Emmy Winner Laura Linney Tackles Comedy About Cancer

Laura Linney contemplates life on her own terms in Showtime's 'The Big C.'

The “Big C.” Just the phrase fills us with dread. And the idea of a comedy about it perplexed us. As anyone who’s been touched by it knows, a cancer diagnosis is nothing to laugh about. But there’s humor in the darkest situations and Showtime finds just the right balance of it in The Big C, the new Monday-night series starring Laura Linney as a woman whose late-stage melanoma diagnosis gives her permission to live her life — whatever remains of it — on her own terms.

Like the protagonists of Showtime’s other female-centric comedies Nurse Jackie, United States of Tara, and Weeds, Linney’s Cathy Jamison has her share of flaws and isn’t always likeable. “She’s an odd person. She can be really rude. She’s a woman who really doesn’t know who she is. She’s been functioning and not living, so there’s a lot of potential for growth,” describes Linney. “Some of the things she does are strange — nothing I would do — but it’s her own very unique journey.”

Linney, who won her third Emmy for her last TV appearance in HBO’s John Adams, was intrigued by the theme of “time and life and how much time you have, and the privilege of growing old,” though she was aware that a cancer comedy would be challenging to pull off. But as she acknowledges, “Life has a way of blowing a breeze through the most horrible of circumstances. Absurdity will creep in.”

Cathy, a teacher, has argumentative (to put it mildly) relationships with her estranged husband, teenage son, homeless brother, neighbor and a student (Gabourey Sidibe) she takes on as a personal project, but keeps her diagnosis secret from them. “When you tell people, your world changes. Your identity changes and people treat you differently and then not only do you have to deal with your own emotional response to what’s going on, you take on everybody else’s emotional response. It’s a lot and she’s not ready to do that yet,” explains Linney, who admittedly doesn’t know how she’d handle similar circumstances.

She’s never had a health scare herself, but the 46-year-old New York City native grew up with a mom who was a nurse at Sloan-Kettering, “so I was very aware of cancer as a young girl. I certainly know a lot about melanoma.”

Linney has small roles in three independent films already in the can: the “absurd dark comedy” The Details with Tobey Maguire and Elizabeth Banks, the drama Morning, directed by close friend Jeanne Tripplehorn’s husband Leland Orser, and Sympathy For Delicious, directed by her You Can Count on Me brother Mark Ruffalo. She professes no desire to direct, preferring to act and produce, as she’s doing on The Big C. Her schedule is intense, but she nevertheless finds herself “a little calmer than I normally am, a little more relaxed,” and doesn’t take the dark side of her character home with her. “I’m not Debbie Downer,” Linney says, referencing the sad sack Saturday Night Live character. “I have a lot to be happy about.”

We like the idea of seeing aging as a privilege. Do you agree?

Photo credit: Ken Regan/Showtime