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From Monsters and Critics.com Smallscreen News The hit NBC drama "Medium," which airs Mondays from 10-11 p.m. EST, has a massive fan base devoted to the show's fourth season and the star, Patricia Arquette who plays Allison Dubois, the crime fighting mom with extrasensory mind ability. NBC’s hit series “Medium” will feature the upcoming episode “Lady Killer” where Patricia’s sister Rosanna will portray a beautiful, single cougar. The Arquette family sticks together, especially in creative matters of ensemble acting and professional collaboration. This episode, scheduled to air on April 7th, features the 48-year-old Rosanna Arquette as "a beautiful, calculating "cougar" who enjoys the challenges of bedding younger men and who pops up in the dreams of crime-fighting psychic Allison Dubois "when her sexual escapades turn deadly," NBC released in a prior statement. "I have to say I have been calling in a lot of favors and I'm really excited about this particular part they wrote for her because Rosanna is a very strong comedic and dramatic actress and this role requires both elements," said Patricia Arquette, 39, who portrays Dubois. "Of course, every time one of my siblings comes on set, the crew realizes that I have yet another sibling nicer than me," she said, before praising her sister's "great legs." The Arquette acting family also includes David Arquette, Richmond Arquette and Alexis Arquette. David recently directed two episodes of "Medium," and Richmond guest starred on the show two years ago. According to NBC, Allison is going to have to team up with Scanlon, played by David Cubitt, to track down and crack some horrible murders of young men during this episode. Monsters and Critics was fortunate to join a few onliners and speak to the beautiful Arquette sisters Rosanna and Patricia about their acting, lives and passions. What do you remember of your relationship with your siblings, Rosanna – growing up, Patricia the same question for you. Rosanna Arquette: I kind of babysat a lot and I left home early so I missed a lot of some of their years and would come back on holidays and stuff. But it seems like as we got older we became closer than when we were younger, Patricia Arquette: Well I think Rosanna did fall into that sort of trap of having to help with so many siblings because there were four of us. Rosanna Arquette: Bumping – The Bump. Did I teach you The Bump? Patricia Arquette: Uh huh, The Bump and we would listen to her records, like, Jackson Five. And she was my big sister; and she taught me a lot of stuff about the world. Rosanna Arquette: Oh, I remember Patricia came to the set of, was it – when did you come and you stayed with me in New York? I guess I was doing… Patricia Arquette: You were – Desperately Seeking Susan. Rosanna Arquette: I was doing Desperately Seeking Susan and you had a punk haircut like shaved head on one side and black… Patricia Arquette: Yeah. Rosanna Arquette: …Patricia said she wanted to be an actress and I thought that was so exciting, she was going to be an actress. Patricia; can you kind of recall when you thought, “Hey, I’ve got a really cool older sister?” Patricia Arquette: I kind of always thought my sister was really cool, as a matter of fact. I’d get her old makeup and I got the best hand me downs, you wouldn’t believe it; unbelievable hand me downs. It was really cool. Rosanna Arquette: Now I get hand me downs. How does it feel to finally be working together? And why did it take so long? Rosanna Arquette: You can answer that, Patricia. Patricia Arquette: we did work together before one time; it was on a documentary, "Searching for Debra Winger." But that was not – that was a documentary, it wasn’t fiction. So this has been our first fictitious experience so to speak. I don’t know why it’s taken so long because we’ve always wanted to. Rosanna Arquette: I know her – Glenn, the creator, said he was just waiting for the right one – the right show; there was just never one that he thought was the right one. And then this one was written for a man and they decided to turn it into a woman. And so here it happened. But, I have to say Patricia’s the hardest working girl in show business. No one knows how hard that show really is because they don’t have a full on script every day so it’s pages and pages of dialogue that the actors have to memorize which was really challenging for me since my show got canceled a year ago so I did not have that muscle memory and I was just like, “Oh my god.” It was intense. And she works very hard – those guys and David and – her co-star, all of them. Patricia Arquette: It was hard for me in that I was smiling so much at what Rosanna was doing and she’s cracking me up. So it was really enjoyable. It was really… Rosanna Arquette: I don’t know if it was supposed to be comedic but… Patricia Arquette: It was. It was really good. Rosanna Arquette: I kept finding all this stuff and it made laugh - but, maybe. He has a sense of humor, Glenn… Patricia Arquette: Yeah. Think about Moonlighting. Rosanna Arquette: Yeah, that’s what it had, yeah, so it had that little element. But it’s definitely, she works – you do a great job, Patricia, I don’t know. It’s – the people don’t know – the people that are watching that it seems very simple but it’s hard. Now that the two of you have worked on the show together are there any plans to get David on in the future? Patricia Arquette: I don’t know; I would love that. David’s directed two episodes. Rich – our brother Rich has been on – I’m not sure if it was the second year, I think it was the second year. He played one of our killers. And I would love Alexis to come on and David to come on. But, you know, David has directed two of them and I don’t know how many favors he owes me at this point. How different were your acting styles? Rosanna, just give us a little bit more of a sense of your character. Rosanna Arquette: I was discovering the character as I went along because I just knew that I was given these pages because they worked that – the way that Glenn works he kind of has a script, you have an idea and then new pages come. And so I was figuring her out as we were going. But she started off as this woman who was a cougar women who lures young men in and kills them, which was kind of interesting to do; I’d never played anybody like that so that was fun. And I was impressed with how they work and how Patricia’s crew loves her so much and it’s a really challenging hard work because she has so much dialogue... Patricia Arquette: Poor Rosanna, her first day on the job it was like a love scene. Rosanna Arquette: Two days in a row of love scenes. Patricia Arquette: I kept saying, “Am I going to work with my sister?” Rosanna Arquette: I thought she was playing a joke on me. Patricia Arquette: Because there – because we kept saying, “What’s the ending?” And he kept saying, “I don’t know yet. I’m not sure yet.” Rosanna Arquette: Oh, that was funny. How much interaction do the two of you actually have in the episode? Patricia Arquette: Yeah we have a little bit. We have some a... Rosanna Arquette: It’s like interrogation, two interrogations - or, you know, scenes like that. Patricia Arquette: Rosanna’s my dream girl a lot – dreaming about her a lot. Rosanna Arquette: I come to her in her dreams. Do you keep a close-knit family now, reunions, holidays and stuff? Patricia Arquette: We spend all our holidays together and… Rosanna Arquette: Easter. We’re there this Sunday. Patricia’s – does her big Easter time. Does your daughter love Aunt Alexis? Patricia Arquette: Oh, yeah. Rosanna Arquette: All of our girls love Alexis. All the girls want to be like Aunt Alexis. Patricia Arquette: They do, they ask fashion advice. Are they ever going to give Alexis a role on the show? Rosanna Arquette: Oh. Patricia Arquette: Yeah, I know, I’m going to send him to Debtors Anonymous if he keeps not working. Rosanna Arquette: Man, well I like the house husband – I love someone that just can take care of everything at home and while you go to work. Patricia Arquette: Yeah, it’s nice. Rosanna Arquette: Sounds good to me. Patricia Arquette: It is nice. We do have to have some scenes of him cooking dinner. Rosanna Arquette: Yeah. Patricia Arquette: That would be good. Doing the laundry; bring it on. Patricia Arquette: No, I’ve got to tell those guys that. You know, it’s kind of neat, when we have our kids on the set, you know, Bridgette, Maria Lark, all the girls that are on the show, she came in and she’s got four teeth that she’s wiggling and wiggling them. So I ran upstairs to Glen and I said, “You know, she’s got loose teeth. You’ve got to write it in.” Rosanna Arquette: Yeah. Patricia Arquette: And the next morning we had a loose teeth scene… I love Bridgette. Rosanna, when you were young, maybe even now; who was better at pulling the other’s hair? Rosanna Arquette: Alexis. I don’t think there was any of that stuff because, you know, I’m much older and so it was more of like braiding hair. Is there a shortcut the two of you can take that nobody else could on Medium? Rosanna Arquette: What do you think, (Tish)? Patricia Arquette: Well I think I was – I was really enjoying Rosanna’s work. And I kind of had to keep catching myself because my own self was coming through. Does that – I don’t think Allison is quite as on board. So I had to keep kind of putting myself in check. It was so fun to watch her so in that way it was really fun being at work and fun to be around her. But I enjoy her so much it was sort of like weird to try to keep pulling myself back from that. In some interviews the two of you described as your growing up in the family as chaos; but you also describe your parents as great explorers, you also had exposure to a commune lifestyle, did the two of you pick up the explorer bug of your parents? Rosanna Arquette: I did lots of exploring in the years – in my life that I – and I’d love to do some more. It’s constantly – a lot of self-exploration; I’m surrounded by a lot of self-exploration book right now. But I know, Patricia, you just went to Egypt. That’s like, you know, she’s always out and finding great things to do and traveling in the world. And… Patricia Arquette: Yeah, I was just in Egypt and India. That was amazing. But I do think our parents, their main voyages were – my mom was born Jewish and supposed to go to school to marry a Jewish man. And then she ended up marrying a man who had been raised Christian. And then he converted to Islam, so their exploration was about different religions, comparative religions. So when I saw this warfare going on between these different religions I really didn’t understand it because in our house we could do little Hanukkah things or we would fast for Ramadan. So I didn’t see where the warfare came in… Rosanna Arquette: They’re so similar, both religions anyway, that’s the thing. Patricia Arquette: I think – it wasn’t your stereotypical commune, to begin with; it was all these people that came together that were sort of seeking a different experience about their spirituality and a place where they could talk about spirituality and a place where they could think about their spirituality. And a lot of them were artists. So it wasn’t the kind of free drugs, free sex commune that people often think of. It wasn’t just about freedom, for them it was more about different ways of thinking about politics and religions and, so. I think, you know, doing without when we were little and being very, very poor – I think it served me really well in my life oddly enough because it taught me the value of things and not to judge people with material objects. Rosanna Arquette: Yeah, we weren’t, I mean, when you – it’s funny because we had everything we needed. And we were also living in a pretty poor town too. I mean, the commune was, our father was an actor and doing show or Broadway and basically he was supporting him and, you know, our godfather, it was (Hamilton Cappas) was supporting the whole commune by the Broadway, they were doing a show called Story Theater. And so going to school in the town was challenging because they just – well I think my mom took me out because they actually said that the South had won the Civil War. They were lying in this school that I was going to. My mom said, “We’re out of here.” Rosanna: I was wondering how you enjoy playing a villain? Rosanna Arquette: You know, it was challenging. There was this one moment where I had to strangle this man. And I found myself getting really nauseous, like, every time I would do I kind of felt sick to my stomach. And I said, this is, this feeling - because - that comes – it’s because that is wrong, I mean, it’s amazing the people who actually really do these things, how they can get to that place. But it was hard. It was – I don’t know if I would want to do it a lot. It was interesting to be in somebody’s skin that could do that. But it was, yeah. I don’t know. It was interesting to play, for me, something that I’ve never done before because I haven’t ever done that, so. Was it difficult for you, Patricia, to react to Rosanna as though she’s a villainess? Patricia Arquette: Yeah, I would find myself smiling really big. And then I’d have, oh, no, it’s not supposed to be funny. Oh, stop, what are you doing? No, you’re supposed to be looking at her surly. Hmmm, you’re not sure if she’s telling the truth, you know. I was having this inner war with myself because – and then she had this one line, which was just – every time she would say it… Rosanna Arquette: Oh my god. Patricia Arquette: …she’d say, “A middle-aged mouse burger.” Rosanna Arquette: We were going, “Middle-aged mouse burger.” And I – we’d go, “Excuse me, what’s a mouse burger?” Patricia Arquette: Every time she’d say “Mouse burger,” I would crack up. Rosanna Arquette: We ended up having to cut it, right? Patricia Arquette: Yeah, we ended up cutting it because… Rosanna Arquette: No one knew what – do you know what a mouse burger is? We were trying to figure out, so… Patricia, You did such a great effort with (Jake Webber) and your crew getting supplies to the Katrina victims and really spearheading that effort after the Hurricane. And I just wanted to know if there was any kind of an update or if your crew was still involved in helping? Patricia Arquette: You know, I haven’t. I’ve talked to some people that are still working out there. Different – it’s so political even when it’s not in politics. And our country is just basically turned its back on it. There are different programs that I do believe in there but pretty much most of the people that were working on the project we worked on, disbanded and some people moved off to do other things. But, you know, at a certain point you kind of have to think strategically like, “All right, what do I think this needs now?” If that makes sense… Your crew is so giving; are you still really close with all your crew on Medium? Patricia Arquette: Oh, we’re so close; they’re so sweet. I love my crew so much; they really have my back. Rosanna Arquette: They love her. Patricia Arquette: Yeah, they do. Or I hit them. Rosanna, I know you talked a little bit about what it was like to play a villain in this particular episode, but what about playing a cougar of sorts; was that a role that you were comfortable in? And, Patricia, how did you feel about your sister being a cougar? Rosanna Arquette: Yeah, it was, I mean, it was fun. I was discovering the character as I went along. And so – and, which was kind of a really interesting way to working and they do that a lot on that show. So, I’ve never been one to, you know, go out really with younger men but, you know, it did spark and idea in me. Like, wow, this is not so bad. Patricia, what did you think of the character? Patricia Arquette: I thought because I know my sister so well it’s a testament to what a great actress she is. I mean, physically she is a very beautiful woman but she’s a very natural woman in real life. So it’s – I knew she would look gorgeous and she looks gorgeous. But to see her as this sort of carnivorous mercenary kind of dangerous person was so different for me to see her in that. So part of the reason I was just enjoying it so much was enjoying my sister’s incredible talent. Rosanna Arquette: Aww. What about like an all-Arquette project? Rosanna Arquette: I would love us to do like a carnie thing, you know, a traveling carnival, you know, and if we were all in like a carnie situation, that could be pretty interesting. Patricia Arquette: I think the really interesting thing about us as artists together is when I did work with Rich on the show or David or Rosanna, the collaborative exchange of ideas, like, oh, well maybe this moment…or hey, what do you think about this idea, checking this out? All of us are open to each other and all of us are – respect each other’s mind as artists. And so it’s not uncomfortable on the way it might be for some people. David and I had more scenes together and it was too kind of – one particularly a very emotional episode, I would be thinking about something from my early life and then later David would go, “Great, cut,” you know, “print.” And he’d go, “I know exactly what you were thinking of right then.” Rosanna Arquette: That’s so neat, you know. And she was able to look at me – like if I was having some – a challenging moment with this one scene that had quite a lot of dialogue in it, it was a little tongue-twisting, and, but, you know, then she kind of said, “Well maybe try it this way,” and that was neat. Patricia Arquette: I think we’re, we love each other. Rosanna Arquette: Yeah. Patricia Arquette: And we’re open to each other. And not that anyway is the right way but I think we’re all open to exploring. What’s your take on the current season of Medium? How pleased are you with the way it’s going and the stories that they’re telling? Patricia Arquette: Well, how do I feel like it’s going? I feel like we’ve really had a lot of good luck with having Angelica Huston come in and have Rosanna come in and now Kelly Preston is going to come in so… Rosanna Arquette: Oh, Kelly’s great. Patricia Arquette: Yeah. So we’ve been really lucky in that way; having a lot of great guest stars and that’s been really exciting. It’s always hard for me to tell honestly. Usually I watch the whole season at the end; I don’t actually watch it every week because we’re usually working when it’s on. And then the idea of, you know, making my children watch, you know, wait around while I’m watching myself is too strange of an idea for me. So I’m not sure. It’s sort of like life when you’re in it it’s hard to see outside of it. And I don’t know if there’ll be a next season. I know we do have very devoted fans and that we’re grateful for that. Rosanna Arquette: Oh yeah, people love that show so much. Yeah. Patricia Arquette: But…I don’t know what’ll happen. Do you want to come back for another season? Patricia Arquette: Yeah, I would like to come back. Patricia, can you talk about what it’s like to be back to work now since the strike is over? What were you doing during that time and how was it first day back? Patricia Arquette: It was great. It was so good to see our crew and see everyone that was back. I mean, I was a little concerned because a bunch of our drivers weren’t back at first because there’s different rankings of drivers; there’s like the Number 1 group, 2 and 3 and – in their union. And so the Number 1s all have to be working first. So at first I didn’t see some our drivers, I was really worried about that. But then everyone else got work so they got put back on our show. It was great to see everybody. Everybody looked 20 years younger and tanner. I just hung out with my children the whole time and just cleaned my house and I got a lot of rest. I was glad everyone got to get back to work. I mean, I felt like it was an inevitable strike and that they really had to come to some kind of an agreement together and I was glad they eventually did. But it felt like it took a lot longer than it needed to. Rosanna Arquette: It was debilitating for a lot of people. I mean, it was a really hard strike; a lot of people got truly affected by it. And hopefully the actors will come to an agreement and not have to strike. But I’m glad people are back at work. I sure am.
Patricia, what was going through your half-shaved head at the time you showed up on Roseanna’s door? And secondly trying to reconcile that image, that ultimate image of rebellion with this centered, soft-spoken mother we have today. Rosanna Arquette: She was a punker; she was great. Patricia Arquette: I was a punker but I always was soft-spoken, I mean, even when I had my Mohawk instead of spiking it up I would braid it back with ribbons. So – and I mean I’ve always been interested in this visual that’s different and artistic exploration but it’s always been tempered with a very old-fashioned notion of things I guess. But Rosanna was the first person I ever told I wanted to be an actress, which shows how safe I felt with her. And she said, “Really? Okay, well there’s always room for another rose in the garden.” And she’s the one who paid for my acting classes. Rosanna Arquette: Actually it was amazing because – and she looked great, it was really black and so her eyes are so piercing. And I just remember how cool it looked. And I thought, “Oh, god I never got to do that,” you know. Patricia Arquette: I don’t know how soft-spoken it was to my parents. I certainly was not… I had to move out… Rosanna Arquette: Yeah, I had – you came in – you and Alexis both came to live with me for a little while, right, when you were…Junior high, right? Patricia Arquette: In North Hollywood, yeah. My mom would drive me to school everyday and it was during this teenage period where your mom is your mortal enemy…and I’d be in the car with her for like an hour and a half every day and we would just be going at it the whole time. And eventually I ended up moving in with Rosanna and finishing the second part of my ninth grade living with Rosanna. No, it was great. Rosanna Arquette: How crazy is that, yeah. Rosanna, you mentioned that at the time you were Desperately Seeking Susan, was there any sense then sort of what a sort of sort of zeitgeist tapping moment in time that would be the that, you know, Madonna was going to be this huge? Rosanna Arquette: Oh, yeah. It happened during the making of that movie…that just saw. It – suddenly it just exploded overnight, you know; she was everywhere. And they started kind of re-writing the script for that to tailor-make it for her in those moments. But – and here she is, she’s just still at it 50 years old – almost 50 and rocking on; I think that’s great. Patricia, have you ever had any of these kinds of ESP experiences yourself in your own life? Patricia Arquette: I think that what you’re speaking to says a lot about our writers. I think they’re very clever and they’re very talented and they work really hard at what they do. And I’m always fascinated by what they’re going to come up with. I feel like I’m sort of intuitive but then also I can be wrong sometimes when I think I’m being intuitive. I think as a woman we’re all a little intuitive and…men are always like, “You always think you know what I’m thinking.” I think when I was younger I had more absolutely certain sort of psychic-ish experiences than when I’ve been older. But again I think I would get sunk and drowned in this show working on what I work on everyday and then going home and if I started to indulge and try to grow that part of myself or hone that part of myself I don’t think I would ever get release. I’m always excited and surprised by what the writers come up with. A lot of times we rarely ever, I mean, maybe five times all together have had a full complete script that doesn’t really change. Can you talk about Beyond Rangoon - what is the most memorable experience that you had on that shoot? Patricia Arquette: It was all very interesting. We shot that film in Malaysia because it was sort of critical of the Burmese Myanamar government. So we shot it in Malaysia and Malaysia has a very strong policy of trying to encourage foreign tourism and, look, it’s great; have a Mai Tai on the beach. But when you work there for a certain amount of time – we were there for six months – you start seeing that – it was an Islamic government and it was very traditional. And at a certain point I started finding out that if couples were found living together the moral police could break into your house and force you to get married. And even though they’d have pictures of these Westerners, like, kissing on the beach with the sunset, if a Muslim woman was caught either drinking a beer or kissing or holding hands with somebody the moral police would come and she would get a ticket. And so it was interesting to see the reality outside of the business world; how there’s different rules for the tourists and how somehow those things are okay as long as they translate to money. Also just being aware of the sex industry and what happens to women. I mean, at this point in time, also it educated me a lot about what was happening to Aung San Suu Kyi who was freely elected the democratic leader of Burma and immediately was placed under house arrest. All the people are saying they want democracy. It’s so strange that we’re trying to force democracy in these countries that possibly don’t even want them when we have a country here that’s begging for democracy and they’re arresting Aung San Suu Kyi. And now there are incredibly horrible problems, there’s two different oil companies decided to put a pipeline through Burma and they would just go through villages and they would just grab villagers and force them to work until they died, many of them, these farmers, and just work them to death. And there’s a horrible sex trade going on too where children and women from Burma being brought into Thailand and being used as sex slaves. And I feel like our country, we’ve got to say, “No.” we only have one person from Homeland Security working in the Interpol. We need to pass through this information that sex predators, stop the sex industry the travel trade. Even if it says we have to just stop all trade with all of Asia until you guys – and we as citizens decide there will be no more tourism to Thailand until you guys make it a literal crime, arrest your police officers who are on the take with these pimps. And we don’t want to have anything to do anymore with this degradation of women and children. It is, it’s horrible. even just thinking about it, I don’t walk around all day thinking about it, but even talking about it I’m imagining children locked in rooms having to have ... Rosanna Arquette: You know, I heard that Daryl Hannah just did a documentary on this and – after you went over – and it’s supposed to be pretty great. Patricia Arquette: Yeah, I heard that too. I really want to see it. I just wanted to say the two oil companies that have been – work with the government in Burma is Total, which is a French oil company and Unocal. Rosanna Arquette: American. What is your favorite role you both have had the opportunity to play in your careers? Patricia Arquette: My favorite character – I did really like this character that I played in Human Nature. Rosanna Arquette: Yeah, that’s one of my favorites. Patricia Arquette: I played a woman that was hirsute, so I had hair all over my body and I was hiding my hair. Rosanna Arquette: I love that movie so much. That’s a great performance. Rosanna? Rosanna Arquette: Oh, gosh. I think probably it would be maybe Baby It’s You with John Sayles, so. Patricia Arquette: That movie holds up so well. Rosanna’s amazing. If you haven’t seen that movie you should check it out; it’s such a great movie. Rosanna Arquette: That was a run experience, too. I had so much fun doing that. That would probably – both – yeah, that one too. The whole experience, you know. I never look at my work and go, oh, this is a – I never really like anything I do. But I love the experience of having done it How weird was that? Patricia Arquette: It was weird because I’m so awkward and uncomfortable about nudity, which is part of the reason I did it. But also David’s such an artist and such a vanguard…and he’s such a brave visionary. It was so fun working with him. I remember at one point the camera was pulling ahead of me down this hall. And, you know, they pull focus on you, they have to focus as you’re walking. So they say, well try to stay about four feet behind the camera because if you get closer than that it’s going to be blurry – it’s inside minimum focus. So I’m walking down the hall and David’s like, “Great, cut, print it.” And then the cameraman says, “Well, no, Dave, some of it wasn’t good because it was inside minimum.” And he goes,” What do you mean?” And they’re like, “Well some of it’s blurry.” He’s like, “Great, print it. I want to see what that looks like.” Rosanna Arquette: You don’t get any answers from him though, do you? Patricia Arquette: No, he would say, “I don’t know, Patricia; what do you think?” And he’s always go, “Arquette, you’re solid gold. That was solid gold.” And I was at a party with him with Laura Flynn Boyle and she was really sweet to me. And then – and David’s worked with her also. And he said, “Arquette, you know, you really are solid gold.” And she liked punched him in the arm and like, “Thanks, David.” Patricia, can you talk about your experience on True Romance where a couple people were at the beginning of their career - Tarantino and James Gandolfini Patricia Arquette: Yeah, that was James’s first movie. Rosanna Arquette: Oh, god, another great… Patricia Arquette: And he was kind of in character the whole time. He like slept in that suit for three days and slept in his car and he’d done a lot of Broadway before that and theater. But I think that was his first film experience. And during that Quentin had sold the script to True Romance, which gave him some money and some esteem in the industry. He had directed Reservoir Dogs with that. So while we were shooting True Romance Reservoir Dogs came out and he the hottest thing since sliced bread, you know? And I guess he says, “Patricia Arquette is the only person who ever re-wrote my work.” Rosanna Arquette: We’re both in Pulp Fiction.
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