What was it about the project that attracted you to take on this character? If Cortland is the personification of the more Bohemian side of New Orleans, Deirdre embodies New Orleans' resilience and tragedy. To the production designer's credit and the city as a whole, New Orleans is a character, and the house is a character. There's just a flavor to New Orleans that is so rich and decadent. It's the air, the scent, their history of imminent weather, destruction, devastation, and coastal debacle, but also the rising up and resilience. I truly don't think there's any other city like New Orleans in that context. How was it drawing from that history and atmosphere? In terms of filming a Southern Gothic show, there is no better place to film it than New Orleans. It wasn't hard to step out into the New Orleans mist and feel the petals for this beautiful, sensuous awakening.

You don't want to go overboard with the catatonia. Those first two episodes are directed by Michael Uppendahl, whom I love, and all the directors are great. It's always a question with the director. How was it capturing that in the nonverbal side of the performance? She's confined, and then she's walking again for the first time in over a decade. In speaking of that physicality, a lot of scenes Deirdre isn't speaking. For me as an actor, that was hard because I'm confined to a wheelchair - a wickery, antiquated, annoying wheelchair - and then to have the contact lens, it was a physically uncomfortable role to play.

For her to find her voice, we had to trip over it a little bit and find physicality. We had to play with that in the little time we had because she's been voiceless for the 18 years she's been on Thorazine and medicated. I was talking to Harry, and he said he found his voice for Cortland from speaking with Tennessee Williams.

The witching hour by anne rice