Laura Linney on her education in HBO's "John Adams"
Laura Linney, whose performance in John Adams is winning rave reviews, says she is embarrassed by how little she knew about America's first vice president and his wife, Abigail, prior to playing Mrs. Adams.
"Taking this role made me really think about what I really knew about my history as an American," Linney said today. "When I think about John Adams, I knew: a) he was married to a woman named Abigail, b) they wrote lots of letters to each other, and c) he was part of the Declaration of Independence. And, yeah, I knew he was president. And that's about it, which is embarrassing quite frankly, when you start to be exposed to all this material and realize how important it is to us as Americans."
One of the keys to understanding Abigail Adams, according to Linney, is that, "Her entire life, she regretted that she wasn't able to have an education (because of 18th century American mores). And she was a far superior writer to her husband, which he admitted. But her grammar's bad, her spelling's terrible, and the handwriting's not very good. So, she always felt that there was injustice there."
Beyond reading David McCullough's Pulitzer-Prize-winning book on Adams, on which the $100 million seven-hour mini-series is based, Linney said she also learned much about the life of Abigail and her husband from the richness of the HBO production.
"I have never been in a production that had production values this high," the Emmy-Award winning actress, said. "Production design, costume design, props, hair and makeup -- all of that stuff was exceptional. So, we were really able to rely on each other for a lot information. So, I would learn an awful lot from the research that the production designer had done, or a lot from what the props master would show me. So, I knitted that in with the research I had done from David McCullough's book and others that I had gotten my hands on."
One of the biggest challenges was learning the Colonial American dialect that the characters speak.
"The dialect was something that it really took us a while to zero on," says Linney, "because no one really knew what they sounded like. There are experts in this field who believe it was that crossover between British and American and what would eventually become that Yankee accent. And, then, she was slightly higher class than John Adams. So, once Paul Giamatti (who plays Adams) had his accent, I sort of based my accent on his, but pitched it up a little bit."
Linney, who will appear next on Broadway in Les Liaisons Dangereuses (May 1), says she's delighted with the warm critical response and solid ratings the mini-series has received - especially given producer Tom hanks' commitment to accurate history at all costs.
"I'm so thrilled that people are seeming to like John Adams so much. It's nice -- really nice -- because the standards are so high on this production. And when something with high standards succeeds, it makes it easier for all of us to do good work."
Comments
I like the show, my family and I are watching it to really appreciate what the founding fathers had done!
Posted by: Moamar | March 24, 2008 11:45 PM
Tom Hanks has become quite boring and overused as an actor. As a producer, though, the man deserves the highest credit and admiration. His love of American history, his appreciation of the virtues and sacrifices of those who founded this country, and fought its wars, is perhaps without parallel in our time among the Hollywood set, most of whom are drunk or stoned, self-indulgent lechers who think their "craft" (barf) entitles them to act like, well, Hillary Clinton.
And unlike most of them, he does more than speak in platitudes...he makes history come alive on the screen.
Stay BEHIND the camera, Tom!!!
Posted by: Dave | March 25, 2008 3:28 PM