Bill Paxton on the New Season of Big Love - and its Biggest Fan
http://www.blackbookmag.com/article/bill-paxton-on-big-love/5930
“Hello? Thanks for the—hang on—watch out for the mountain lions, sweetie!” Given the upward lilt at the end of his paternal warning, one gets the impression that actor Bill Paxton is joking. He’s not. Tucked away in rural America, the three-time Golden Globe nominee sounds worlds apart from the New York ad blitzkrieg promoting the third season of his hit drama Big Love, which returns to HBO this Sunday. Back in Manhattan, street-level billboards come equipped with audio jacks into which passersby are invited to stop and listen to the confessions of random strangers. Meanwhile, human advertisements pepper heavily trafficked intersections with thought bubbles atop their heads, meant to expose true feelings they would never dare utter.
The show’s tagline this season, after all, is “Everyone has something to hide.” And Paxton, for his third year as Bill Henrickson, assures us that the show’s polygamy-centered plotlines are about to accelerate. Here, although immune to blog speculation and aggressive marketing ploys, the star of Twister and Apollo 13 readies himself for a return to Salt Lake City.
Your fans are really excited about Sunday’s premiere.
They won’t be disappointed. This year, I really think the fans are going to have bragging rights for having caught on early. The stakes have gone way up. It was one of those seasons where I just barely manage to crawl out from the wreckage after the last episode—it was emotionally and physically draining.
Do you take the turmoil home with you after a long day on set?
Not really. But that said, I don’t think the human body knows the difference between artificially induced stress and real stress. As actors, we go from zero to 60 emotionally with these characters.
Have your opinions on Mormon fundamentalism and plural marriage changed over the last three years?
When we shot the pilot, I hadn’t yet done much research. Since then, I’ve read up on it more. Plural marriage was abolished by the Mormon religion when they chose to move into the 20th century. But, you know, every religion has its dark days. Look at the Catholics. The Inquisition makes plural marriage look like a Walt Disney film. I’m actually really glad we got into this, because I’ve been thinking about it lately. Big Love has put a human face on a religion that a lot of people have thought of as a cult. We were bombarded with all of those images from Texas last year, showing these women in these prairie dresses with their children being taken away. I think, because of this show, America suddenly felt like we knew these women—they weren’t so foreign or cultish anymore. I wonder, had there been no Big Love, would America have been asking, What the hell is wrong with them? Who the hell are they? What the hell is the deal with the weird hairstyles and those dresses?
When your character tries to navigate the politics of plural marriage, I would imagine you can’t help but questions those ethics yourself.
No, I don’t really question his ethics, because like any character you play, you play them without judgment. Winston Churchill once said “Judgment is a fine thing, but keen insight is much rarer.”
Also, you’ve been able to circumvent the widespread criticism that polygamy is inherently misogynistic and patriarchal by focusing equally on each wife.
I don’t think he’s a misogynist, even though he seems to live in a misogynistic world. His father, for example, is the king of misogyny.
Have you heard back from any actual Mormons about the show?
I haven’t, no, but I don’t really spend a lot of time in Utah. I also don’t really get on the blog sites, so you’d probably know better than me what people are saying. To me, the show is a clever way of using the lens of polygamy to project all of these contemporary morays about sex, marriage, religion, fatherhood and husbandry. In that way, we play these characters without judgment, and so I’m always surprised when other people condemn them.
In light of the recent passing of Proposition 8, do you feel like your on-screen relationships—and, less specifically, non-traditional marriages—have become more relevant to audiences?
Here we are, in 2009, and there’s still this whole thing about Prop 8! At the end of the day, Big Love is about tolerance. It seems hypocritical for one group to make another group a pariah just because they don’t share their views on traditional marriage—that’s ridiculous. If somebody is a law-abiding citizen, a taxpayer, and consenting adult—what the fuck does this country stand for? As a nation, we talk and talk about our freedoms, we talk about the Constitution, but where does the rubber meet the road? The show doesn’t have some subversive agenda, or some liberal agenda, but it addresses the reality that we’re still in the Dark Ages at times.
Agenda or no, the show can’t help but be somewhat political ...
Speaking of, Barack Obama is a fan of the show! I met him last year at a private fundraiser at an attorney’s house in Pacific Palisades. I was asked if I would like to meet him, and I said, God, would I! I was led to another part of the house where I could see him talking to some people, and I was standing next to Reggie Love, who is one of his personal aides. Reggie is a big guy, the size of two refrigerators, and he’s really nice. So we’re talking and I’m kind of waiting for Obama to finish his conversation. Reggie says, “Hey, we love the show,” and he kids me about the wives, as most people who’ve watched the show do. At that point, Barack walks over to me and extends his hand. Before anything else, he points to Reggie and says, “You know what we call this guy, don’t you? Big Love!”
In a recent BlackBook interview, Chloë Sevigny said that the sex scenes on the show were difficult for her. How do you feel about getting naked on camera?
There’s nothing less sexual than doing a love scene on a movie or TV set—you’ve got technicians standing there, and you’re sitting there trying to create this illusion of intimacy and passion. The whole thing can look kind of ridiculous. I try to be respectful, but at the same time, once the camera is rolling, you kind of have to go for it. Chloë has a great proprietary quality about her that I really like; as hip and as big a style maven as Chloë is, there really is an old-fashioned girl inside of her, which I find really beguiling and enticing. She doesn’t play it too cool for school, and she has a really private way about her, which carries a lot of dignity. Self-dignity seems to be the first thing we give away nowadays.
Another project you’ve reportedly signed on to star in—
I am not involved in the remake of Creature from the Black Lagoon. There was also some rumor, a few years ago, which said I turned down Tom Hanks’ role in The Da Vinci Code. I must get my publicist to get that stuff off of there.
Well, fanboys went crazy over the monster thing.
Are they even making that remake? I figure Universal will remake any old monster movie from their archives. Oddly, I had an idea for a Creature from the Black Lagoon movie years ago when I was filming Navy Seals. And it was actually a pretty good premise: a Navy Seal who’d volunteered to do these experiments with liquid breathing drowns in the process. He’s buried at sea, but hell, he’s not dead, and he’s going through a metamorphosis to become a frogman. So he comes back to deal with the people who left him for dead and the government that completely ruined his life.
Did you tell anyone that idea? That’s probably where the rumor started.
No, that’s not where it came from. But who knows? Maybe somebody had some kind of prophetic vision of me and it will all come to pass.