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Personal Note: Star Trek fans might remember Michelle Forbes as Ensign Ro . When I found out that she is going to appear in Wonderland , I decided to put this artcles on .
By the way if anyone is going to watch Wonderland, please let me know what you think of it. Thanks.
Michelle Forbes is a drama queen. Not in the Joan Crawford-diva kind of way, but in the way that she gravitates to complex situations and multi-layered roles. With her latest project, Forbes goes from the coronor's office she ran on ''Homicide'' to a New York psychiatric hospital as the star of ABC's unsettling new series ''Wonderland,'' (premiering March 30). "I guess that means I'm really edgy and gritty," laughs the 33-year-old actress on the phone from her home in Los Angeles where she and her terrier mix Kokoscha relocated from New York earlier this month. "But I don't know if that would describe me as a person. So I don't know why I'm drawn to these types of projects, why I'm not in a kitchen baking cookies or something. For some reason I always find myself in a morgue or a mental hospital, these really sort of dire straits."
An insatiable interest in the human condition almost led to an alternative career choice.
"For a while I wanted to quit acting altogether, go back to school and become a Russian translator," giggles Forbes, whose friends began calling her "Mishka" when she was going through her late teen-aged phase. "I was a little obsessed with Soviet cinema and Soviet literature. Don't know why," she shrugs. "But it's a young thing. You see these Russian women, they're all eating potatoes and everybody's suffering and wearing black. I don't know why."
SHE'S NOT A DOCTOR, BUT...
But Forbes enjoyed "playing pretend" too much to abandon years of theatrical training. She played a schizophrenic psychologist Solita-Sonni in an Emmy-nominated turn on "The Guiding Light;" the recurring Ensign Ro on "Star Trek: The Next Generation;" the savvy D.A. Rachel Simone in "The Prosecutors;" the girlfriend to pre-"X Files" David Duchovny in the big-screen psychotic trip "Kalifornia" ; and, her favorite, "Homicide's" Dr. Julianna Cox. "She had demons, but she was also kind of funny and knew how to have a good time," says Forbes of the character she reprised last month for "Homicide: The Movie."
"I miss 'Homicide' terribly. I loved being there," she reminisces about the Baltimore homecoming for Tom Fontana's Emmy-award winning series. "It was just so wonderful to be back there and see this cast of characters, which I think is the most extraordinary cast that has ever been on television--that's my personal feeling."
When it comes to working with "Wonderland" creator Peter Berg, the usually chatty Forbes clams up. "It was interesting," she laughs. "That's all I can say."
STARTING THE INSANITY
But Forbes has plenty to say about what Berg attempts to depict in his series, a world where patients and doctors alike can crack; where madness and sanity are often indistinguishable. Berg, whose mother worked at New York's Bellevue psychiatric hospital (on which Berg's is molded), says the show gives him a chance to de-mystify the world inside a mental institution.
"People might not come to it," Forbes admits, but regardless of its reception, the actress is excited about the show's subject matter. "I'd been obsessed with this world for a long time, with mental illness and psychiatry. It's fascinating, and we've come so far in the realm of psychiatry and taking the shame off mental illness, and so perhaps it will be user-friendly. I hope so."
"I keep hearing about how gritty the show is," she continues, "but we see shows about cops, about detectives dealing with murders, about doctors ripping chests open and dealing with death--that's everybody's biggest fear. I don't see this as being any more frightening than the key plot of any crime drama or medical drama: death. That has to be more frightening than mental illness. It is sometimes a very fine line between madness and genius? Are they closer to God or are they not? It's just a fascinating world and I don't know if everyone else is so fascinated by it though."
After several grueling months of 18-hour days in the freezing New York winter at a closed wing in the Creedmore psychiatric facility, Forbes has been looking forward to life in sunny L.A.
Far from the mad crowd, Forbes says she enjoys "my dog, my pals, yoga, puttering around the garden. Those quite good things that keep everyone sane."
"Wonderland" premieres Thursday, March 30, at 10 p.m. on ABC.
