Marin Hinkle as Sofia’s daughter-in-law, and Katherine LaNasa, as Sofia, share a tense moment during a game of tennis on “Deception.” (David Giesbrecht/NBC)
Ever since Madeleine Stowe bared her claws — and that stony forehead — on ABC’s “Revenge” two seasons ago as meddlesome matriarch Victoria Grayson, networks have been searching for actresses sleek, sexy and sinister to give her some competition. While this resurgence of the elegant battle-axe doesn’t quite match Joan Collins’ mad-for-mascara heyday on “Dynasty,” we are seeing actors who excel at making their co-stars a little — how shall we say? — uncomfortable.
One of these is Katherine LaNasa. She plays Sofia Bowers on NBC’s mid-season replacement “Deception,” the story of a wealthy family whose daughter, Vivian, overdoses on heroin. Her death brings an estranged childhood friend, Joanna Locasto (Meagan Good), who is also a narcotics detective, back to the Bowers’ Long Island estate. Sofia is suspicious, especially when her husband, Robert (Victor Garber), offers her a job in his pharamaceutical company.
“It’s so hard to be a guest in someone else’s house,” she says with a menacing undertone.
“Sofia’s coming from three degrees below hell,” says LaNasa, 46. The Louisiana-born actress is talking about the show at Bubby’s, the TriBeCa mainstay, over a late breakfast. She’s wearing ripped jeans and a black leather jacket, a look she dubs “Desperately Seeking Sofia.”
With a devilish laugh, she admits that she plays certain scenes as if Sofia desires Joanna, to make her character seem more twisted.
“Katherine LaNasa and I seem to be a perfect fit in this wildly dysfunctional family,” says co-star Garber.
While in New York filming the series, LaNasa is renting Gina Gershon’s loft a couple blocks away with her third husband, Grant Show, the actor best known for playing Jake Hanson on “Melrose Place.” Coincidentally, one of LaNasa’s first roles was as the police sergeant on “Seinfeld” who gives Jerry a lie-detector test to expose his secret love of the Aaron Spelling 1990s soap.
LaNasa’s path to acting began at the barre. She was a professional ballet dancer with Karole Armitage’s company. While on tour in her early 20s, she met her first husband, actor/director Dennis Hopper (her second was “3rd Rock From the Sun” star French Stewart). LaNasa and the late Hopper were together briefly, but they remained connected through their son, Henry, now 22, and some of Hopper’s acting style has rubbed off on LaNasa.
Her process is very visceral and one of the first ways she accessed the deep recesses of Sofia’s mind was finding the right shoes: stilettos. “I feel like her shoes weigh 2,000 pounds,” she says. “There’s a Sofia cloud that kind of hangs over me like a hangover. It’s like she’s always kind of drunk. There’s nothing light.”
While LaNasa insists Sofia has a softer side, it’s not easy to find. In the second episode, she eviscerates her husband’s ex-mistress, but doesn’t spare her husband: “One of these days you’re going to sleep with a smart woman, and then God help us all.”
The writing on “Deception” is alternately salaciously over-the-top and concisely plotted. Creator Liz Heldens, whose writing credits include “Friday Night Lights,” first laid eyes on LaNasa when she helped write an episode of the short-lived Rebecca Romijn series “Pepper Dennis,” in which LaNasa played a sultry Russian named Nadia Vadinava.
In contrast, Sofia asserts herself using other methods of control. “I like it when I get to yell and throw glasses. There’s a scene where I get really drunk around Meagan and I have a big turn,” she says. “That was really fun to play. It’s like a roar.”
LaNasa draws similarities between Sofia and her role as Rose Brady, the wife of long-term congressman Cam Brady (Will Ferrell) in “The Campaign” this past summer. “Those are two women that wield a lot of power and manipulate things behind the scenes. In that way, they’re a lot a like,” she says.
LaNasa confesses all her roles stem from a childhood sadness. “That’s the motherlode for me, and everything comes out of that — if I have to get angry or sad,” she says. “And sometimes it’s something joyful that makes me sad. It’s this crazy trip.”
For all the intensity she displays on camera, LaNasa has no problem dropping character when the scenes wrap. “Meagan [Good] and I just hang out. We go shopping for Isabel Marant sneakers or go out for karaoke. We just have fun.”