Love or Hate Her Character, Laura Innes Loves Keeping the ER on Its Toes The actress behind no-nonsense Kerry Weaver, Innes knows that the difficult doc keeps it interesting
by David Martindale about the author >>
Laura Innes still vividly remembers the first time an ER viewer recognized her as Kerry Weaver, the no-nonsense emergency room doc who has been working in Chicago's County General since 1995. The encounter ultimately taught Innes something about trusting her instincts. "I was in a department store buying a bedspread," she recalls. "It was on a Friday and my first show was on the night before. And I heard this woman at the cashier's counter talking: 'Oh, my God, there she is, there she is!' She was so angry. Like growling. Like 'Grrrr!' Like she was ready to spit. Then I realized she was talking about me and my character!"
Innes was taken aback at first, even a little bit hurt. "Because I had not seen the character in this way," she says. "I mean, I got what this woman was talking about. I wasn't totally oblivious. The character I play can be a total ball buster. She's someone who's not easy with other people. She's not warm and fuzzy. But I never felt like she was Super Bitch."
When Innes received this unfavorable critique, of course, it was too late do anything about it, too late to "soften" the portrayal. "Because we start shooting in July and they don't start airing till September," she explains, "meaning there were at least three episodes already shot." And for that, she is grateful. "Because if I had gotten that kind of feedback right away, I might have been tempted to make her nicer--and I think it's a mistake to want to be liked all the time. Your ego can get in the way of making something more interesting."
Innes has certainly made ER a more interesting show. She came aboard at a time when the emergency room was populated mostly by heroic, cool doctors. Initially, she was signed to do a six-episode story arc, but Weaver shook things up so much around Drs. Ross (George Clooney), Greene (Anthony Edwards) and Carter (Noah Wyle) that she was added to the cast full-time by season three. It's sometimes thankless work, playing the not-so-likable one, but it's a vitally important ingredient to making compelling drama. "Any time you have a series television show," Innes says, "it's essential that you have characters who have a different voices and different rhythms, which allows you to create this kind of symphony in storytelling."
To this day, Innes meets ER fans who hate her. But interestingly, she also meets fans who appreciate Weaver's blunt nature. "I have people coming up to me who just want to belt me, because they're so angry at me. But I can walk across the street, go into another store and somebody comes up to me, literally with tears in their eyes, saying, 'Oh, I love your character so much.' I love this broad spectrum of reactions."
Innes is actually quite different from her character in many ways. Of the major ER characters, Weaver and her past is perhaps most shrouded in mystery, in part because she's so closed off from co-workers that she reveals next to nothing about herself. Innes, on the other hand, is warm and friendly--and she freely volunteers details about her life (born and raised in Michigan, began her career in the Chicago theater scene, married since '88, with a 13-year-old son and 2-year-old adopted daughter). Weaver is also aggressively ambitious, eager to grab more power and control within the hospital hierarchy, whereas Innes isn't nearly as assertive. For example, when it came to launching her second career as a director (she has directed several ER episodes and also earned an Emmy® nomination for directing The West Wing), her ER colleagues practically twisted Innes' arm.
"It was Anthony Edwards who first said to me, 'Are you interested in directing?' And I said, 'Oh, I could never do that.' It's sort of a clich¿the saying, 'What I really want to do is direct,' and I was hesitant to become that clich¿But then the producers and writers, who I had always had a good relationship with, approached me and said, 'Would you like to direct?' I said, 'But I've never done this before.' And they said, 'Still, it seems like a good idea to us.' So I did it and I've enjoyed it. But I don't think I would have had the confidence without them sort of seeing something in me that honestly I wasn't sure I had."
Today, not only is Innes at ease running entire episodes of this very demanding TV series, but she has also discovered she's no longer blindly compliant as a real-life patient when dealing with real-life docs. "My doctors are wonderful, but I know now they're no different from me. They just have a different job. I'm less intimidated by my doctor and it makes me more aggressive in terms of asking questions, doing research and knowing what's going on. I'm a little more proactive in terms of my own medical care."
Sounds like some of Dr. Weaver's traits are rubbing off.
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by David Martindale
