Edie Falco on Addiction and “Nurse Jackie”
Fans of HBO’s The Sopranos are likely eagerly awaiting Edie Falco’s next role as the star of the new Showtime feature Nurse Jackie, which premieres Monday June 8th. While fans might know that Falco’s character is a veteran nurse with a bad back and an addiction to pain medication, they might not know that Falco herself has struggled with addiction, giving her special insight into the character.
“If you’ve ever struggled with addiction, you’re always struggling with addiction,” she told NPR. “It’s a personality trait, really. It’s a mindset I understand deeply, and I’m sure that went into my portrayal of Jackie,” Falco said.
In the opening of the first episode, Jackie lies on her back in a white-tiled bathroom, seemingly experiencing a dream-like state. As the credits begin, a life-sized pill is popped open and tiny red granules come cascading out, raining down on her. Then we see Jackie’s worn hands chopping up the granules into a fine powder, which is then inhaled for a quick fix.
We see several sides of Jackie in the debut episode—on the one hand, Jackie is a devoted nurse and mother of two who will risk her own career to save more lives. She’ll also flush away the severed ear of a rapist instead of reattaching it, and will steal money from said rapist to give to a struggling pregnant woman who just lost her boyfriend. On the other, she is having an affair with the pharmacist who keeps her in pain killers, snorts the highly addictive painkiller Oxycontin, and is consistently rude to an over-eager nurse in training.
“Very few things in life are absolutely black and white,” Falco said in an interview. “The struggles [Jackie] has are the things that are faced by a lot of people; it’s the stuff that goes on in the real world.” When describing Jackie’s double life—as a sinner and a saint—Falco said, “I think there are a lot of things that [Jackie] loves, a lot of things that she wants, and I think a lot of them cannot exist in the same place. One of the ways that she makes that OK is by this addiction issue that she has.”
When speaking about her character’s life, Falco said, “There are many aspects of it that are mutually exclusive…I’ve discovered people who have lots of things in their lives that don’t really fit together have to find some way to kind of deny that it’s happening.” And that’s where the addiction comes in.
About her role, Falco said, “I just love it. I just really have never felt so intrinsically connected to the action — it suits me.”
