Season two of Nurse Jackie ended with our favorite antihero Jackie Peyton (the amazing and incomparable Edie Falco) facing herself in the mirror, and thus, facing many of her own demons. Her final words before fading to black? "Blow me!"
And so begins season three of Nurse Jackie tonight on Showtime at 10 p.m., and we're picking up right where we left off with Jackie. Executive producer Liz Brixius talked to us about where season three goes beyond the bathroom mirror and how Lea Michele impacted the first episode back:
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"We know Jackie is going to get herself out of stuff, but I think that the viewers really, really like watching Jackie get out of trouble," Liz tells us. "So I thought, OK, we're going to paint her into this impossible corner, confronted by her best friend and her husband, trapped in a bathroom with proof that she's been buying drugs at pharmacies. So I don't want to miss a beat, I want people to watch her think and talk her way out of it."
And watch you will, as the season premiere will show you just how Jackie gets out of that corner, with a scene that Liz created after finding inspiration from an unlikely source. "I was watching the Tonys, and I was thinking about season three, and I heard Lea Michele from Glee singing 'Don't Rain on My Parade,' " she says. "I knew in that moment what Jackie was doing in that bathroom. I'm like, 'That's it!' Jackie is just defiant. Don't get in her way--she's just going to do what she's going to do, and in my head, she started destroying the bathroom."
And if we've learned anything after two seasons of Nurse Jackie, we know that any lie Jackie tells will eventually come back to bite her in the ass. In the realm of not fixing what ain't broke, she continues to get caught in lies in season three. "Jackie will tell lies, and she's so far not gotten away with any of her lies in the life of the show," Liz says. "The only thing that hasn't come out yet is that Kevin doesn't know that she's sleeping with Eddie. Other than that, every one of her lies comes out."
And remember that dental floss full of pills that Jackie lost in the car in season two? That little item causes huge problems later in the season. "We knew in season two when she dropped the dental floss that it would be found by Kevin in season three," Liz reveals. "That's what we knew when we planted it the first time."
We had to wonder how much many more disasters and lies Jackie can handle before hitting rock bottom, and it turns out, she doesn't have one! "Jackie doesn't have a rock bottom," Liz laughs. "I can't figure out what it is yet. She has risked her marriage, she has risked custody of her kids, what will stop her? I don't know. I don't know what could possibly stop her. Something would, but those things are always very mysterious."
Jackie's antihero ways will continue as old characters wise up to her lying game and new characters are brought in. But above everything else, Jackie will continue to defy, well, pretty much everyone and everything. "It is game on. That's what the first episode is called," Liz says. "[Jackie] knows, 'I have to up my game, I have to work harder to get my drugs, I have to hide them deeper. I have to deal with these idiots who don't understand what my life is like, and I got to do it. I'm doing it.'"
Watch Jackie do exactly that on the season premiere of Nurse Jackie tonight on Showtime at 10 p.m, followed by the season premiere of United States of Tara.