There’s a good chance Desperate Housewives star Felicity Huffman’s recently snared Emmy may be getting some company on her mantelpiece (or wherever she keeps it—keep reading). Hollywood is buzzing about her astonishing turn as Bree, the preoperative transsexual who embarks on a cross-country road trip with the troubled teenage son she never knew, earning her an Independent Spirit Award and frontrunner status for this year’s Oscar race. Hollywood.com caught up with Transamerica‘s Huffman on the gender-bending challenges of going from harried housewife to a faux female-turned-father, and on her, um, supporting player named Andy.
Hollywood.com: How did you have the balls to take on this role?
Felicity Huffman: The chance to play this role was a dream. I mean, it was scary and I could’ve blown it on so many levels, but the opportunity was fantastic. I don’t know if anyone would’ve turned it down.
HW:There’s a scene in the film where we see that you actually have extra “equipment” down below. How did it feel to get down and be totally in character? Did it make you giggle?
FH: Well, in that scene, I didn’t giggle because it was hard to do. I felt really exposed and vulnerable. I’d been living with Bree so much that the idea of actually… Even showing the crew—all two of them—was shocking and upsetting and exposing. When I first started wearing Andy, which was about the second day of shooting in New York, it was different. I have to say this, I know it sounds trite, but I understood why it’s all guys think about because I put it in my girdle and it was all I thought about it. It was sticking out and moving around. It was very odd.
HW: How did the name Andy come about?
FH: Oh, gosh. I don’t know how we named him Andy. It ended up being Andy and then the wardrobe supervisor said, “Andy is the name my ex-boyfriend who dumped me who I hate.” I was like, “Andy is a d**k.” And now Andy doesn’t call me anymore. You know, I paid for Andy. He’s my own personal guy. I still have Andy somewhere. Andy is in the closet and the dog is going to find it [Laughs].
HW: How did this movie affect your ideas about gender?
FH: When you talk to transgender women or men, they say that the fact there are two genders and you have to choose between them is ridiculous—that it’s like saying there is only chocolate and vanilla. They felt that there was many, many different permutations of gender, of sexuality, of who you want to sleep with, who you don’t want to sleep with. All those things that I felt were particular to me as a woman… It’s just hormones. They told me that as a man they felt like a destroyer moving through the ocean. The ocean comes, but you’re pretty steady and you go like that through the water. They started taking hormones, and this was before the sexual reassignment surgery, and six months in you start feeling like a little tugboat. The waves come up and you go up and then the wave comes down and you come down, and you’re so affected by life and you get upset about things and you have a fight with your girlfriend or boyfriend or just a friend, and you can’t get over it for days. It lives in you. The way guys can fight, we sort of can’t. We take it to heart. Or even temperature. Guys who are never cold and women are cold all the time. They start taking hormones and they’re like, “Oh my God, a breeze. I hate a draft. I’m always cold.” So those are small incidences, but it did make me realize that so much of who we think our personalities are, it’s just biological.
HW: In working with your coach on this character, what was the point where you felt it all clicked into place? The voice and the walk and everything?
FH: The final lynchpin was the voice. When I finally went to New York and worked with Katy Bowl, finally the voice came. We worked from the inside out. So I needed a voice that sounded disenfranchised, that sounded lonely, that had a quality of depression, that had a quality of hollowness and reaching and searching. Once I could ground that in my body and find it again, do the warm ups that led me there I did sigh—a huge sigh of relief. But at no point did I ever go, “Oh yeah, I got this.” It always felt like, ‘Oh, f**k. F**k. I’m going to screw this up!
HW: Did you have any prejudices of your own that you had to face when you did this movie? Any preconceived notions knocked away because of this experience?
FH: Well, sure. I knew nothing about the transgender community. I thought at best that they were some odd little group and, at worst, that they were weirdos. I mean, come on. Change your gender? I thought maybe they’re just gay and they don’t want to except that they’re gay. And the first time that I met transgender women it felt like I was nervous and going, “I don’t know where to look.” It’s in that same way when you meet someone who is severely handicapped. You want to sort of pretend that they’re not handicapped, but they are handicapped. I realized that all of that shit lives over here with me, that they’re these fantastic, regular, normal women and it certainly opened up my eyes.
HW: The main thing is that they don’t want to be the sex that they were born with?
FH: Yes. Although I would say it differently. I would say that they feel that the sex, the gender that they were born with is not the correct gender.
HW: Is it true that you scared your kids? What happened?
FH: [Laughs] Well, they came to the set in Arizona and I forgot that I didn’t look like me and I walked forward. My little two year old started screaming so I immediately switched my voice and started going, “Hi, it’s me.” And for some reason she was fascinated with my fake boobs. I was like, “Look. It’s a fake boob. It’s so big.” I think that as a two year old she was interested in that. I finally talked her into not being too scared. But she was definitely leery.
HW: What about your husband [actor William H. Macy], did you scare him at all?
FH: I didn’t scare him, but he did get tired. I would call him everyday from the set, but I couldn’t break my voice because it was too hard to get back there. After about a month, he said, “You can’t call me with the voice anymore. It’s just too awful. So call me at the end of the day or at the beginning of the day before you’ve warmed up because I can’t talk to you like this.” And my agents didn’t know who I was when I called.
HW: Have your cast mates from Desperate Housewives seen the movie yet?
FH: They all came last night. Isn’t that sweet? And they had like a 5 a.m. call this morning.
HW: What did they think?
FH: They hated it. [Laughs] I only saw Marcia [Cross] and Eva [Longoria] afterwards because I sort of got pulled into press. But they gave me a big hug. Marcia is so sweet. Before she saw the movie she goes, “I’m so proud of you.” I said, “But you haven’t seen the movie.” And she goes, ”I don’t care. I’m so proud of you.” So they’ve been really supportive.
HW: There seems to be a fair amount of criticism this season. How do you respond to that?
FH: I sort of go, “I hope that they don’t take us off of the air.” I think that bad gossip is always a lot more interesting than good gossip.
HW: Do you miss Lynette’s old kind of craziness this season, with her move back into the corporate world?
FH: Craziness? I miss the big jeans and the big shirts and not having to do hair and makeup. And I really don’t tire of the overwhelmed mother. I don’t tire of that because I experience it everyday and I didn’t think that voice was out there in television before. But am I glad to sort of broaden it? Yeah, because so many moms are working moms and it brings a whole other set of problems, and well, to tell you the truth it brings those problems and just moves them to another setting and adds to it. But now Doug [Savant, her onscreen husband] is the one who’s at home filthy and dirty, not taking a shower with stains on his shirt.
HW: It must be wonderful to have this movie winning awards at festivals right after getting the Emmy.
FH: I can’t believe that anyone is watching the movie at all much less that they go, “Yeah. You win this.” It’s fantastic because it’s this tiny little movie and it won at Tribeca and Berlin.
