{"id":1810,"date":"2019-06-19T20:36:31","date_gmt":"2019-06-19T20:36:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ramolawpc.com\/?p=1810"},"modified":"2019-07-11T20:39:38","modified_gmt":"2019-07-11T20:39:38","slug":"why-julianna-margulies-took-on-national-geographics-chilling-ebola-thriller-the-hot-zone-because-fear-motivates-action","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ramolawpc.com\/new\/why-julianna-margulies-took-on-national-geographics-chilling-ebola-thriller-the-hot-zone-because-fear-motivates-action\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Julianna Margulies Took On National Geographic\u2019s Chilling Ebola Thriller \u2018The Hot Zone\u2019: \u201cBecause Fear Motivates Action\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"deadline-hollywood-logo-o\"After six years on ER, playing Carol Hathaway in NBC\u2019s hit medical drama, Julianna Margulies made a vow to stay away from roles that involved delivering complex scientific jargon. She was so strict with herself that, when Scott Free first approached her with The Hot Zone, a six-part tale about the origins of the Ebola virus in the late 1980s, she turned it down flat. Curiosity got the better of her, though, and soon after picking up the script she found herself in a Hazmat suit, surrounded by test tubes and petri dishes, as Nancy Jaax, a colonel at the United States Army Medical Research for Infectious Disease Institute (USAMRIID).<\/p>\n

Why did you change your mind about The Hot Zone?<\/p>\n

When I read the script, I thought, Why didn\u2019t I know about this? And why are we still in the same place we were 30 years ago? It\u2019s amazing\u2014just this morning I was listening to BBC News on NPR, and they were talking about Ebola in the Democratic Republic in Africa. Over 800 people have died since August from Ebola, and it\u2019s 2019. So, every day, I keep thinking, My God, it\u2019s not getting better. It\u2019s getting worse\u2014and no one in this country is paying attention.<\/p>\n

What appealed to you about playing the part of Nancy Jaax?<\/p>\n

She was just really dedicated to her profession in a way that I\u2019d never seen before\u2014she was putting herself at risk every day, walking into these labs and trying to understand these infectious diseases. She researched not just Ebola, but Anthrax, and the Marburg virus, and AIDS. She\u2019s alive and well today. I haven\u2019t met her yet in person, but I spoke to her at length on the phone just to sort of try and understand what I was doing.<\/p>\n

What kind of research did you do\u2014or can you do\u2014for a project like this?<\/p>\n

Well, I\u2019d never have enough time to do it properly [laughs]. These people do this for years and years and years.<\/p>\n

But, luckily enough, Nancy Jaax\u2019s nephew, Michael Smit, happens to be one of the top specialists of infectious diseases in our country. He came, generously, and gave me time, and showed me how you manipulate the instruments, how you test the tissue, what you\u2019re looking for under the microscope. He showed me what to do, what not to do, and how to fake it enough to make it look real; those kinds of things. And, honestly, for me that was the most important thing: once I was in the lab, to make it look as real as possible, because of course the people that I care about watching the most are those who work at USAMRIID.<\/p>\n

And reading the book was important, which of course wasn\u2019t good night-time reading.<\/p>\n

Even the trailer is terrifying.<\/p>\n

Yeah, it\u2019s frightening. There\u2019s nothing light and airy about it. I mean, I love that Brian [Peterson] and Kelly [Souders], our showrunners, really tried to put a little humor wherever they could into the dialogue, because it\u2019s so devastating when you really strip it down to the bare essence of what we\u2019re dealing with. The fact that Ebola had not ever been on U.S. soil until that moment [in 1989], and we were caught with our pants down. We didn\u2019t know what to do. There was no protocol.<\/p>\n

For me, the sad truth is that science-deniers have their heads in the sand. It\u2019s the government\u2019s job to believe the scientific facts and to start moving forward and finding a vaccine and a cure. People think, \u201cOh, Ebola, that\u2019s in a far off place, that\u2019s another nation. It doesn\u2019t affect us.\u201d Of course it affects us. Wake up. So I felt like this whole project was a wake-up call, a chance to hopefully at least shine a spotlight on what truly could be an epidemic that hits our country in a way that we will not be prepared for unless we start really taking it seriously.<\/p>\n

Julianna Margulies On Becoming A Doctor, Lawyer And Scientist, And Why Her Grandmother Would Have Been Proud \u2013 The Actor\u2019s Side<\/p>\n

How did the Hazmat suits help your performance\u2014or hinder it?<\/p>\n

I\u2019m embarrassed to tell you that those Hazmat suits were the bane of my existence. I did not realize how claustrophobic I truly am until they put that suit on me.<\/p>\n

There are a few different ones, but the Hazmat suits that I wear in the lab, in the biohazard level four labs, were modeled on, and made up of, the original ones from 1989. I\u2019m sure nowadays they must be lighter, but back then they weighed 50lb. And in order to keep the air circulating in there, they have these two fans that are attached into the back of the suit. Once the suit is put on, they\u2019re turned on, and there\u2019s a whirring sound. You can\u2019t hear yourself think, let alone say the dialogue, let alone hear your partner speak.<\/p>\n

And these suits were made for men\u2014in 1989, Nancy Jaax was the only woman in her department. Where the weight of the suit would come down on a man is the collarbone, but where it comes down on me is the tip of my shoulder, so with every movement I made in the lab, I was lifting an extra 50lb every time I moved my arm. I wrote to my agents and said, \u201cI don\u2019t care if someone wants to pay me $10 million, I will never step foot in that suit again.\u201d<\/p>\n

Where did you shoot?<\/p>\n

Well, all of my scenes were shot in Toronto, and then for all of the flashbacks, which Liam Cunningham and James D\u2019Arcy did, they went to South Africa. I didn\u2019t get to go. I actually asked Nancy why she never was in South Africa, and it was a personal medical reason, so I didn\u2019t press her. So all of her stuff is in Toronto. We doubled Toronto\u2014which most productions are doing nowadays because of the tax breaks\u2014for Maryland, and Virginia, and Washington, D.C.<\/p>\n

Did you ever have any contact with Richard Preston, who wrote the book?<\/p>\n

No, only in an edition of his book that he gave me and signed, saying, \u201cThanks for putting this on film.\u201d I haven\u2019t met him yet. I\u2019m hoping to, but, no, I didn\u2019t speak to him.<\/p>\n

I did ask Nancy about how she felt about the book, because there was a little bit of controversy when it came out\u2014some of the characters were either omitted from the book, or not in the book enough. And so I wanted Nancy\u2019s blessing. I didn\u2019t want to do a character who is alive and well today who wouldn\u2019t have given us the thumbs up to do it.<\/p>\n

She said that she really felt the book replicated exactly what was going on at the time, and if there was any controversy, it was just egos getting in the way, that kind of thing. But she and her husband felt that it was spot on.<\/p>\n

What would you like people to take away from The Hot Zone?<\/p>\n

Ebola is something that changes constantly, and we talk about that in the show\u2014you think you\u2019ve beaten it, and it retreats back and disappears, and then it comes back even stronger, which means we have to stay two steps ahead of it. And so what I hope the conversation will be\u2014what I hope that governments globally will take away from it\u2014is the fact that we\u2019ve all got to start financing and supporting the scientific work behind the disease to try and find a cure. It\u2019s going to happen. And so we need to wake up. And I think that\u2019s why it\u2019s important that it\u2019s such a scary thing to watch\u2014because fear motivates action.<\/p>\n

View this article at Deadline<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

After six years on ER, playing Carol Hathaway in NBC\u2019s hit medical drama, Julianna Margulies made a vow to stay away from roles that involved delivering complex scientific jargon. She was so strict with herself that, when Scott Free first approached her with The Hot Zone, a six-part tale about the origins of the Ebola
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