By Christina Radish

Clare Carey at the Starz Entertainment after-party for the Hollywood Awards held at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Beverly Hills, Calif. on October 27, 2008.

The show features a disparate group of Los Angelenos, including maverick record producer Ben Cendars (Dennis Hopper); impulsive cop Kenny Battaglia (Ross McCall); his actress-turned-police officer partner Bebe Arcel (Arlene Tur); frustrated Brentwood mom Christine Emory (Clare Carey); her pre-bust real-estate developer husband Peter Emory (D.B. Sweeney); former gang member-turned-EMT Eddie Choi (Brian Tee); Ben’s street-smart driver Anthony Adams (Jocko Sims); illegal Guatemalan immigrant Cesar Uman (Luis Chavez); and cocky, hot-tempered detective Axel Finet (Nick Tarabay).

Carey recently spoke to MediaBlvd Magazine about what it’s like to film the first original television series for Starz Entertainment.

MediaBlvd Magazine> How did you get into acting? Was there someone or something that led you to that career path?              

Clare Carey> I had a lot of help, actually. I did kid’s theater because I went to a Montessori school and it was part of the curriculum. And, I’ve always done community theater, and stuff like that. I had a teacher in junior high who helped me get my agent, which helped me get in the Union. I lived in Santa Barbara and she would actually take me to L.A., or meet me down there, and she hooked me up. During high school, my mom would drag me to auditions, at the drop of a hat. So, I was lucky that I had some people who helped me navigate, very early on, because I’m sure I wouldn’t have been able to figure that out on my own. Then, I went to L.A. when I was 18, and I just kept going from there.

MediaBlvd> How did you know it was something you wanted to make a career out of?

Clare> I really enjoyed it, as a young person. I was onstage since I was about six, and I liked that feeling. And then, when I was able to make money at it, starting when I was about 14, it just seemed logical. It didn’t seem like a pie-in-the-sky dream. It seemed realistic, at that point. It’s what I always envisioned for myself, even though there have obviously been times, along the way, where you rethink it or you get frustrated. But, initially, there was just a huge conviction, on my part. It’s just how I saw my life. What’s funny is that it wasn’t until just recently that I stopped getting really nervous before every single time I work. There was still always a tiny part of me that couldn’t believe I was doing it. If I was about to walk into the room for a big audition, where you have to totally spill your guts on the floor, there was a little, tiny slice of me that would be like, “How are you going to do that? What are you going to do?” And then, there’s another part of me that has the technique, the skill and the experience, and knows exactly what I’m doing.

MediaBlvd> How did you get involved with Crash? Was it just through the regular auditioning process, or had they seen you in something?

Clare> The casting people had cast me several times before, most notably in Jericho, so they put me on a short list of people that they saw. I got in there early and I got really lucky because Glen Mazzara saw me as one of the first few people he read and he told me later that I matched his idea of what he’d envisioned. He met me and was like, “Well, there you go. That’s the character.” And then, he met a lot of people after me, and he met a lot of stars. The network wanted a big name, and he said, “Yeah, she’d be good, but Clare is the character.” So, they decided to cast the actress that was right for the role, and not just a star in the role. It was just one of those things where it all came together at the right time. It was the right role, the right person and the right project. They were willing to take a chance on me. I’m a familiar face, but I’m certainly not a star, in measurable ways.

MediaBlvd> For those who might not have seen Crash yet, who do you play on the show, and how does your character fit into the story?

Clare> The story of the show is essentially more about the American dream than racial tensions. It’s more about the spectrum of people on the economic scale, and my character is one of the ones that’s up there in the upper echelon, financially, but my family is portrayed as very dysfunctional. We do not have much honesty with each other, let alone respect. There is a lot of love, but it’s very dysfunctional. It shows the hollowness of the American dream. All of the other characters are striving to make their lives better, and get more respect and more money. My character has society’s respect and she’s got money, but she doesn’t have true love or a good relationship with her daughter.

MediaBlvd> Was it easy for you to find something to identify with in the character, or did it take some time for you to understand her?

Clare> The thing that I start with is always whatever the audition scene is about. It was basically the scene in the first episode where my character tells her dad to F-off. It was someone who has always sublimated all of her anger and her point-of-view, just to make peace and make everyone else feel okay. So, there’s this one moment where she was finally like, “You know what, dad? Fuck you!” It was a big deal for her. It summons all of her courage. That was the moment that I hinged it on, and where I began exploring from. I found the core moment of the whole show, and of why my character is even there. I could relate to that, emotionally. I didn’t have the same relationship with my dad, in real life. My dad was actually an incredibly sweet guy who was always extremely encouraging to me, unlike this character whose dad was actually quite cruel and emotionally cold. Even though he loves her, he just doesn’t know how to express it. But, I could relate to being someone who always wants to make peace and wants everyone to just be nice. I get ingrate, but I don’t really ever want to tell anyone to fuck off, if I really feel that way. For me, the most challenging part was that this character’s insecurities and weaknesses were very similar to my own. In that sense, I felt very vulnerable and raw, and had nothing to hide behind, emotionally. And, they didn’t give the character a whole lot of other things to hide behind either. She doesn’t have a funny personality or witty turn of phrase. It was, immediately, very easy for me to relate to her, emotionally speaking. I’m also a woman who grew up in an upper-middle class home. I don’t think it was so expressly deliberate, but the women in my family are all very nice. The premium, socially speaking, is to always be nice. It’s funny because, on one hand, I do strive to be a graceful person, and I appreciate grace and class in people, but nice is sometimes not the best thing for a woman. You surrender a lot of your strength by being nice. You have to balance it. This character has suffered from a lifetime of being nice, so she ends up becoming really unconscious of her hostility and it seeps out, in little comments that she makes, that she doesn’t mean to sound sharp at all, but they are because they’re loaded with 40 years of being nice. She’s never had any therapy. She never went to a healing retreat and saw the light. She’s just very east coast, blue blood, in her sensibilities.

MediaBlvd> Did you ever have any hesitation about doing what was the first original series for Starz? Was it more reassuring that the same producers that were behind the Academy Award winning film were also behind the series?

Clare> Yeah, of course, absolutely! You want to work with people who have consistently created quality film and television. Paul Haggis has a huge track record, as does Bobby Moresco. When I found out about Glen Mazzara, and all of the things that he’d done and the shows he’d been involved with, I realized that it was all top tier stuff. I was thrilled to get to work with all those people. And, also, material is really key. It was top quality material. It was written with a great deal of depth and didn’t pull a lot of punches, as far as stuff really happening at a core, raw level. They’re really living through something. A lot of television is just very light entertainment. This is not TV lite. Another thing that really attracted me was the idea of stripping down those layers, like “Here’s this perfect life. Let’s examine what’s rotten underneath.”

MediaBlvd> What’s it been like to work with such a varied ensemble of actors?

Clare> It was fun to work with D.B. Sweeney because he had been on Jericho, which was also quite a large ensemble cast, but he and I had never actually even been in a scene together since our characters’ stories did not directly cross. He is fantastic. He played a super-bad, straight-up evil guy on Jericho, so it was really fun to see him come and do this, and play a guy who couldn’t even be evil, if he wanted to. He can’t get it together. He’s a smart guy, and he is a good guy. He was the protege who was going to be the big billionaire entrepreneur guy, but it just never came together. He gets to middle age and, rather than start to be honest with himself and learn from his mistakes, he starts spinning faster. He can’t be honest with his wife. She can’t even really read between the lines of what he’s telling her. It’s a really interesting relationship, with years and years of stuff layered in there. He’s just such a really fine actor, so it just all worked. We talked about some stuff, but other stuff was just there. It was really, really fantastic to work with him. All the people who played my family, in my story, were tremendous. I just felt so lucky. Michael Fairman, who plays my dad, plays this really Archie Bunker, crazy, bigot. He does love, he just doesn’t know how to love. He’s terrific. And, the young woman that plays my daughter, Eloise Mumford, is just an amazing young actress. Actually, I did not really get to work with a lot of the others. We did have an episode where we were all at the police station, so we got to work with the police a little bit, which was fun. Arlene Tur, who plays Bebe, was also my roommate in Albuquerque this summer, and she’s super-fun and great. We were like, “We finally get to do a scene together!” I would have loved to have worked more with some of the others, but the stories didn’t intersect as much as perhaps I would have thought or liked. They are a great group of people. I know them all, socially. We all hung out, and they’re all super-cool. They’re all about the work. There were no egos or silliness. I really felt blessed to be around such a cool group of people.

MediaBlvd> With the show set in L.A., but filmed in New Mexico, how was it to work there? What are the advantages to working outside of L.A.? Is it difficult to be on location because you have a family?

Clare> The advantage is a financial one, for the producers, especially in this market. You get a 25% rebate on your taxes. That’s a lot of money, so I understand it. And, if you have to go somewhere, New Mexico is not a bad place. It really could be worse. But, for me, personally, I’d rather work in L.A. because of my family. I burned through a lot of dollars, flying back and forth, every chance that I got. I’ve probably been back and forth to New Mexico, easily 50 times, in the last few months. It’s been really crazy. And, my next project happens to also be shooting in New Mexico. That one is a western, so it takes place in New Mexico.

MediaBlvd> Which project is that?

Clare> It’s called Doc West, and it’s a mini-series. It’s for Italian television, and the guy who’s the star, whose name is Terence Hill, is a huge star in Italy. He was a star of these westerns, when he was a young man and, in the last 10 years, he did a big TV series there, where he plays a priest. It’s a little bit like Lonesome Dove or Into the West. It’s a big mini-series for Italian television, but there’s potential for them to bring it to the States. I don’t want to jinx it by saying anything, but it’s a really fun project. It’s exactly the opposite of Crash. My character, Denise Stark, is extremely heroic, very noble and very firmly stands in principle. She’s not morally ambiguous or totally selfish.

MediaBlvd> Do you know if there will be a second season of Crash?

Clare> No word yet. There is no way to tell because they’re making all sorts of internal decisions, and I don’t think they’re necessarily basing them simply on numbers. They’re a new channel and it’s an experiment and they’re trying to figure it out. They’re probably going to have to get more people to sign up for the channel, to really be able to tell if they’re getting any numbers.

MediaBlvd> Would you like to continue to explore this character?

Clare> Oh, yeah. What happens to my character is that she basically loses everything she has. She goes from this completely ho-hum, humdrum, ordinary life, to having to really hustle to live. Her husband is gone and her daughter is about out the door because she’s going to be a senior in high school. She doesn’t have a house, and she has no money and no job skills, and she doesn’t even know who the hell she is. Would that be an interesting place to start a second season? Sure! It’s a super-interesting journey to go on, so I would love it. But, in this silly business, one can never really want something too much. I hope so. It would be really fun to keep working with all of those great people.

MediaBlvd> If you had your choice, are there types of roles or specific genres that you’d like to work in, that you haven’t gotten the chance to yet?

Clare> I feel like there’s so much I haven’t done. I would love to do a villain. I’ve never really done a hardcore villain who is just messed up and bad, and who isn’t trying to find nobility in it. I think that would be fun. I always play really good people. I would love to do some more great old theater, like Tennessee Williams. And, I’d love to be a superhero, for sure. Who doesn’t want to be a superhero? I was Wonder Woman for Halloween and my daughter told her friends at school that I could fly. She got in a fight with one of her girlfriend who was like, “She cannot fly!” My daughter was like, “Yes, she so can fly!” Around my house, I am a superhero. I don’t know what I’m going to do when I have to tell her the truth. It’s going to be very disappointing.

MediaBlvd> Is there one project that you tend to get recognized for most often?

Clare> It depends on the age of the person. The 12-year-old girls know me from So Little Time, when I played Mary Kate & Ashley Olsen’s mom. If it’s 28-year-old survivalists, they’re going to recognize me from Jericho. And, so many people know me from one episode of Grey’s Anatomy that I did. If they’re a little bit older, maybe they know me from Coach. Most of the time, people just go, “How do I know you?,” and they think they actually know me. I’m one of those people that frustrates people because they think, “God, that person looks so familiar. Have we met?” It’s just because I’ve been on TV for 25 years, in one random role after another.

MediaBlvd> How do you feel about the fact that Jericho is now running again on The CW, and you’ll be exposed to this whole new audience who probably hasn’t seen the show before?

Clare> I think it’s awesome! I’m a huge fan of the show. What a joy to work on it! It’s something I’m so proud of, to even be a small part of. I don’t think that show was finished at all, and I’m not alone in that. There is so much of that story left to tell. Maybe it will get a cult following and they’ll realize they have gold in their hands. Stranger things have happened! Sometimes, it just all really comes together. With Jericho, it was something that came together, partly because of the really cool story, and partly because of the characters. And then, it was also the time and the people who saw it. It really resonated and struck a nerve. With Crash being on a cable channel, where the numbers are a little harder to track, I don’t know what’s going on out there. I can’t tell. There is no crazy, wild blogging community that has spun from Crash, like there was with Jericho. The feedback I’m getting, personally, is that people seem to dig it. People seem to like the show, so I’m hoping that it strikes a chord as well. But, I’m just glad I’m working. I’m just glad to have a job, and feel like I got to stretch a little. In this series, I got to really dig deep. It’s always good to feel like you did something you haven’t done before.