Felicity Huffman

Felicity Huffman

By Daniel Robert Epstein
Dec 10, 2005

Up until this time last time Felicity Huffman was known as a brilliant working TV, film and stage actor but hadn’t yet reached mainstream. All that changed when Desperate Housewives premiered last year and became a national phenomenon.

In between filming the pilot for Desperate Housewives and the series, Huffman dipped her big toe into a leading woman role for the film Transamerica.

Huffman plays Bree, a pre-operative, male-to-female transsexual who saves every penny so that she can pay for one last operation that will make her a woman at last. One day she receives a phone call and finds that she has a son in jail. Bree flies from Los Angeles to New York in order to bail the boy out. Her son believes Bree to be a Christian missionary and she sees no reason to clear up the misunderstanding. She persuades him to accompany her back to the west coast secretly planning to leave him at his stepfather's along the way.

Check out the official site for Transamerica

Daniel Robert Epstein: This has been some kind of year for you. First an Emmy for Desperate Housewives, a nomination for an Independent Spirit Award and there is talk of an Oscar nomination for Transamerica as well. What’s your reaction to all this?
Felicity Huffman: It’s thrilling, surprising, baffling, frightening and fantastic.
DRE:
[writer/director] Duncan [Tucker] has said you spent a long time coming up with the voice for the character. What did you do to prepare for that?
FH:
I went through a couple voice teachers because transgendered men spend a lot of time finding their female voice so that they don’t sound like Tony Curtis in Some Like it Hot. I had to find my male voice and then make it sound like I was trying to find my female voice. So that was a conundrum in and of itself and I finally found a voice teacher here in New York named Katie Bull. She figured out a way to lower my voice about four octaves and then make it sound like I was striving for a higher voice. I think it sounds really, haunted, lonely and a little false.
DRE:
How much did that voice inform your performance?
FH:
I found the conundrum of being a woman playing a man becoming a woman unscaleable. The internal journey is someone who is becoming who they really are, which is something we all want to do. We want our families to see us for who we are.
DRE:
What was the attraction to the role?
FH:
It’s the screenplay first. If it ain’t on the page, it ain’t on the stage. It was a fantastic script. You can have a great character and if the script is nowhere, you’re done. But this had a great screenplay and then the character was just fantastic. The risk was screwing it up, but not to take a shot would’ve just been cowardly.
DRE:
The funniest thing about the movie is how conservative Bree is.
FH:
Isn’t that great?
DRE:
Someone that’s about to have their penis cut off, you’d think they’d be okay with seeing a couple of naked men jump into a lake. How did that strike you?
FH:
I thought it was wonderfully specific. I think it’s a generalization among those not familiar with the transgendered community that someone who’s transgendered is wild and woolly and wacky and out there. But no, there’s a broad spectrum like there is with any segment of society. I love that she was like this fussy aunt who didn’t want to look at the naked boys and was very proper. Just because she wants sexual reassignment surgery doesn’t mean she wants to run around seeing people naked all the time.
DRE:
How much did you do to create Bree?
FH:
Duncan wrote the words and I came up with everything else. Interestingly enough when I talked to Duncan before we started shooting, I was going "God, what does she look like? and he said “I don’t care about that. You don’t have to do anything. Just look like yourself. You don’t need to change your voice.” So I was the one going “God. All right. He doesn’t know what he’s talking about. I better do it.” He just cared about the heart of the movie and yet when I showed up on set on the first day of filming after I’d put all the elements together he became the watchdog of it. It was a good collaboration.
DRE:
Could you talk about the decision for Bree to go stealth?
FH:
I think it’s a really tough decision for transgendered women because they are women and they don’t want to be known as transgendered women because then they become a sensation as opposed to “I’m just a woman.” So it must be a tough political choice to go “Do I come out so that I can support other women going through this process? Or do I lead my life so that I’m known as a woman? Can I move to another town and just be Bree as opposed to Stanley?” I don’t think Bree has actually addressed that question because Bree has a hard time leaving her house, much less deciding whether she wants to make a political statement with her sexual reassignment surgery. If she could, she’d be invisible. The only reason she works at the Mexican restaurant at the beginning of the film is because I’m sure her shrink has said, “Look. You’ve got to get a job outside the house.”
DRE:
Is the possibility of getting nominated for an Oscar important to you?
FH:
It’s something that I can’t make a decision on because it’s completely out of my control. It would be a complete thrill. Would I run around in my house in my underwear screaming? Yeah. Do I count on it? Absolutely not. I don’t want to set up so that if the film doesn’t get recognized by the Academy, it’s a failure. I think the fact that you are here wanting to talk to me about the movie is fantastic. Who knew that anyone would watch this tiny movie other than me and my family. You have to be realistic and grateful.
DRE:
How much did the success of Desperate Housewives astonish you?
FH:
I thought the pilot script was fantastic, which is why I auditioned and wanted to be a part of it. But I’ve been a part of a lot of pilots that have died ignominiously so I thought that was my track record and now I was killing Desperate Housewives. It was just another pilot I was doing that probably wouldn’t go. Then I went and shot Transamerica and I came back and five days later we started shooting the first season of Desperate Housewives. It’s lightning in a bottle. It happens once in a gazillion badillion years or ten. So it was a complete shock.
DRE:
What do you think it hit with America?
FH:
It’s Marc Cherry’s voice. It’s possible to copy a genre. It’s really hard to copy a voice. Marc Cherry has a very specific voice. He wrote a great pilot and then ABC launched it brilliantly. Marc Cherry holds up the icon of the American family and then he pokes fun at it, but not in a way that would tear it down or destroy it, but in a way that we can laugh at ourselves. He does it with this delicious, wicked little tongue in cheek twist, so it’s truthful and delightful and you feel a little naughty watching it as well.
DRE:
How do you feel about the evolution of your character on the show from being a true desperate housewife to being a working woman who’s scheming to get her boss fired?
FH:
I actually thought that last year was important because it was a voice of motherhood that I don’t think had been out there. It was always motherhood going, “Honey, did you forget your lunchbox?” Instead of “Oh my God! I’m going crazy and I can’t take it and I’m bad at mothering and I don’t know how to do it and I feel guilty and I’ve lost my old self and all those things that I feel are much more for me” an accurate voice of motherhood. So this year a desperate housewife should go to work because a lot of women have to work part time or full time and I don’t think this particular venue has been explored on TV.

by Daniel Robert Epstein

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