Medium's Star Couple Ignites
Patricia Arquette, star of NBC's hit paranormal series Medium, told SCI FI Wire that she had an eye-opening experience working for the first time with her real-life husband, actor Thomas Jane, who guest-stars in the show's November 15 third-season season premiere. "I have a crush on my husband," Arquette said in a conference call with journalists last week. "And so when I was watching him, and they'd shine this bright light on him, I was like, 'God, he's foxy.' I got a little shy, because he was foxy."
Arquette added that working with her husband had certain advantages. "It was a hell of a lot easier for me to run lines [practice dialogue]," she said. "We got home, I was like, 'Let's run lines. Yay!' Because I always feel bad kind of descending upon him and having him run all these other characters' lines all the time. But I finally had a great partner to work with at home."
In the two-hour season-premiere episode, "Four Dreams," Jane plays Clay Bicks, the recently deceased ex-boyfriend of Arquette's character, psychic Allison Dubois. When Clay decides to take up residence as a ghost in the Dubois home, it creates some tension between Allison and her husband, Joe (Jake Weber).
Show creator and executive producer Glenn Gordon Caron, who also participated in the conference call, said that it wasn't easy for Jane to watch Arquette interact with her on-screen husband while filming the episode. "I think the word he used was jealous: really, really jealous," Caron said.
SCI FI Wire by Cindy White 11/13/06
Medium Star Cut Short
Patricia Arquette, who plays real-life psychic Allison Dubois on NBC's Medium, told SCI FI Wire that she caused a stir behind the scenes when she decided to cut her hair short at the end of last season; Arquette now sports a tidy blond bob, as will her character when the hit series returns for a third season this week.
"As soon as we wrapped, I chopped my hair off," Arquette said in a conference call with journalists on November 10. "When I cut it, [producer Ron Schwary] was like, 'Oh, my God! She cut her hair!' And there [were] ripples of panic stretching across the network. And [creator Glenn Gordon Caron] said, 'What's the big deal? She cut her hair. People cut their hair. They grow their hair. They cut their hair.'"
Arquette made the decision to update her look because she was getting tired of having long hair and wanted something more low-maintenance. "To be honest, I think in life, any person just gets fed up with their look sometimes," she said. "I've had this hairdo before. It's the easiest hairdo I've ever had. I roll out of bed, I brush it, it's done."
Stars who cut their hair cause anxiety in part because of the example of The WB's Felicity, which saw its ratings plunge after lush-maned star Keri Russell sheared off her long blond locks at the beginning of the series' second season in 1999.
In any case, Arquette's Medium character will also sport the new style when the show returns for its third season. But don't expect it to be mentioned onscreen. "We don't make a big deal of the fact that she cut her hair, but it's just a haircut," Arquette said. "Marriage is like, you gain weight, you lose weight, you have a baby, you get fatter, you get skinnier, you cut your hair, maybe even dye your hair a slightly darker shade. It grows. It falls out." The two-hour season premiere of Medium airs Nov. 15 at 9 p.m. ET/PT; the show will then move to its new timeslot, Wednesdays at 10 p.m., the following week. NBC is owned by NBC Universal, which also owns SCIFI.COM..
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