In Shining Vale‘s first two episodes, audiences learn that Pat (Courteney Cox) left life in the big city following an affair with their family’s handyman. As a result, Pat’s husband and children feel more than a little lingering resentment towards her for uprooting their entire lives. While Pat adjusts to their new life in a small Connecticut town, she discovers something entirely unexplainable. Pat dreams about a woman named Rosemary (Mira Sorvino), who may or may not be a ghost, demon, or a part of Pat’s mind. One day, however, Pat wakes up with a cigarette burn on her arm, and she believes it was Rosemary who hurt her in her sleep.
During a press event attended by CBR’s Cass Clarke, Shining Vale star Mira Sorvino delved into how she approached portraying such an ambiguous role. “I had to play her as though she’s real — no matter what she actually is because, otherwise, it doesn’t have any internal logic for me,” Sorvino said.
“There was a historical Rosemary that lived in the house,” she continued. “So there was a 50s housewife that lived in that house that looked like Rosemary but didn’t dress as glamorously, wasn’t as fabulous, wasn’t self-actualized and proud and feisty. She was much more repressed and held down and abused by her husband — certainly mistreated, betrayed, and really, really miserable, like having a nervous breakdown miserable… So it’s coming from this real place of having experienced this and not being able to be her own person. So when she’s the ghost version, or the spirit version, or whatever you want to call that manifestation, she is all the things that she wished to be in life. She’s bold. She’s fabulous. She’s living like a 50s movie queen in the golden age of Hollywood — a fabulous woman with beautiful clothes and fantastic hair and has witty things to say. She’s got the zeal and the gusto of someone who is starved for life. She’s so hungry for life, and she’s infectious. I think that she gives Pat that same hunger.”
When asked by CBR why Rosemary chose Pat to appear to, Sorvino replied, “Pat is trying to free herself up… And I think that as Rosemary has more influence on her, she realizes that maybe [her current life] is not enough for her. She herself is constrained by these societal regulations and her own regulations and the weird inherited relationship with her mom. You see this generational saga of slight insanity from mother to daughter to granddaughter. Her first book was light literary porn, so obviously she has this wild child in her. She used to be a heavy drinker. And it’s as though she cleaned herself up, but then silenced herself. That’s the part of her that’s calling to by Rosemary like, ‘Don’t ignore that part of you, because otherwise you’re just not really living truthfully.'”
See how far Rosemary will push Pat in Starz’ Shining Vale, airing new episodes on Sundays.
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