Anna Friel is a slight thing, with curly hair and boundless energy. Her animated presence is a perfect fit for Pushing Daisies, the candy-colored hit series in which she plays Charlotte "Chuck" Charles, a woman with the sparkling air of the recently resurrected. You see, Ned, a piemaker-cum-detective, has the power to bring murder victims back to life. One touch from Ned revives a corpse, while a second returns it to the grave. Ned's shtick was hitch-free until he laid a hand on Chuck, his childhood sweetheart. Smitten (again), Ned holds himself back from touch number two. Thus begins a love affair limited to eye contact, banter, and the occasional hug, grasp, or dance--the kind that's insulated by rubber gloves or head-to-toe beekeeping gear.
In person, it's hard not to touch Friel. She's the woman who, when you ask where she bought her dress, invites you to peek down the back to read the label. Although Friel isn't as well-known in the States, she's both well-respected and notorious in England. On the soap opera Brookside, she performed the country's first lesbian TV kiss ("It was the highest rating the channel ever got!"); in The Tribe she had a ménage-a-trois with Jonathan Rhys Meyers and Jeremy Northam ("By the end of it, we were all flopping about naked, like, Wahoo!"); and in the sexually fraught Broadway hit Closer she played Alice, a stripper. No wonder Friel is quickly becoming our favorite British import since HobNobs and David Beckham.
How does living in Los Angeles match up against Windsor, where your place had a view of the Queen's castle?
I love it here. Even the realtors are famous! You get the famous gardener, the famous hairdresser, the best this, the best that. I also love that there's always someone here who's a bit more famous, which keeps the paparazzi at bay.
You get covered a lot by tabloids in Britain, but not here--not yet, anyway.
Thank God. It's fantastic. I don't have to put on makeup all the time.
Do tell: How does one become a tabloid darling?
I used to hang around in this group the press called the "Primrose Hill set," which included Kate Moss and the guys from Oasis. The press found that interesting. They always wanted to know what we were wearing. The English press has been very good to me, touch wood.
Speaking of touch, what has Chuck taught you about physical intimacy?
When you can't ever touch, it makes you want to do it more. You forget how much it's a part of communicating. I often think if I could just touch Ned, I could show the audience so much more.
You've done so many risqué roles; this must be a huge change.
It's so clean compared to, say, a play like Closer. Being bubbly, happy, and positive five days a week is more challenging than I expected. I think risky material helps you grow as an actress, which you need if you want longevity. If you're just the pretty girl, you're going to have a really short career. A ripe actress like Susan Sarandon or Judi Dench, with lots of layers, is more interesting to me than the young, unripe version.
Your American accent on the show is flawless.
Thanks. In my car on the way to work, I speak with an American accent and keep it the whole day, even during personal phone calls. I have a voice coach who gives me 30 notes [on how to improve] every day! I wanted the character to have a lot of air in her voice and to be very wide-eyed. I based it a lot on my daughter, Gracie. I wanted my character to be childlike.
It must be fun to do a show your 2-year-old can watch!
Those bright visuals really get her. She likes to come to the set because they've built a sweet shop that looks like something from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. She takes sweets from all the jars. Her new thing is to say to me "Cut, Mummy! Cut!"
You and your partner, actor David Thewlis, are raising Gracie but aren't hitched. Suspicious of marriage?
Oh no, I always thought I was quite conventional--that I'd get engaged, marry, have a child--but it's all gone higgledy-piggledy. I think it's nice we've stayed together for the right reasons and not some tangled mess. And he's never asked, really! No, I'm always saying I don't need to. I think we'll wait to do it when Gracie can actually stand up at the wedding and be a part of it.
David plays Remus Lupin in the Harry Potter movies…
He's shooting in England right now. He's also a writer. His novel was recently released in the U.S.; it's called The Late Hector Kipling. It's amazing. It's all about the art world. He's constantly writing, and he reads, like, five books a week. I'm more social than he, the one with the bouncy energy, and he's more in his head--everything goes onto his pages. So it's a nice balance.
What do you guys do when you're not working?
We love the mountains and the sea, and we love to watch movies. People hate watching them with us because we talk and analyze all the way through!
I heard that you once gave a film producer a piece of your mind when he asked you to eat fewer doughnuts.
I told him he could have me--or a model without a brain in her head. The obsession with weight today is just incredible. Curves have gone out the window, and I don't understand it. For me, I think if you're disciplined enough to stop eating when you're not hungry, then you can maintain a balance. When I first moved to L.A. I got a trainer, but when we started doing the show, the whole thing fell apart. But I have a row machine now. That's how I lost all my baby weight in three months!
So you're not a calorie counter?
No. Look at French women: They eat cheese, drink wine, and they have incredible bodies and skin. I can't even do that water, water, water thing. I get so bored of it. But I do drink English tea, PG Tips, all day long. Eight cups a day! I also eat three bananas a day, every day. On set, they call me Anna Banana. I'm obsessed. If I'm tired, they make me feel better.
You must burn those bananas off by talking so fast. This is the quickest interview I've ever done.
And yet all day the director tells me to do my lines "flatter and faster, flatter and faster."
Why is that important?
Because if you're doing very poetic dialogue, it can sound too "television"--but when you do it flatter and faster, it makes it sound more natural and gives it a rhythm. This is the only role ever that a director hasn't asked me to slow down.
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