Jackie Peyton does not lead a safe life.
The title character of Showtime’s dark comedy “Nurse Jackie” is using — and stealing — drugs, cutting corners at work and is about to resume an affair with the stalkerish ex-lover who recently struck up a friendship with Jackie’s husband.
Is there anything Jackie isn’t capable of? “No, I don’t really think there is,” said Edie Falco, who’s played the emergency-room nurse for two seasons.
“Depending on how deep in she gets, I think she could potentially be capable of anything.”
Clearly that’s a big part of Jackie’s appeal for the actress. But there’s a difference between playing a character who lives on the edge of disaster and living there yourself, and it’s a difference Falco appears to appreciate.
“You start out hoping that you’ll trust them,” she said of “Nurse Jackie” executive producers Liz Brixius and Linda Wallem.
“You kind of go into it with a certain amount of trepidation, keeping your antennas up. But we’ve got a solid two-plus years under our belts — going on three years, since I met them — and we are still obviously on the same page . . . tastewise.”
It doesn’t hurt that Falco, who came out of HBO’s “The Sopranos” with three Emmys, has managed to surround herself with people she trusts.
“Pretty much everybody working on ‘Nurse Jackie’ I have a history with, and that was not by accident,” said Falco.
“Because if you’ve been doing it for a while, you really start to travel in the same circles and, ideally, when you get to a job, you’re like, ‘Oh, fantastic! He’s working on this! That’s great, I love that guy.’ We got all of those guys in the cast and in the crew.
“So to be in an environment where you have absolutely secured a safety zone for yourself and your castmates, it really is just completely different.
“Going on set, I knew most of these people the first day,” Falco said. “It’s a very different thing. I really feel like — it feels a lot like home, you know? A very safe, comfortable place to be.”
With shooting set to resume in September for a 12-episode Season 3, Falco said that she’d be willing to spend even more time with the “Jackie” cast and crew. Though the schedule’s “ideal” for her as both a mother and an actress who wants time to do theater, “I would do more. I would do maybe 15 or 18 or something, just because we’re up and running and we’ve got a real shorthand with each other.”
She wouldn’t be surprised, either, if the new health care law became part of the discussion on “Nurse Jackie.” “I bet it will, because it’s something that we all are aware of, paid attention to, cared about . . . so, yeah, I imagine it will be reflected in the writing.” As for Jackie, “I think she’d be thrilled” about health care reform.
Just don’t expect anyone to reform “Nurse Jackie.”
