Felicity Huffman is currently promoting a play, Hir, which is being staged in London for a month. Which means she’s giving interviews to British outlets like the Guardian, and the Guardian didn’t really want to talk about the play. They wanted to talk about Felicity’s arrest and brief imprisonment, her guilty plea and her politics. I’m used to reading bonkers interviews and profiles and let me tell you, this Guardian piece is very, very weird. Partly because Felicity so clearly does not want to talk about many subjects and partly because the Guardian interviewer is making it extremely awkward. Some highlights:
How she feels about her criminal past: “You mean Varsity Blues? ‘How I am is kind of a loaded question. As long as my kids are well and my husband is well, I feel like I’m well. I’m grateful to be here. But how am I? I guess I’m still processing.”
She has barely worked since the scandal broke. “I did a pilot for ABC recently that didn’t get picked up. It’s been hard. Sort of like your old life died and you died with it. I’m lucky enough to have a family and love and means, so I had a place to land.”
She has encountered a range of reactions from the public. “I’m not in any way whitewashing what I did but some people have been kind and compassionate. Others have not.”
David Mamet defended her: Among her defenders is her good friend David Mamet, who wrote an open letter insisting that Huffman should have received the “Texas Verdict” which means: Not guilty, but don’t do it again. “I thought it was kind and brave of him to say something, regardless of what it was.” What does she think of his Texas Verdict argument? “I don’t know,” she says flatly, bringing the matter to a close.
She’s a Democrat, David Mamet is not: “The country is so siloed. My husband and I are Democrats and we thought we should try watching different news channels that don’t tell us what we want to hear.” Or they could speak to Mamet, a proud Donald Trump supporter. “It’s really hard to do with someone you love,” she sighs. “I can’t understand it.” Isn’t it worth trying, now that a second Trump presidency is a possibility? “Anything I can do on the ground with my actions and my pocketbook to help that not happen, I am committed to doing. But talking a loving friend out of their political convictions? I’m not signing up for that.” Was she surprised when Mamet swung to the right in his 2008 essay Why I am no longer a “brain-dead liberal”? “Yeah, I don’t really wanna go into it,” she says, squirming in her coat. We move on again.
In late November, Felicity gave her first big interview since the guilty plea and jail, and while she sounded humbled, she also claimed (bizarrely) that she thought she had to do fraud and break the law “to give my daughter a future.” The pushback on Felicity was immediate. I think she realized that she needs to talk about all of it in a different way, but she still hasn’t figured out what to say so she’s just sort of stilted and awkward about it.
This is such a tangent, but let me compare Felicity and Halle Berry in a narrow way – in 2020, Halle got probation, a fine and court-ordered community service for a hit-and-run. Halle began working with Jenesse Center for her community service and simply never stopped. She’s an ambassador for the domestic-violence charity and she’s spent over two decades doing amazing work with them. I actually believe that Felicity is trying to do something similar, which is continue working with charities beyond her community service. Lean into that and work with a publicist to figure out a way to talk about your crimes so you don’t come across like a privileged a–hole. Like, it’s so simple but Felicity still hasn’t figured out a way to do it.
Photos courtesy of Cover Images.