Entertainment

Edie Falco: clean & sober

Four years of playing a drug addict on a TV series would put most Hollywood actresses out of commission. Not Edie Falco. The quintessential New Yawk actress is back on Showtime’s “Nurse Jackie.” The show’s fifth season is her most personal yet.

It’s the year that Jackie, after going to rehab, tries to live a sober life.

Falco, 49, has been sober for 21 years but can recall the struggle to stay on course, memories she draws on in Sunday night’s season premiere. Falco captures the isolation of a woman who’s lost her marriage, alienated her kids and nearly wrecked her career. And who, even on a good day, is still a handful.

“Dealing with that feeling of steadiness about how to proceed, that’s long gone. But it’s still part of what I remember,” she says. “It’s like learning to ride a bike, you know? You have to get your bearings and you have to stay stable. And balanced.”

Sitting outside at a West Village cafe, Falco says, “I had a lot of support. Still do. But they couldn’t go through it for me,” she says.

Falco is back in her favorite neighborhood after a stint in TriBeCa. It’s the ideal place for her to raise her kids, Anderson, 8, and Macy, 5. She has brought them to the “Jackie” set since they were small and finds now that they’re old enough to wear headphones and listen to Mom do a scene, they are likely to repeat the dialogue.

In the new season, Jackie confronts a boy who has charmed her daughter into taking the subway from Queens to Manhattan to watch him play guitar. Jackie sets him straight: “You’re 17. My daughter’s 14. This isn’t happening.”

One day at home, Macy said to her, “Ma, this isn’t happening.”

Though she once dated her “Frankie and Johnny” co-star Stanley Tucci, Falco has never been married. But she does not rule it out. “I never made any plans in that regard,” she says. “Every step of my life has surprised me. At this point, anything is as possible as anything else.”

There are some surprises at “Nurse Jackie” this year: The show has a new boss, former “Dexter” executive producer Clyde Phillips. When Falco met Phillips, she said it was like “a B-12 shot.”

“I wanted the show to be a comedy again,” Phillips says. “I wanted to make it sexier.”

That means a new love interest. Adam Ferrara plays Sgt. Frank Verelli, a cop Jackie meets at the hospital.

“We auditioned a lot of guys. And we knew right away with him,” Falco says. “We had an ease with each other which is where I think we’re going with this.”

When reminded she is the most prominently employed “Sopranos” star, she quickly raps her knuckles on the table for good luck.

“Never in a million years did I ever think my life would look the way it does now,” she says. “To be a mom with two spectacular kids. To be able to support myself in a difficult career. It is an embarrassment of riches. And I had never anticipated also to not be going through my days drinking. Of living a life without any kind of crutch. It’s a lot of really good stuff. And I dreamt small. So it’s all big. And continues to be.”

Edie Falco as Nurse Jackie

Edie Falco as Nurse Jackie (
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