Felicity Huffman is on her cell as she enters the restaurant for an interview. She’s talking to husband William H. Macy, who’s half a world away filming the adventure “Sahara.”
As parents of two young daughters, the acting couple try to juggle their busy schedules so only one of them is working at a time. Occasionally, however, they end up working at the same time — even on the same project.
Such was the case with the crime thriller Scott Turow’s “Reversible Errors.” The CBS miniseries, which also stars Tom Selleck and Monica Potter, airs May 23 and 25 (9 p.m. ET).
Huffman, 41, portrays Gillian Sullivan, a disbarred judge whose drug abuse and ethical violations have landed her in prison.
“I look like hell in this movie. Which is fine,” says the forthright Huffman.
Wearing a T-shirt, jeans and smoothed blond hair, she looks considerably better this day, although she apologizes for not being able “to get all dressed up” because of family demands.
Macy, 54, plays Arthur Raven, a big-time corporate lawyer who is grudgingly assigned to a pro bono appeal for a man on death row claiming innocence. While unraveling the truth, Raven tracks down Sullivan. She not only had sentenced his client, but was also someone he once had a secret crush on.
Partners in work and lifeHuffman insists she still harbors some surprise that in real life Macy “chose me ... You could have knocked me down with a feather. I had a bad perm and glasses and I was 30 pounds heavier than I am now.”
The Macys have worked together in “a bunch of plays,” the movie “Magnolia” and on the ABC sitcom “Sports Night.”
“It’s actually one of the things we do best. We work really well together, which is surprising because I know it’s tough for couples to play tennis together, much less work together,” says Huffman.
“I’m not competitive with him at all. I think he’s one of America’s greatest actors and so you sort of go, ‘Well, you cornered the market on that. That’s cool,”’ she says. “He’s able to help me and coach me and I don’t get my nose out of joint.”
Furthermore she insists, “Bill’s very kind and not judgmental ... and I am not kind and I’m very judgmental!”
The script of “Reversible Errors” was “sent to Bill first,” she says, as is usual. “Then he says, ‘Cast my wife, please.”’
She wasn’t cast until the day before rehearsals started, but was “thrilled to get a job without auditioning,” even though it meant moving the entire family from Los Angeles to Canada on short notice for the shoot.
“Felicity is capable of playing all facets of a diamond,” says co-executive producer Frank von Zerneck. He noted how Huffman’s character transitions from “a cold, tough cookie, smart as whip with no cracks in her exterior to ... this injured bird with a broken wing, vulnerable, frightened.”
“This is someone who fell, fell, fell,” says Huffman. “He (Raven) remembers me from my glory days ... so he’s intrigued and sort of pursues me, even though I’m so damaged.”
Huffman, the youngest of eight kids, grew up in Aspen, Colo., in a family “mostly into horses.” She did her stint as a polo groom for several summers, but had already been hooked by acting.
A long-time love of actingShe starts to explain that her mother was “an actor, or an actress ...” She interrupts herself to query, “Do you find that actresses only say ‘actor’ now? I like the word ‘actress’ ... it’s much cooler than ‘actor.”’
Point taken. Back to the personal history. “I guess I was loud and obnoxious” she said, reasoning that’s why her mother sent her to the Stage Door Manor camp when she was only 10.
Later she studied acting in both London and New York, where she met Macy.
Huffman co-stars in the upcoming Kate Hudson movie, “Raising Helen.” She has also filmed “Desperate Housewives,” a pilot considered likely for ABC’s fall schedule in which she plays “a crazed mother of four.”
This month it will be Macy’s turn to stay around Los Angeles with the kids as Huffman starts work on the independent movie “Transamerica,” playing a transsexual who discovers that as a man he fathered a son.
The role required her to study how men who undergo the transition learn to move in a more feminine way. To illustrate, she walks around the Hollywood restaurant patio swaying her head, cupping her hands to make her arms look shorter, pointing a toe, only keeping the weight on one thigh.