» PoppyMontgomery.net » Your #1 Poppy Montgomery resource!

» Articles » Interviews » "The Beat" Q & A (March 2000)

From the acclaimed creative team of Barry Levinson and Tom Fontana, "The Beat" is a distinctive new series that focuses on two young beat-cops on Manhattan's Lower East Side and the drama (and the unexpected humor) that lies as much in their private lives as in their workday. "The Beat" will premiere Tuesday, March 21, 9:00PM ET/PT on UPN.

Barry Levinson directed the first episode that was written by Tom Fontana. Starring are Derek Cecil as Mike Dorigan; Mark Ruffalo as Zane Marinelli; Heather Burns as Beatrice Felsen; and Poppy Montgomery as Elizabeth Waclawek.

QUESTION: Barry and Tom, could you talk about the film style in this? What kind of different stocks are you using and why?

BARRY LEVINSON: We're using Super 16 and we're using the little digital video cameras. You know, the ones you can just hold in the palm of your hand, not even the larger units. And we mix that. When we're dealing with the police world, we're using the digitals; and when we're doing more of their personal lives, we're doing Super 16.

QUESTION: Why?

BARRY LEVINSON: Why are we mixing the different types? In a sense, we've seen a lot of video in terms of police things in the past, so it seems like it would be interesting to be able to take that another two or three steps past the regular video type of thing and do a special treatment to it using a mixed media. I think the language of film continues to evolve and I think this is one way to do that.

QUESTION: This is for the actors, do you have to adjust your acting style from film to video, or is it basically the same?

DEREK CECIL: I think there's a huge benefit to covering police business in video because it's really loose. There are situations that arise that aren't blocked and you don't exactly get to hit your mark because you can't get the cuffs on the guy or you can't get him in the car fast enough or you trip on the way up the stairs. The fact that it's really loose gives us a lot of freedom to deal with the awkwardness of being a police officer. It's not really slick work all the time. We can deal with what happens right there, and it's different from take to take. Whereas with film, there's more of a rigid style and you just have to hit your marks.

QUESTION: In what ways are you like the characters you play?

MARK RUFFALO: Well, I'm the one who actually has a fiancé and is about to be married, and most of my wild times are probably behind me, although, that remains to be seen. And Derek is out of his mind.

DEREK CECIL: A little bit. It was funny. When we first started working, we realized by the third episode that my life is a lot more like his character, so we're actually playing the opposite. I think the thing that happened to me is that by my second or third call-back, I got in the room with him, and just being in the same room with Mark, I felt that I knew him. I felt that he was very available, and this was a guy that I could care about. There was some sort of unknown history.

MARK RUFFALO: Tom and Barry didn't know this, but I knew Derek was going to get the part the first day that he walked into the room.

QUESTION: According to your bio, your name is Poppy Petal and your sisters are Rosie Thorn, Daisy Yellow, Lily Belle, and Marigold Sun. I'm just curious if either your parents were into horticulture or they did a lot of peyote in the '60s?

POPPY MONTGOMERY: You missed my brother's name in there, which is Jethro Tull. To me, they sound like porno star names. I'm, like, "Good God, Poppy Petal?" My mother's outgrown that phase of her life, thankfully. The new batch of children is Tom, Dick, and Harry. They've got the normal names. She found a flower fairy book, and that's where our names actually came from.

QUESTION: What is a flower fairy book?

POPPY MONTGOMERY: There was Poppy Fairy, Rosie Fairy and Daisy Fairy. Then my mother added the middle names for sort of a kitsch factor, I think. It hasn't been easy growing up with that one.

QUESTION: Did you get kidded as a kid?

POPPY MONTGOMERY: Red hair, freckles, and my name was Poppy Petal. It was like hell. I'm still not over it.

QUESTION: Poppy, you shot through the names so fast. Let me ask you, how many brothers and sisters do you have?

POPPY MONTGOMERY: I actually have more than that. I have nine.

QUESTION: Are they all full or some half-brothers?

POPPY MONTGOMERY: We have halves and steps, and they have babies. We're like rabbits.

QUESTION: Your mother has ten children?

POPPY MONTGOMERY: No, gosh. Yes. My parents divorced each other and remarried other people and then had more kids, so my mom actually had five children.

QUESTION: And those are the funny names that you mentioned?

POPPY MONTGOMERY: Yes. My dad's new kids are Sean, Patrick and Tara. He went with the Irish theme. Actually, my last name is O'Donohue, but I took my mother's maiden name, Montgomery, because my Dad's name is Phil O'Donohue, which is just more than I could handle.

TOM FONTANA: You changed your last name, but you didn't change the first name?

POPPY MONTGOMERY: My dad always wanted to see my name up in lights.

TOM FONTANA: But he wanted to see Poppy O'Donohue?

POPPY MONTGOMERY: He didn't speak to me for two years after "Relativity." They're getting it in Australia now, and he's like, "I refuse to watch it."

QUESTION: Some actors come from interesting hippie families, like Rosanna Arquette and River Phoenix. Was your family interesting when you were growing up? Were there ways that they influenced you?

POPPY MONTGOMERY: My mother is a combination of the two characters on "Absolutely Fabulous." She's insane. My dad is kind of an old hippie. He's got a ponytail. He thinks he's Sean Connery. But yes, they influenced me a great deal. My family was about getting everything out on the table, and then it was over, much-to the chagrin of all of my ex-boyfriends. Also, they did influence me in the sense that I just got on a plane when I was 18, and came here, and they were very supportive of that. I had no family here. I didn't know anybody. I never acted before. And that comes from them, I think.

QUESTION: Poppy, it says in your biography that you're from Australia, but you sound more like you're from Long Beach. What happened to your accent?

POPPY MONTGOMERY: It is much to the mortification of my family that I sound this way. I was on a show called "Relativity" when I first got here, and I kept thinking I was going to get fired if my Australian accent came through. So, I basically started talking in an American accent all the time. Initially, I ould just talk very slowly -- enunciate everything -- and it sort of became second nature. In fact, Tom and Barry had me do an Australian accent for my audition, and it was horrifically bad.

QUESTION: Tom, could you talk a little bit about Heather's character? You've sort of taken her right out to the edge on this craziness. How far can you push that character before the audience is just going to turn against her completely?

TOM FONTANA: First of all, I think Heather is so great in the part. Everyone that's seen it and has talked to me about it has fallen in love with her in the most bizarre kind of way; reflective of the way Mark's character has in the show. All I can say to you is the character continues to evolve and emerge and have all of these different elements to her.

HEATHER BURNS: I agree 100 percent. She starts from a very intense place. You can't go much further than burning down someone's apartment. There's a bunch of interesting questions, too, about what's going on with her and how she's going to stay in his life. And you never know, she could find the right medication and become a complete angel.

QUESTION: How are you going to maintain somebody who is patently involved in not only insane behavior, but also illegal behavior? How are you going to be able to sustain a character like that?

BARRY LEVINSON: I think the character presents an enormous amount of conflict that can be played out. The things which you referred to as being illegal is interesting in the context that her boyfriend, or sort of boyfriend, is a policeman, so he's conflicted between the fact he is a cop and on the other hand he is involved with this woman. It makes for a lot of conflict that I think is interesting. And I don't think we've quite seen a character the way Heather functions. There are quite a few people who struggle, when you talk about what is the medication that keeps them in balance, and all of those things, and then their behavior goes completely haywire, and at certain times they get it back together again. In terms of a series, I think it makes it quite interesting for us to play with that.

QUESTION: Tom, now that you've completed 12 episodes in New York, what challenges have you encountered filming on location in New York that were different from your many years filming "Homicide" on location in Baltimore?

TOM FONTANA: Well, shooting in Baltimore was a dream, in the sense that the city really opened itself up to us. New York is not quite that friendly. And plus, what you have happen is there are so many shows shooting and so many features shooting in New York right now that the city has had to designate areas that are literally not production friendly. You'll get a list every once in a while from the film office saying, "Please don't write for this neighborhood. They're so pissed off at movie people right now. They don't want you there."

One thing that was funny that happened one day was Mariska Hargitay came out of her trailer, and she walked over to the craft service table to get a cookie or something, and she realized that it was our craft service. And she called up Dick Wolfe, and she said, "I don't understand why Tom Fontana's craft service is closer to my dressing room than the 'Law & Order' one is." …And then she proceeded to eat everything. Everybody is on top of each other, so that makes it very difficult. The terrifying moment was when our beloved Mayor Rudy Guiliani was having the problem with the transit authority and it was going to potentially go on strike. He basically decided that there would be no filming in New York while the transit strike went on. If the transit strike had happened, everybody would have literally shut down. So, little things like that make you just wake up in the morning clutching your throat, hoping you're going to get through the day. Other than that, the great thing about New York is it is New York.

[source: paramount.com]

« back