“I suddenly got hugely vulnerable in a way I haven’t for years,” reveals Bill Pullman in our exclusive webcam interview (watch the video above). USA Network’s limited series “The Sinner” focuses on Pullman’s Detective Harry Ambrose investigating a brutal murder by Cora (Jessica Biel), a young unhinged mother who has no knowledge of why she committed the violent crime. Ambrose is also a man with his own demons, as he struggles with paralyzing anxiety and the need to be dominated sexually by his mistress.
“Just the thought of people seeing me involved in [certain] behavior and television audiences being different for films, and people in small towns that I live in and have contact with who are going to look at this and go ‘Pullman, what’s happened to you,’” the actor says, made him feel anxious and vulnerable. “It was almost as if Harry’s personal shame was something I was conflating with my own circumstance.”
“What’s strange about masochism, you know, is it’s [about] feeling unworthy, feeling a lack, and that somehow the pain,” Pullman explains. “It is more comforting than not having it because there’s a clarity to it and it somehow gets distorted with also a little bit of oblivion,” he adds. “That sense of ‘I want out of here, I want out of my body, I want out of my torture, my personal torture.’”
“The Sinner” has been a huge success for USA, landing two nominations at the Golden Globes earlier this year and is a frontrunner to nab a few mentions at the Emmys next month. The limited series has also been picked up for a second installment, which Pullman talks about in some detail during our chat, also revealing that he was surprised that the show took off the way it did, given his paranoia that it might not be widely seen. “I think I entered into it without really predicting that it would be seen by people. I think I am still a little, after all these years, naïve,” he says smiling.
The Independence Day actor, 64, on fruit-picking with the neighbours, escaping to life on the ranch and why his latest film is a true family affair
Your latest film is The Ballad Of Lefty Brown. What were the highlights of filming a western near your home in Montana?
Well, it was about as exciting as it gets. I’ve had a ranch in Montana with my brother for 26 years and people I’ve known for a long time are in the movie as extras. Our local taxidermist plays the guy with the beard in the hanging scene, and a guy who is a retired theatre professor I used to work with plays the clerk in the hotel. My youngest son plays a young cowboy, my other son and daughter are in it as extras, and another son is a banjo player. My wife is in it briefly in the hanging scene, as one of the widows all in black.
You’ve been in so many shows and movies, can you tell which ones fans are going to ask about?
No. I used to think I was good at that but now there are strange things. I never realised, for instance, how much that movie Casper is now discussed by a lot of women as a coming-of-age joy because they identified with the daughter’s character.
Exciting: The Ballad Of Lefty Brown
My favourite is erotic thriller The Last Seduction, with Linda Fiorentino…
Gad! I’m glad you like that one, I wouldn’t have predicted that! The other day I was trying to get rid of stuff — it’s now my big chore in life — and I went through some boxes and there was this photo shoot with Linda that was the most extraordinary photo shoot. The shoot and the pictures, I don’t know, there was something so… she was in a very wild place!
Outside work, what are your passions?
Oh God, I have too many of them, but I have spent a lot of time making an orchard in LA. We started about six months ago with my neighbours, this community initiative. Believe it or not, in LA people have trees and they can’t be bothered with it, so we have volunteers that pick the fruit off them and we have pop-up kitchens and bring a lot of food to the areas that need it.
Any other passions?
The ranch has been a big part of my life and I was told recently by someone with a bit of psychic power in Norway that I was reincarnated from an early Roman emperor who was always obsessed with infrastructure. In the ranch I don’t go fishing, I don’t go there to relax, I build and make things better — fencing and irrigation — and I just love being outdoors. It gives me a chance to readjust my brainwaves.
What else do you have coming up, work-wise?
We might try another run at The Sinner, a TV show, plus I’m doing something I swore I’d never do — a one-person show. It’s about Charlie Russell, an iconic American painter of the west.
Wild: Linda Fiorentino in The Last Seduction
You’ve played many professions. Which do you have a connection with in real life?
My father was a doctor, so there are those connections to medicine, but then I was a teacher in real life and there’s a few teachers in there. Then a carpenter — I’ve made some furniture.
What about the president?
Oh, the president — right, that’s right! I totally forgot! That’s an important one, yes. Politics is really a local thing with me: think global and act local. With this orchard initiative I’m involved with we started small and now we’re getting involved with climate change and advocating for indigenous tribes. That’s the closest to politics I think I can get.
Do you have recurring dreams?
I did have nightmares growing up in the 1960s, when we used to see a lot of films about nuclear blasts. I could almost see the radiation coming like a sheet of rain, progressing across the land. The image is of glowing green rain, moving forward, and no one around me is aware that it’s happening.
Scary. You’re so busy, when do you sleep?
You know, it feels like in the last two days more people have said that. I must look like a maniac! I’ve got all this going on and sometimes you get in this manic mode. You’ve got to keep adding on and adding on. I’m overcommitted and I’m not sure I can deliver. I’m a little nervous about this one-man show right now, I’ve got to figure out how to carve up enough time to really do it. It’s so fascinating, though — stimulation brings more stimulation.
The Ballad Of Lefty Brown is out now on Digital HD and DVD
BOZEMAN — Montana State University expects 1,811 students will receive degrees during MSU’s 128th commencement ceremonies, which are set for 9 a.m. and 1:30 p.m. Saturday, May 5.
NEWS BRIEF: USA Network has ordered a second season of psychological crime drama The Sinner, based on Petra Hammesfahr’s book of the same name and exec produced by Jessica Biel.
