Post by Naj on May 11, 2005 19:11:46 GMT -5
Cold Case star Kathryn Morris talks to Debi Enker about her loner character, Lilly Rush.
In 1998, when Kathryn Morris was chosen to play the fierce fighter Najara in an episode of Xena: Warrior Princess, the petite blonde actor credited her casting to a "Joan of Arc" quality. "They wanted the character to be strong but have a gentle appearance," she explained. In her guest-starring role in that high-camp cult favourite, Morris played a zealot who took on the formidable Xena in several battles and surprised the tough, take-no-prisoners heroine with her grit and fervour.
A similar philosophy appears to operate in relation to Morris' casting as Philadelphia homicide-squad detective Lilly Rush in the popular American crime series Cold Case. One of a handful of slickly produced and top-rating crime shows made by Jerry Bruckheimer's company - the others are the CSIs and Without a Trace - Cold Case is the exception in its use of a female protagonist. In the others, the preference is for a middle-aged male, a character capable and case-hardened.
Cold Case creator Meredith Stiehm has said that when she and her fellow executives were looking for their lead, they saw Morris in The Contender, a political drama made in 2000 in which she starred alongside Jeff Bridges and Joan Allen, and they knew they'd found their woman: "She played that character exactly as we envisaged Rush would be - cunning and direct."
So here too, Morris' strength is played off against her appearance: she's a slim, pretty blonde, the type who, in a different context, could easily slide into a bubbly Meg Ryan kind of role in a romantic comedy. In a nod to that dichotomy, in the recently screened episode "The Badlands", which was made to launch the show's second season in the US, one of the bystanders, observing Rush's attendance at a triple murder in a diner, quips derisively that "Homicide Barbie" is on the case.
What Lilly Rush shares with her crime-fighting colleagues in the Bruckheimer stable is an almost religious dedication to her work. It's less a job than a calling. It consumes her waking life and interrupts her sleep. Dressed in her ready-for-business pant suit, with her hair clipped back into a no-fuss arrangement that has the advantage of looking simultaneously careless and fabulous, Lilly is a cold-case crusader. She declared her motto in the show's first episode, when she discovered her affinity for neglected files: "People shouldn't be forgotten: they should get justice too."
Morris acknowledges all the Bruckheimer shows take pride in bringing cinematic production values to the small screen, but Cold Case has a few signature flourishes. It spends big on music, liberally sprinkling popular songs appropriate to the period of the crime through the drama. It goes to noticeable lengths to make the flashback sequences stylistically different each week, so that the mood of the flashback fits the mystery that it's depicting. And it always ends with a lavish, all-stops-out, melodramatic montage sequence, often in slow-motion, accompanied by one of the big songs, in which Lilly, having cracked the case, exchanges a meaningful look with the victim. As a result of her talent and her zeal, that previously unquiet spirit can now rest in peace.
Not that Lilly's success rate in solving cases makes her life any easier. According to Morris, who recently made her first trip to Australia as a Logies guest, the currently screening second season sees the stoic detective facing hard times.
Morris finished work on that 23-part season in mid-April. In Australia we are approaching the fourth episode and Lilly still appears to be the coolly capable and briskly efficient cop she's always been.
But, says Morris, "Lilly's not so perfect this year. She's immature at moments. She says things that are not so nice, although she has good reason to. The detectives in her squad don't always get along so perfectly."
Morris sees Lilly as "a loner who quietly goes about her business of trying to make some change in a small way, to make the world better. She's a true believer that justice will prevail and that the bad guy's going to go to jail. It may not be today, it might be 10 years from now, but he's going," she says. "On a deeper level, I think Lilly has a fondness for complete strangers because she's so guarded herself and so wounded that she can relate to the pain of what some of these strangers are going through. Somehow that's more familiar than having people over for dinner."
Why Lilly might be so damaged is something that Morris won't reveal and that the writers have yet to delve into in any detail. "She has a lot of secrets," Morris observes. "There's a lot of history in the things that made her become a cop. She doesn't have a lot of family, she doesn't have a lot of people she can rely on. She's the ultimate martyr: people need her, and she has the capacity to take it."
Lilly's history is something Morris has discussed with the writers, and something she has worked on for herself to help flesh out her portrayal. "The writers have developed a story and then I have developed a story that is richer for me. It's more secret than they would ever have created. I don't know everything: they haven't told me everything. They've told me big chunks that the audience doesn't know. But I've developed things that the writers will never know."
Morris won't elaborate on the pieces of Lilly's past that she has invented to inform her performance: "I had this great acting coach who said, 'If you can talk about it, then it's not personal enough'. It should be so terrible that you could never even tell your closest confidant. If it's that private, then it will always work for you. I like to use my imagination."
Like so many committed TV crime-busters, Lilly appears to have no life outside her work. A brief romance with assistant district attorney Kite (Josh Hopkins) fizzled because of her case-related activities after-hours, and Morris says the second-season also holds little joy on that front.
"She has a moment of a chance but that doesn't pan out. I think that in the third season she should have a very hot romance, just to make up for the second season. It's very rough.
"As I was telling Meredith Stiehm the other day, 'You know, season two for Lilly Rush is basically like this: she goes to a vending machine to get a sandwich and she puts money in. She pulls the knob for her favourite sandwich, it's the only sandwich that's left, and it gets stuck. She hits the machine, but it's not going to happen. She walks away: forget it. Then somebody else walks by and just the weight of their walk makes the sandwich pop out. It's not Lilly's year.' "
Adding to her woes will be the unexpected arrival of her sister, Christina, played by Nicki Aycox. The estranged sibling has little respect for her sister's boundaries and carefully ordered universe. "My sister changes the whole dynamic," says Morris. "She thinks it's no problem just walkin' into homicide. Lilly is very territorial. She doesn't have anybody else that she can rely on, but she's built this world for herself and if she controls it, then everything is fine." Immature outbursts, a romantic wasteland, a disruptive sister, tensions in the homicide squad: these are the problems that Lilly Rush will be facing as the current season plays out. But these troubles don't make her any less effective as a crime-solver.
"I know that by the time we get to the montage, I've probably wrapped up the case," Morris says with a laugh. "Once the big-budget music has kicked in, I've probably done something really right, so it is nice when I'm also allowed to do something wrong."
Post-Logies, Morris is trying to squeeze in a film project if the schedule allows before she returns to work on Cold Case in July. Once production on the new season begins, she reverts to a gruelling timetable as Lilly appears in almost every scene except the flashbacks. Playing the lead in a TV series means a good day at the office might require 12 hours on set. More often, it's 14 or 16, and then home to read her lines for the next day. That routine runs from July to April.
"Last year I was in every single scene other than the flashbacks," she recalls, noting that the second season has given the males of her squad a little more screen time.
"For me to go to the ladies room was a big production. I'd think, 'I'm just going to hold it until lunch'. If I had to go, I'd have to make an announcement: 'I have to go pee now, I'm sorry'."
As to her career beyond Cold Case, Morris, who has appeared in several films (Minority Report, Paycheck, AI: Artificial Intelligence) says, "I would love to have a role that's so hard, it's scary. Like Cate Blanchett playing Katharine Hepburn. How terrifying, exhilarating and terrifying. I'd love to have opportunities like that.
"It's always scary to lead the pack on a series but it's also fun to be the quarterback and know that 'I've decided we're going to play a great game. Everyone be calm, here we go'."
Cold Case screens on Monday at 9.35pm on Channel Nine.
See Picture of Kathryn with article:
Cold Case Crusader!
In 1998, when Kathryn Morris was chosen to play the fierce fighter Najara in an episode of Xena: Warrior Princess, the petite blonde actor credited her casting to a "Joan of Arc" quality. "They wanted the character to be strong but have a gentle appearance," she explained. In her guest-starring role in that high-camp cult favourite, Morris played a zealot who took on the formidable Xena in several battles and surprised the tough, take-no-prisoners heroine with her grit and fervour.
A similar philosophy appears to operate in relation to Morris' casting as Philadelphia homicide-squad detective Lilly Rush in the popular American crime series Cold Case. One of a handful of slickly produced and top-rating crime shows made by Jerry Bruckheimer's company - the others are the CSIs and Without a Trace - Cold Case is the exception in its use of a female protagonist. In the others, the preference is for a middle-aged male, a character capable and case-hardened.
Cold Case creator Meredith Stiehm has said that when she and her fellow executives were looking for their lead, they saw Morris in The Contender, a political drama made in 2000 in which she starred alongside Jeff Bridges and Joan Allen, and they knew they'd found their woman: "She played that character exactly as we envisaged Rush would be - cunning and direct."
So here too, Morris' strength is played off against her appearance: she's a slim, pretty blonde, the type who, in a different context, could easily slide into a bubbly Meg Ryan kind of role in a romantic comedy. In a nod to that dichotomy, in the recently screened episode "The Badlands", which was made to launch the show's second season in the US, one of the bystanders, observing Rush's attendance at a triple murder in a diner, quips derisively that "Homicide Barbie" is on the case.
What Lilly Rush shares with her crime-fighting colleagues in the Bruckheimer stable is an almost religious dedication to her work. It's less a job than a calling. It consumes her waking life and interrupts her sleep. Dressed in her ready-for-business pant suit, with her hair clipped back into a no-fuss arrangement that has the advantage of looking simultaneously careless and fabulous, Lilly is a cold-case crusader. She declared her motto in the show's first episode, when she discovered her affinity for neglected files: "People shouldn't be forgotten: they should get justice too."
Morris acknowledges all the Bruckheimer shows take pride in bringing cinematic production values to the small screen, but Cold Case has a few signature flourishes. It spends big on music, liberally sprinkling popular songs appropriate to the period of the crime through the drama. It goes to noticeable lengths to make the flashback sequences stylistically different each week, so that the mood of the flashback fits the mystery that it's depicting. And it always ends with a lavish, all-stops-out, melodramatic montage sequence, often in slow-motion, accompanied by one of the big songs, in which Lilly, having cracked the case, exchanges a meaningful look with the victim. As a result of her talent and her zeal, that previously unquiet spirit can now rest in peace.
Not that Lilly's success rate in solving cases makes her life any easier. According to Morris, who recently made her first trip to Australia as a Logies guest, the currently screening second season sees the stoic detective facing hard times.
Morris finished work on that 23-part season in mid-April. In Australia we are approaching the fourth episode and Lilly still appears to be the coolly capable and briskly efficient cop she's always been.
But, says Morris, "Lilly's not so perfect this year. She's immature at moments. She says things that are not so nice, although she has good reason to. The detectives in her squad don't always get along so perfectly."
Morris sees Lilly as "a loner who quietly goes about her business of trying to make some change in a small way, to make the world better. She's a true believer that justice will prevail and that the bad guy's going to go to jail. It may not be today, it might be 10 years from now, but he's going," she says. "On a deeper level, I think Lilly has a fondness for complete strangers because she's so guarded herself and so wounded that she can relate to the pain of what some of these strangers are going through. Somehow that's more familiar than having people over for dinner."
Why Lilly might be so damaged is something that Morris won't reveal and that the writers have yet to delve into in any detail. "She has a lot of secrets," Morris observes. "There's a lot of history in the things that made her become a cop. She doesn't have a lot of family, she doesn't have a lot of people she can rely on. She's the ultimate martyr: people need her, and she has the capacity to take it."
Lilly's history is something Morris has discussed with the writers, and something she has worked on for herself to help flesh out her portrayal. "The writers have developed a story and then I have developed a story that is richer for me. It's more secret than they would ever have created. I don't know everything: they haven't told me everything. They've told me big chunks that the audience doesn't know. But I've developed things that the writers will never know."
Morris won't elaborate on the pieces of Lilly's past that she has invented to inform her performance: "I had this great acting coach who said, 'If you can talk about it, then it's not personal enough'. It should be so terrible that you could never even tell your closest confidant. If it's that private, then it will always work for you. I like to use my imagination."
Like so many committed TV crime-busters, Lilly appears to have no life outside her work. A brief romance with assistant district attorney Kite (Josh Hopkins) fizzled because of her case-related activities after-hours, and Morris says the second-season also holds little joy on that front.
"She has a moment of a chance but that doesn't pan out. I think that in the third season she should have a very hot romance, just to make up for the second season. It's very rough.
"As I was telling Meredith Stiehm the other day, 'You know, season two for Lilly Rush is basically like this: she goes to a vending machine to get a sandwich and she puts money in. She pulls the knob for her favourite sandwich, it's the only sandwich that's left, and it gets stuck. She hits the machine, but it's not going to happen. She walks away: forget it. Then somebody else walks by and just the weight of their walk makes the sandwich pop out. It's not Lilly's year.' "
Adding to her woes will be the unexpected arrival of her sister, Christina, played by Nicki Aycox. The estranged sibling has little respect for her sister's boundaries and carefully ordered universe. "My sister changes the whole dynamic," says Morris. "She thinks it's no problem just walkin' into homicide. Lilly is very territorial. She doesn't have anybody else that she can rely on, but she's built this world for herself and if she controls it, then everything is fine." Immature outbursts, a romantic wasteland, a disruptive sister, tensions in the homicide squad: these are the problems that Lilly Rush will be facing as the current season plays out. But these troubles don't make her any less effective as a crime-solver.
"I know that by the time we get to the montage, I've probably wrapped up the case," Morris says with a laugh. "Once the big-budget music has kicked in, I've probably done something really right, so it is nice when I'm also allowed to do something wrong."
Post-Logies, Morris is trying to squeeze in a film project if the schedule allows before she returns to work on Cold Case in July. Once production on the new season begins, she reverts to a gruelling timetable as Lilly appears in almost every scene except the flashbacks. Playing the lead in a TV series means a good day at the office might require 12 hours on set. More often, it's 14 or 16, and then home to read her lines for the next day. That routine runs from July to April.
"Last year I was in every single scene other than the flashbacks," she recalls, noting that the second season has given the males of her squad a little more screen time.
"For me to go to the ladies room was a big production. I'd think, 'I'm just going to hold it until lunch'. If I had to go, I'd have to make an announcement: 'I have to go pee now, I'm sorry'."
As to her career beyond Cold Case, Morris, who has appeared in several films (Minority Report, Paycheck, AI: Artificial Intelligence) says, "I would love to have a role that's so hard, it's scary. Like Cate Blanchett playing Katharine Hepburn. How terrifying, exhilarating and terrifying. I'd love to have opportunities like that.
"It's always scary to lead the pack on a series but it's also fun to be the quarterback and know that 'I've decided we're going to play a great game. Everyone be calm, here we go'."
Cold Case screens on Monday at 9.35pm on Channel Nine.
See Picture of Kathryn with article:
Cold Case Crusader!
