' 'Weeds' The Latest Twist On American Suburbia'

August 13 2006

By: Maggie Wicks

If you thought Gabrielle from Desperate Housewives was shallow, wait till you meet Weeds' Celia Hodes.

Neuroses in suburbia is what good TV is made of these days. Polygamous Mormons and institutionalised housewives have taken their places in our hearts and our viewing habits. And now, in the middle-class Californian suburb of Agrestic, housewife Nancy Botwin is selling pot to fund her lifestyle. Having recently lost her husband to a mid-jog heart attack, Nancy has no choice but to start dealing drugs to her local community.

Not quite a comedy and not quite a drama, Weeds is dark and hilarious, and what might be called "lowered reality". There's the sweet drug-dealing mom who's trying to keep weed out of schools, the sexually active teenagers who can't find anywhere to lose their virginities and the husband who's banging the tennis coach. And Elizabeth Perkins - remember her from the now cult Tom Hanks movie Big - has the best role of all: dissatisfied, appearance-obsessed Celia Hodes.

"Celia is damaged," says Perkins. "She thinks she's never really lived the life she feels she deserves. She's the most politically incorrect person in town and at home she is a nightmare. Her husband is screwing the tennis pro and she can't divorce him because that would mean giving up her lifestyle. Her daughter is fat and she can't see beyond that. It is a pleasure to play someone so unheroic." Have the two got anything in common? "Absolutely not," she declares. "That's not even my real hair on the show. This is a chance for me to step out of Elizabeth Perkins and take on a totally different human being."

Celia certainly gives Perkins the most contentious lines in the show. In the first episode Celia's daughter films her father having sex with the tennis coach, and tricks Celia into watching it. "You little c–-," Celia spits at the screen. "I knew I should have had an abortion."

Perkins says she approached the producers several times questioning whether her character is going too far, but this wasn't one of them. "When I read the pilot and read that line I knew I had to play this role. If I could play that line and pull it off I thought, 'We're gonna have a great time on this show'."

Perkins was never a struggling young actor - her first movie audition landed her the part that was her making - the role of Tom Hanks' rather bewildered girlfriend in the 1988 film Big. But she never reached any great heights either - her biggest box-office success was playing Wilma in the awful Flintstones movie in 1994. On the subject of Big - in which she jumped on a trampoline in a stunning 80s mesh skirt and famously revealed her boobs to Tom Hanks' 12-year-old character - Perkins is keen to move on quickly. "Everyone knows that film as, 'Oh, that great film that Tom Hanks did', so I'll always be proud of that. I was fortunate enough at 24 to get my first movie audition and get the part and my name was above the title. I was born under a lucky star. But I'm more grateful that at this point in my life I'm 45, I'm still working and I've been given a great role. I'm extremely grateful to be going to work every day, I haven't felt that way for years."

She especially wasn't feeling that way when she visited Auckland in the late 1990s to play the part of evil queen Alcmene in what Perkins describes as "a terrible TV mini series". The show was Hercules. "We were based in Auckland for about four months and it poured all the time we were there. It was grim and cold and we thought we were making something really serious - they told us we were making something great. Oh god, I can't even talk about it."

Thankfully things are looking up. Weeds has had plenty of fun shocking middle America, satirising the mundanity of living in suburbia and taking open pot shots at what Americans love most - beauty, SUVs and George Bush.

It has been a hit. "We thought it would be big in Europe and Australia and New Zealand," says Perkins. "We didn't expect the American public to get it. It's really touching on social issues in a really unapologetic way -issues that just aren't discussed in our country. There aren't many references in mainstream shows that say George Bush is an asshole."

Perkins says despite her Democrat leanings, she was shocked by the show's content. "Pretty much on a daily basis I'd go to (creator and producer) Jenji Cohen and say, `I'm really uncomfortable with this'. And she'd say, `think back to Archie Bunker in All in the Family - he was a full blown bigot, racist and sexist. He said `spic' and `tar baby'. We're putting Celia out there in all her ugliness so she can be examined. It doesn't condone it - we're just putting it out there."

But it isn't the pot smoking that is suburbia's dirty little secret - it's every other thing in the show. "There are fat camps all over America and every actress in Hollywood is anorexic," says Perkins. "We're fighting this dirty war overseas so housewives can drive their (Cadillac SUV) Escalades. And we're putting out the largest emissions in the world. Marijuana is innocuous - it's really neither here nor there. The problem is that we, as Americans, will not give up our lifestyles. Marijuana is just a metaphor for the dirty little secrets underneath this pristine American way of life."

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