband's mid-life crisis, her unstable siblings, her alcoholic mother, cancer, a miscarriage, and a serial killer, to name a few. But the one thing she could count on through all of it was her loving husband, Tom. Until he took a corporate job and didn't have time for tending to the family or their marriage. Lynette, long the person who called the shots in the relationship, was suddenly delegated to being the "plus one." Feeling like their lives were going in different directions, the two finally agreed to a trial separation. Can the marriage that so many of their friends admired survive?
"I love the marriage Lynnette has with Tom. Maybe it's just that I adore working with Doug Savant, but it is a "marriage in progress." It has its ups and downs but is still alive and vibrant and the characters love each other. I also love how the writers create Lynette. She is strong, but always crazed trying to balance family and work. She is a very truthful character who has a big heart and a lot of flaws. Finally, I love that I get to wear baggy clothes!" -Felicity Huffman
actor
We love our actresses versatile, and, geez, does Felicity Huffman ever fit the bill! Not only can she currently be seen starring as Super Mom Lynette Scavo on the hit Desperate Housewives on ABC on Sunday nights at 9:00 p.m., Huffman also proved herself to be an exceptional actress by earning an Academy Award nomination for her stunning performance as a transsexual woman inTransamerica, as well as a Golden Globe Award and Independent Spirit Award for the same role.
Huffman also nabbed an Emmy and a Screen Actors Guild Award for Best Lead Actress in a Comedy Series for her role onDesperate Housewives. The cast won the 2004 SAG Award for Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble in a Comedy Series, and most recently won a Golden Globe for Best Television Series-Comedy or Musical. Huffman was also nominated for Best Actress in a Television Comedy for Desperate Housewives.
In 2006 she starred in the critically acclaimed Weinstein Company film, Transamerica, as Bree, a transgendered woman who embarks on a journey across country with her newly discovered son. In addition to an Oscar nomination, Huffman won a Golden Globe and Independent Spirit Award for the role..
In 2004 Huffman appeared in the feature film Christmas with the Cranks, which starred Tim Allen and Jamie Lee Curtis. She also appeared in Raising Helen, with Kate Hudson and John Corbett.
On the small screen, she was seen in 2004 in the television movie Reversible Errors with William H. Macy, Tom Selleck and Monica Potter. Among her television movie credits are Out of Order, the critically acclaimed Door to Door, starring William H. Macy, Path to War, starring Alec Baldwin and Donald Sutherland, The Heart Department, Harrison, Cry of the City, Quicksand,Heart of Justice, The Water Engine and Underworld. Other television credits include Chicago Hope, X-Files, Law and Order,Bedtime Stories and appearances as a series regular on The Human Factor, the ABC series Sports Night, Thunder Alley, Early Edition, Jules and The Golden Years.
Huffman is a founding member of the Atlantic Theater Company, an off-Broadway theater company where she has been featured in numerous plays, including Dangerous Corner, Shaker Heights and The Joy of Definitely Going Somewhere. Among her other stage credits are Oh Hell, directed by Greg Mosher ad the Lincoln center Theatre, Boy's Life, directed by William H. Macy, The Loop and Grotesque Love Songs. Huffman also appeared in David Mamet's Speed the Plow. She received an OBIE Award for her portrayal of Donnie in Mamet's Cryptogram.
Felicity Huffman may have played one of the "Desperate Housewives" but, in real life, she was adamant that she didn't want to become one.
"I was so scared of marriage that I thought I would've preferred to step in front of a bus," the actress, 52, told the Tribune News Service.
"I thought I'd disappear. Men's stock when they get married goes up. Women's stock goes down. Another thing, 60 percent of first marriages fail, 80 percent of second marriages fail."
With those odds, Huffman was hesitant to marry husband and fellow actor William H. Macy, even though they were together for 15 years.
"Bill Macy asked me to marry him several times over several years. And I was finally smart enough to go: ‘I'm going to marry this guy or really lose him for good,'" Huffman told the Tribune. "And it was after we broke up for four or five years when he asked me again, I knew I couldn't say no."
But first she had some work to do on herself.
"It was the work I had to do in order to bring myself to the marriage and then the work that I did to be able to trust another person and see what comes out of that comfort and that safety," she said. "I was able to blossom out of that."
The couple finally wed in 1997, and Huffman credits that love with helping her through a crippling depression.
"I went through a very, very dark three years," she said about the time, from ages 28 to 31, before they married. "It was that kind of depression where I just wished I was dead, that kind of relentless — I just wished I was dead."
The actress, who plays the ex-wife of Timothy Hutton on ABC's new drama "American Crime," said she recovered through "the love of my family, through therapy. I came out of it."
Looking back, she said, "That dark time changed me, I think, for the better."
With rave reviews pouring in for her honest portrayal of a flawed, grieving mother in the hit ABC series American Crime, Felicity Huffman talks about why the show is so important and why she completely fell in love with Austin during filming.
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Felicity Huffman starts gushing about Austin before she’s even taken her seat for lunch, talking about her favorite neighborhoods and, as the hostess sets the menu down in front of her, declares that if she had to leave Los Angeles, she would move to the Texas capital—no question. Her love affair with the city began last year while shooting the timely and provocative ABC drama American Crime.
Her four-month Austin residency—she rented a charming house complete with a screened-in porch in historic Pemberton Heights—was actually Huffman’s first time in Texas. “I’m now assuming it is all as kick-ass as Austin,” she says. When told that that’s not necessarily the case, she says, “That’s what everyone says, but I don’t care. I’m holding on to that. I now love the state because of the city.” She even wrote a love letter to Austin on What the Flicka?, her popular parenting website.
Huffman, looking casually chic in a white shirt, black sweater, and little makeup, sips on hot tea while recalling the previous night’s 30th anniversary party for the Atlantic Theater Company, which was founded by two important men in her life: the actor William H. Macy, her husband; and the legendary playwright David Mamet, her longtime theater collaborator to whom she credits her career. In fact, it was a member of the theater company who advised Huffman to read the pilot for John Ridley’s American Crime, and she signed on quickly. Her first meeting with Ridley was scheduled for the morning after the 2014 Oscars ceremony, where he won the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay for 12 Years a Slave and celebrated into the night. She felt horrible about the timing.
“At 11 in the morning, John Ridley had to go meet this middle-aged, thinlipped TV actress,” she recalls. “I kept saying, ‘I’m so sorry you’re here; I’m so sorry you’re here.’ But I wanted to be a part of it. It was the writing—it’s always the writing.” American Crime, the 11-episode anthology series that debuted in March, is a network revelation: a nuanced look at racial tensions stemming from the murder of a white war veteran at his home in Modesto, California (played by an unrecognizable Austin). Huffman and Oscar-winner Timothy Hutton star as grieving parents Barb and Russ, whose gambling drove them apart years ago, leaving Barb to raise their two sons in public housing, where she developed hard, ugly prejudices.
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Ridley, who calls Huffman a “phenomenal partner,” was impressed by how completely she embraced such a difficult character. “Sometimes an actor wants to make sure that people know, ‘That’s not me,’ and there’s a little wink or nod to the audience,” he says. “Felicity relied purely on what was provided on the page and then as an actor brought out the humanity in her character. If she was going to take on that challenge of playing someone like Barb, she was going to play all of the aspects of her—from those that some people might find repugnant to those that people might find admirable.”
Huffman, a mother of two daughters in their early teens, says she entered her character by relating to Barb’s deep love for her children. “People ask me if Barb’s a racist or a bigot, and I say, ‘I don’t know.’ I know she wouldn’t describe herself as that. She would call herself a realist and a pragmatist…. But I think possibly the new face of racism is saying, ‘I’m not a racist; I’m a realist.’ I don’t quite know how to talk about it, so something this series does, in addition to the great storytelling, is have those conversations.” While they were filming American Crime in Austin, news reports from Ferguson, Missouri, and Ohio to New York City kept coming in a relentless stream of headlines.
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Explains Ridley: “We really wanted to make sure we had emotional honesty, and to do that you have to have a show that’s about more than the headlines. It’s about family; it’s about interactions; it’s about people evolving over time.” Ridley adds that Hutton and Huffman were true leaders and consummate professionals. “To do a show that is very personal to me, and that is very much a statement about where we are now as a country, and to have two people at the head of it who in every regard did everything they could to see that we would succeed, is very special.”
Huffman recalls feeling an instant familiarity with Hutton at their first encounter, when he came into the production office as she was reading the script. “I looked up, and it was like, ‘Oh! It’s you. I know you. You’re part of the tribe—I get it.’” That kind of connection doesn’t happen often, she insists. Hutton felt the same way. “It instantly felt like I was with one of my best friends,” he says shortly after arriving back in Austin in March for South by Southwest. “It was one of the most incredible experiences I’ve had working with an actor in my career, if not the best one.”
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Barb joins the other groundbreaking television and movie characters in Huffman’s impressive catalog. Her portrayal of Dana Whitaker on Sports Night was something rare on television in 1998: a strong yet flawed female leader in a male-dominated work environment. A few years later her next show on ABC, Desperate Housewives, for which she’d win an Emmy for her portrayal of Lynette Scavo, pushed the envelope in front of a wider audience, defying stereotypes and proving that a cast dominated by women in their 40s could be entertaining, sexy, and profitable. And soon into the success of Desperate, Huffman turned in a memorable, Oscar-nominated performance for Best Actress as a transgender woman in Transamerica; it’s a role that, exactly 10 years later, seems ahead of the curve.
Huffman’s choices are admirable for the risks and leaps of faith she must take to completely own a character, which goes back to how the stage—and working with Mamet in particular—shaped her. As she digs into her bunless burger and salad, she explains, “I was trained by a playwright. What that means is I was trained to serve the play, and to serve the playwright’s intention. It’s had a profound effect on me; it’s had a profound effect on my husband.” (Macy is enjoying TV success of his own, starring in Shameless on Showtime.) And although she’s doing a production of a Mamet play, The Anarchist, which opens April 24 in Los Angeles, she says that TV is now her preferred platform because of the separation between her and the audience. “During Desperate, I got used to people judging me from the very own comfort of their couches,” she laughs.
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If Huffman sounds hard on herself, it’s because she is, and it seems to come from a deep sense of self-awareness. She feels guilty when she’s at work away from her family, and she feels just as guilty when she’s not working. She has found relief by sharing her thoughts and feelings on What the Flicka?, which she started three years ago as Desperate was ending and is read by moms around the world (although not by as many as Gwyneth Paltrow’s lifestyle site Goop, she jokes). And she set a clear intention for herself while she was in Austin. If she was going to be away from her family, she was going to use that time as best she could. She learned to meditate, practicing every day, and took a break from running—instead going to yoga at studios like BFree in Central Austin and taking spinning classes at Ride in the 2nd Street District. This period of self-care was made stronger and easier by the hospitality she says she encountered everywhere. “Everyone in Austin was incredibly kind and incredibly helpful…. Everyone was so wide open,” she says, recalling the invitations to shop or have meals that she would get at yoga, at spin class, and from the group of women she bonded with in her temporary neighborhood. She is especially proud that they invited her to their monthly dinner.
Huffman indulged in Austin’s pleasures when her schedule allowed. “I must have gone to Uchi so much that I think most of my paycheck went there. I went to Guero’s Mexican restaurant on South Congress quite a bit with Tim,” she says, adding that she also loved nearby Home Slice and Hopdoddy. She was fascinated by the LBJ Library and Museum, which she visited half a dozen times. Huffman, who played Lady Bird in 2002’s Path to War, calls the beloved late first lady one of her heroes, especially for her insistence that people not be judged by appearances. She also made repeat treks to the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center, which tapped into her love of nature (protecting the environment is a cause she’s passionate about—supporting groups like the Sierra Club, The Wilderness Society, and Greenpeace).
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Huffman and Hutton spent a lot of time outdoors, riding their bikes all over town and to different parks. “She’s fearless—she’ll ride her bike 40 miles to a spot, no problem,” Hutton recalls. “I even took her jet skiing on Lake Travis. It’s such an amazing place, Austin. We had a great time.”
Huffman is hopeful that American Crime will get renewed, although, like American Horror Story, each season stands on its own—a new story with some of the same characters and actors. Although hesitant to leave her daughters again to return to Austin, which Ridley chose as a location shoot for the first season because of the state’s tax incentives program as well as its rich film community (local cinematographer Ramsey Nickell shot every scene), she’d love another chance at Barb. And no one is happier about the rave reviews the cast—especially Hutton and Huffman—is receiving than Ridley.
“She took a chance on me and signed on to this before the Oscar,” Ridley says. “She did it because she thought the material on the page had value. Her performance is reminding people how powerful an actress she is, how accomplished she is, and nothing makes me happier. I know that her being involved with it has elevated it to a degree beyond the work I put on the page, and that’s a simple fact.”
There was a time when Felicity Huffman was so petrified of marriage that almost anything seemed preferable. Luckily for her husband, William H. Macy, she eventually became more scared ofnot getting married.
"I was so scared of marriage that I thought I would've preferred to step in front of a bus," the actress, 52, tells the Tribune News Service.
"I thought I'd disappear. Men's stock when they get married goes up. Women's stock goes down. Another thing, 60 percent of first marriages fail, 80 percent of second marriages fail."
Huffman, who plays the ex-wife of Timothy Hutton on ABC's new dramaAmerican Crime, dated Macy for 15 years before they finally wed, in 1997. And Macy was trying to bring her around for much of that time.
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"Bill Macy asked me to marry him several times over several years. And I was finally smart enough to go: 'I'm going to marry this guy or really lose him for good,' " she says. "And it was after we broke up for four or five years when he asked me again, I knew I couldn't say no."
Not that it was easy. But it was worth it.
"It was the work I had to do in order to bring myself to the marriage, and then the work that I did to be able to trust another person and see what comes out of that comfort and that safety," Huffman says. "I was able to blossom out of that."
She also reveals that love helped save her from a crippling period of despair and depression when she was single.
"I went through a very, very dark three years … It was that kind of depression where I just wished I was dead, that kind of relentless – I just wished I was dead," she says. "It was kind of the crucible, from 28 to 31. That dark time changed me, I think, for the better."
She recovered through "the love of my family, through therapy. I came out of it." And while she still has fears, they're more manageable now.
"I wake up afraid. I'm afraid of everything," she says. "Everything is triage to me, I have to get the kids' breakfast. I have to get everything done. I guess I would string it together to say I feel like I'm a lazy girl. I feel bad about being a lazy girl. I want to be a perfect girl, so I drive myself to do it."
The Oscar-nominated actress talks David Mamet, Sports Night and marriage in the public eye
TIME: Do you still get nervous before a show launches?
Three years after the final episode of her Emmy-winning showcaseDesperate Housewives, Huffman is starring inAmerican Crime, the new drama executive-produced by12 Years a Slave screenwriter John Ridley. As Barb Hanlon, Huffman gets a deeply challenging role, that of a grieving mother undertaking a journey through the legal system with her estranged husband (played by Timothy Hutton) after the death of her son. It’s a role that pushes her, though the actress, known for her Oscar-nominated role as a transwoman in 2005’sTransamerica, isn’t afraid of a little effort. Huffman spoke to TIME about call sheets, David Mamet and whether she likes being part of a celebrity couple.Felicity Huffman is back on ABC, but there’s nothing funny about her new character.
Felicity Huffman: There’s this wonderful golden cradle when you’re working on something before it airs. It’s like being in rehearsals for a play—it’s just about the work and not about how people are responding to the work. I love that period. Going into the premiere, it does make you nervous, and it doesn’t matter if you’ve done it before—you’re just hoping people will see its merits. Also, you’re trying to be self-aware. After all, it’s just a TV show!
Were you trying to break free from your larger-than-life comedy series, Desperate Housewives, with something darker and more realistic?
I don’t know if I was particularly funny—me personally—but the genre was comedy, soap opera/comedy, sort of larger than life, as you say. I think what I was hoping for in whatever my next job was that the legacy ofDesperate and the character of Lynette didn’t impede the next story I was going to be a part of. It’s not “There’s Lynette as a police officer, there’s Lynette as a doctor!” I didn’t want memories of me to cloud a new story. I think American Crime does that.
What role are you most often recognized for?
Desperate Housewives was such a juggernaut that I think the majority of people, if they recognize me at all, it’s for Desperate Housewives, but it doesn’t really happen. That’s wonderful, I’m honored to have been part of it. Some people go, “Oh, Transamerica,” from a gazillion years ago. Some people say Sports Night. It doesn’t happen that much. A lot of times they go “I love—” and it’s “I love your husband!” I say, “Me too!”
The “Filliam H. Muffman” couple name, coined by Stephen Colbert, is still so memorable. Is it strange that people feel such fondness for you as a couple?
It doesn’t feel like that. It’s cool people like us as a couple. I like us as a couple, too!
What do you talk about now that you’re both on TV series? Is there a rivalry?
We say, Can you believe we’re both working? It’s so cool! I will say, if we were on softball teams, like the Broadway Show League, I think American Crime would kick Shameless’ ass. Timothy Hutton is a great athlete.
What political ideas are present in American Crime? It’s a pretty heady title.
It’s somewhat difficult for me to talk about the political nature of the show — it was my job to look at a very small part of the whole machine. I can say this: I think it’s unfortunate that crime in America is one of the melting pots where you get every race, religion, social class. It’s everyone from every walk of life, every background. I think that’s interesting — why John Ridley put it there. When you look at the American judicial system, you see how it affects everyone. Like any good story, you need an inciting incident. And the inciting incident is crime.
Talk about what it’s like working with John Ridley, who’s probably best known at this point for writing 12 Years a Slave.
He really leads with his intelligence. American Crime is his. It’s very specific and very unusual. What it was like working with him: He has a strong vision. He creates a true esprit de corps on set. It’s a team working together, not a hierarchy. Usually on a callsheet, the star is number one, and the costar is number two, and so on. But he did it alphabetically. He always thanks people for their hard work and not how good they were. And he had a true vision of what he wanted it to look like, and he’s brave.
How has working in TV changed since your career began?
Now is the golden age of television. We have the best of the best. It’s like repertory theater. They have the best writers and actors working in that medium. It’s so cool. When I did Sports Night, it was in front of a live audience. We had a laugh track. The audience doesn’t seem to brand-watch; they go where the content is. Amazon, Netflix, ABC, HBO: people are more emboldened to put out great content even if “it’s not what we do.” ABC, for American Crime, told John Ridley and [co-executive producer] Michael McDonald: “Do your vision.” And they meant it! They didn’t say,Do your vision, but she needs to be in a red dress, or, Do your vision, but you can’t use a curse word. They said, You create your vision and we’ll put it on TV and see if people like it. That’s a bold statement from a network.
It seems like there are more powerful female characters on broadcast TV, and on ABC in particular, between Scandal andHow to Get Away With Murder.
It probably started 10 years ago with Desperate Housewives, which showed women over 40 are viable and it can be a hit. And ABC listened.
What do you make of Transamerica, your Oscar-nominated film, in retrospect? It seems like it was ahead of its time in depicting trans life before it was top-of-mind for many people.
I feel really honored to be a part of it. When I did Transamerica, I thought—it was not an area I was familiar with. I went into it going, Who are these people? I left thinking, I love and admire them. Now that it’s mainstream, I think it’s wonderful. I wish it hadn’t taken ten years. The more we put people in boxes, which John Ridley shows so well—Oh, you’re a lesbian;you’re a Republican; you’re a police officer; you’re a bigot—the less we can see them as human beings. For Barb, even if you don’t agree with her, you can see her humanity. Going back to Transamerica, I think that was [writer/director] Duncan Tucker saying, “Open your eyes.”
What is getting you creatively inspired these days?
I’m doing a David Mamet play in Los Angeles. We rehearse every day. Working on Mamet’s point-of-view and Mamet’s script has really been fueling, and burying, me. I have to say, I did a play a while ago, and I said, “Friends dont let friends do theater.” I got used to people judging me from the comfort of their own couch, not ten feet in front of me.
