Edie Falco's in a juggling act as 'Nurse Jackie' returns

NEW YORK � Edie Falco has firmly shaken free of Carmela Soprano.

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  By Jeff Christensen, AP

  "The scheduling is the hardest part," says Falco, whose series returns to Showtime tonight even as she juggles movie and theater work. "It's cuckoo."

By Jeff Christensen, AP

"The scheduling is the hardest part," says Falco, whose series returns to Showtime tonight even as she juggles movie and theater work. "It's cuckoo."

Though it will remain a career-defining role of which she's immensely proud, Falco, 47, has established herself as a very different pill-popping Nurse Jackie, which returns to Showtime for a third season tonight (10 ET/PT). She's also prepping for a return to Broadway in a revival of The House of Blue Leaves with Ben Stiller and Jennifer Jason Leigh. And she appears as another kind of suburban housewife in 3 Backyards, an indie film released earlier this month.

All this while juggling life in Manhattan with son Anderson, 6, and daughter Macy, 3, and the life as the mobster's wife, which she played over an eight-year run, is in the rear-view mirror. "I was at a party last weekend ? that in itself is news ? and someone said, 'Oh, my God, Carmela is here!' I thought, I haven't heard that in a long time. That's really sweet," she says.

With last year's Emmy win for Nurse Jackie, Falco is the first to take home best-actress Emmys in both the comedy and drama categories, even though her new show doesn't fit neatly into either.

As the second season ended, Jackie saw her facade begin to crumble as her husband, Kevin (Dominic Fumusa), and best pal, Dr. O'Hara (Eve Best), confront her with evidence of her dishonesty and drug abuse. The third season picks up moments later, and Jackie is typically defiant.

"Her tolerance for discomfort is a lot greater than I thought most people would expect," Falco says. "They talk in AA about people's bottoms, how low they have to go before they're ready, and she's still on the fast track, circling the drain."

Executive producer Liz Brixius says she wanted Jackie "to become a tornado of deflection and rage. Her ability to manage her addiction is a superpower." But as this season progresses, her dependency is "definitely taking its toll" on her family and job.

"We're learning how to balance our comedy and the truthfulness of her addiction," Brixius says, while "finding the comedy elsewhere," from fellow nurse Zoey (Merritt Wever) and the budding friendship between her husband and her lover, Eddie (Paul Schulze). Jackie's busy mending fences with her family and Dr. O'Hara.

"She's become a bit more of a confidante than anyone in Jackie's life," Falco says. "That's the nature of addicts: They keep all kinds of secrets from all kinds of people, including (themselves)."

Falco has a rare trifecta, juggling theater, TV and film work, along with raising her kids as a single mother.

"The scheduling of it is the hardest part," she says. "It's really cuckoo."

As is Bananas Shaughnessy, the schizophrenic wife she plays in The House of Blue Leaves, married to Stiller's Artie, who is himself juggling girlfriend Bunny Flingus (Jennifer Jason Leigh).

Producers approached her about John Guare's play, which had an off-Broadway run in 1971 starring Stiller's mom, Anne Meara, as Bunny, and an earlier revival in 1986, with a young Stiller then playing the couple's son, Ronnie Shaughnessy.

"There were a bunch of plays I saw when I was younger; I would come into the city from Long Island. ... They were life-changing," she says. "Sweeney Todd was one, and House of Blue Leaves was one. All I know is I saw a production that shifted my insides in almost a permanent way. And here it is all these years later, it was almost like a to-do list."

It's darkly satirical, and "there are moments where if you read it, it could be like a sitcom, but we're not going in that direction," she says. The show begins performances next week, opens April 25 and runs through July, when Falco will take a month off in Long Island with her kids before returning to work on a nearly-certain fourth season of Nurse Jackie.

She says she doesn't watch TV, but Falco is surprised at how even her co-stars keep raving about her old Sopranos gig. Stiller and Leigh "talk about my show and how it changed television. I said, 'You guys think so too?' I have no concept still."

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