http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/26/arts/television/26blan.html



April 26, 2009
Television
Determination, With Giggles and Quarrels
By MARK BLANKENSHIP

DURING a recent rehearsal for an Off Broadway play, it was hard to remember that
Bobby Cannavale and Sarah Paulson star in a fizzy television series like
“Cupid.” Circling each other, they spit out some of the nastiest lines in Mark
Schultz’s “Gingerbread House,” a dark satire about a couple who decide to sell
their children.

At one point the actors carried their intensity out of the scene, pausing to
discuss the timing of some overlapping lines. As they debated the right moment
for Mr. Cannavale’s shady businessman to interrupt Ms. Paulson’s distraught
mother, they grew more and more intense, cutting each other off to advocate
their artistic points. They weren’t fighting, exactly, but the tension was
thick.

Then Mr. Cannavale made a joke about things “getting heavy,” and Ms. Paulson
scrunched her face and did a little dance. The air cleared, everyone in the room
laughed, and it was easy to imagine the actors appearing on “Cupid,” ABC’s
cotton-candy show about a man who thinks he’s the god of love. (Mr. Cannavale
plays the title character, and Ms. Paulson plays Claire, a psychiatrist who
doubts his immortality and his sanity.)

That balance — earnestly determined about their work but not taking themselves
too seriously — has allowed Ms. Paulson and Mr. Cannavale to navigate two such
markedly different projects. “Cupid” is broadcast on Tuesday nights on ABC, and
“The Gingerbread House,” presented by the stageFarm, opened on April 18 at
Rattlestick Playwrights Theater in the West Village.

“I’ll be doing a scene with Bobby, and Sarah will be off camera making monkey
faces,” said Rick Gomez, who plays Mr. Cannavale’s landlord and boss on “Cupid.”
“It creates this atmosphere of kids one-upping each other, and you feel like
you’re free to play.”

It’s not all goofing off on the set. “With Bobby and Sarah the work is never
done,” Mr. Gomez said. “There’s always one more thing to try, and it really
pushes you to do better work.”

Since its premiere last month “Cupid” has earned mediocre ratings (around six
million viewers a week) and received mixed reviews, though many critics praised
the two leads. (A similar reaction greeted the play.) When Alex Kilgore,
stageFarm’s artistic director, cast them in “The Gingerbread House,” “Cupid” was
not yet on the air. Mr. Kilgore said he knew they had filmed the series, and
while that wasn’t the reason he cast them, it was certainly an asset.

“It made me feel like we were ahead of the game,” Mr. Kilgore said. “There was a
real comfort between them from the moment they read the script, so instead of
waiting two weeks for everyone to trust each other, I was able to start focusing
on what the play is really about.” (Evan Cabnet replaced Mr. Kilgore as director
of “The Gingerbread House” a few days before opening.)

The two actors make a striking physical pair. Mr. Cannavale, 37, is tall and
dark. He’s known for his guy’s-guy charm in television series like “Will &
Grace” and his brooding charisma with a hint of menace in plays like
“Hurlyburly” and “Mauritius” (for which he received a Tony nomination). Ms.
Paulson, 34, is a serious-looking blonde, lauded for her intelligent humor on
Aaron Sorkin’s “Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip” and her subtle evocation of
regret in the Roundabout Theater’s 2008 revival of “Crimes of the Heart.”

Mr. Cannavale and Ms. Paulson overlap professionally, in their lack of formal
training and their similar approaches to developing a role. “In both jobs we
just want to make it clear that we want something,” Mr. Cannavale said, sharing
a couch with Ms. Paulson after a rehearsal of “The Gingerbread House.”

Ms. Paulson added: “There’s just no point in doing it if the stakes aren’t high.
I try to make the stakes for my character just as high in ‘Cupid’ as they are in
this play, because if they aren’t, who’s going to care?”

Ms. Paulson said she was glad to work with Mr. Cannavale onstage, since
television’s quick shooting schedule doesn’t allow for much discussion of what’s
happening in a scene. “I always feel shortchanged, somehow, working on
television,” she said, “because I don’t ever feel like I can get to a place
where my performance is as good as it can be. With this play I’m relieved that
we don’t have to figure out the answers in the 10 minutes before we start
shooting. We can all investigate the nooks and crannies.”

Asked how she creates a role, Ms. Paulson said she searched for the pieces of a
character that were like herself, rather than trying to construct an entirely
fictional person. “Otherwise it comes off like, ‘Oh, I want to make her nervous,
so I’ll be a hand-wringer,’ ” she said. “It seems dishonest.”

“That’s weird,” Mr. Cannavale said. “I haven’t heard you say that, but now I
know one of the reasons I connect with you. I go the same way. I go with how I
relate to the character, then I pull away the things I know wouldn’t help.”

Then Ms. Paulson teased Mr. Cannavale about a day when he was hamming it up on
the “Cupid” set: “You said, ‘Should that be less big? And I said: ‘Yes.
Definitely.’ ”

Mr. Cannavale thrust his arm in the air like a heroic statue. “Right,” he said,
“because I was doing it like, ‘I’ve got a match to make!’ ”

Ms. Paulson said: “It’s funny because we do check in with each other. I’m a very
sensitive person, and normally if an actor told me my performance wasn’t
working, I’d be like” back off. “And I’d start posturing and defending my turf.
But I don’t do that with Bobby.”

Mr. Cannavale said: “Yeah, me too. Sarah and I clicked when we met, and I think
we knew right away we had something like-minded. When you meet a friend, it’s
just there.”





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