Costar age gaps hurt Hollywood — “Fire Country”’s Diane Farr urges for age parity between onscreen couples

The actress speaks with stars including Marcia Gay Harden, Chandra Wilson, and Sarah Wayne Callies about their experiences with same-age costars and how it lends to more relatable and authentic portrayals of relationships.

Orcas are one of the most successful species on earth, reigning at the top of the food chain. Not only are they matriarchal, they are also among the few mammals other than humans whose females go through menopause. However, when breeding ends for a female killer whale, she moves up in status, taking command of her pod as their new leader and most valued hunter.

I currently play Sharon Leone, the matriarch on last season’s No. 1 new TV show, Fire Country. The CBS hit has the highest ratings of any freshman series, on any network, reaching roughly 10 million viewers a week across various platforms. Some say part of its success is the chemistry between me and my onscreen husband, played by Billy Burke — “chemistry” being the word Hollywood uses for a connection and its heat, that can’t be manufactured between actors but will catapult a performance to a cultural moment.

But what if it can be created? Or at least massaged by harnessing a secret I’d like to share: My male costar and I are about the same age.

This is not the norm on American TV, and even less when you consider we are both over 50. Age parity — hiring women who are the age a character is written, and within the same decade as their male costar — has yet to become a standard in film and TV, or even a consideration despite movement toward racial, gender, sexual orientation, and pay parity.

Skipping over the truth of characters’ ages denies actresses opportunities when they are primed to do the best work of their career (hi, Jean Smart, Tracee Ellis Ross, and Sandra Oh), usually when they are also mostly done raising their own babies and ready to give all to their work (hey now, Penelope Cruz, Robin Wright, and Angela Bassett). But what if overlooking them is actually hurting movies and TV shows as well?

I’ve played the female lead or romantic interest of the male lead on 10 television series. The two most successful — Rescue Me, a critic’s darling, and now Fire Country, a ratings standout — both paired me opposite actors within five years of my age. On the other eight shows, my love interests were 10 years older; 20 years older; and, twice, older than my father at 25 years my senior. And none achieved the same success.

Sarah Wayne Callies had a similar experience to mine. She rose to fame on Prison Break and then cemented herself in the zeitgeist on The Walking Dead, where both her male leads were within five years of her age. A film studio then cast her opposite Nic Cage, with a 15-year gap between them that was not a part of nor addressed in the story. The film shared none of Sarah’s previous success. “Hollywood does something very false, which is expect us to walk a path of peers when we are patently not,” Sarah tells me. “What we expect women to do is tell a lie.”

Of course, age-divergent casting can sometimes be successful. Jurassic Park was a box office beast, although it may have slowed Laura Dern’s course to an Academy Award and the slew of nominations she now garners. She recently told The Times, “The age gap between me and Sam Neill was completely inappropriate,” which she only realized after the film’s release when an article pointed out the patriarchal dynamics.

Why does this casting habit even exist? Is it just to make older men seem more virile? I asked Oscar nominee Andy Garcia — who has worked with more leading ladies his own age in romantic roles than most, most recently in Book Club and Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again — if there is something his peers bring to projects that he finds valuable. “Wisdom,” he says. “Like good wine, you get better with age.”

Let me tell you, Andy’s charm is stronger than the pull to the center of the earth. Yet I persist because Gloria Estefan has said she took her role in 2022’s Father of the Bride because it was Garcia who offered it to her. Is there a reason he courted a costar his age, when this would also be her very first starring role at age 63? “We have been very close friends for a long time,” he explains. “There was no other person we all wanted to play my wife. She was our first and only choice. She is an extraordinary artist and I knew that our history would layer our relationship in the film.”

So can an actual connection — at any age — do more for a film than titillating casting?

Oscar- and Tony-winner — and three-time Emmy nominee — Marcia Gay Harden thinks so. She took her role in Ed Harris’ Pollock because of their history despite a 10-year age gap, and she credits him for making her a contender for the Oscar she won. “After the first cut of the film,” she says, “Ed felt it needed more of me and went back to put more of my character in every scene.”

But without a personal or work history — as well as a star and perhaps the director pulling for you — is age parity important?

Marcia says yes: “For gravitas, it is. The closeness of experience lends itself for more interesting character and relationship.” On Harden’s current series, So Help Me Todd, which she also produces, her love interest, played by Jeffrey Nordling, is about her age — which is the standard if a female is in the leading role. “Otherwise it would sexualize the relationship,” she notes. “Just like it does with a younger woman and an older man.” Harden tells me she feels lucky to work all the time, but points out how the characters she portrays are all single, “which makes me wonder if there might be an anthropological element. Like, once you’ve lost your baby-making viability you’re inadvertently dismissed as sexually unviable.”

Hearing this makes me lightheaded. Really? Is age parity not a thing yet because of a more arcane, almost biblical idea that women have to be fertile to be attractive?

I call Joan Rater, one of the three creators of Fire Country, who I have history with. Knowing Joan for years, I knew she suggested me for my role — even though the first thing she told me when I signed on was, “I did not write this for you.” (Her inability to edit the truth is my favorite thing about her. Usually.) She says she simply wrote the best pilot she could and surprised herself when she finished, saying, “Oh, Sharon is Diane Farr.”

Rater found hiring me at age 52 was a non-issue. From casting to the studio and the network, I was a green light and their first offer. I have to wonder if this is because she is also female and over 50, because Joan doesn’t know there was a time when it seemed I would never work again.

I had a 9-month-old child at home when I found myself pregnant again, during my third year on the TV series Numb3rs. When I later discovered I was carrying identical twins, I left the CBS series to stay home with three infants. A year later, when I was ready to return to work, I screen-tested twice for roles here. In both instances, I was the creator’s choice. Letters were written to the then-president, and calls were made by the male stars pushing for me. But both roles eventually went to women a decade younger, and the feedback was the same each time:

“She’s too old. We need someone sexy.”

At 41, with a degree in my field, 25 years of experience, and a recent bikini-clad layout in Maxim magazine, I thought my acting career was over.

Last year, when Michelle Yeoh won the Academy Award at age 60, she returned to Malaysia to speak to aspiring artists. “Look at the definition of ‘prime’ for women. Once you’re past 30, you’re past your prime.” She went on to ask, “How ridiculous is that, right? So maybe we should change the definition,” arguing that our 50s and 60s are our actual prime. In Viola Davis’ 2015 Emmy acceptance speech for Best Actress in a Drama Series, she said, “What separates women of color from everyone else is opportunity.” She told The Guardian she often didn’t “recognize” women in roles she had been offered, calling them “watered-down feminity.” But then, a Black female writer over age 40 brought her How to Get Away With Murder — with a mysterious, sexualized female lead. According to Viola, “We have to ‘woman up’ and live our truths through our work and define ourselves in our terms, not the Mr. Potato Head model of male desirability.”

Shouldn’t the same be true for age?

Joan Rater was also quick to tell me “sexiness” had nothing to do with why she wanted me for Fire Country. “I’ve learned that casting is most important, and have therefore staked out this one idea: that it’s not famousness or prettiness or anything else that’s important to me — it’s authenticity. Do characters bring a realness on screen? I know you as a person to be authentic and on screen you also feel real. So does Billy Burke. That’s why we cast you.”

Is it possible to be authentic with your costar if you come from different generations, classes, educational backgrounds, and methods of working? Yes. Is it better if people represent the gender, nationality, race, and actual sexual orientation they live? So far, as an industry, we believe it is. So it should also apply to women playing the age a character is written because they have voices worth hearing, and representation matters.

A regime change has occurred at CBS since I was passed over as a leading lady. I have now entered my 50s and relish bringing chemistry to the screen. According to Warren Leight, who has run the longest primetime series in history, this heat and the success it brings is about agency. Warren took over Law & Order: Special Victims Unit two days after Chris Meloni left and Mariska Hargitay became the sole lead. “Age parity is why I was able to keep the show going,” he tells me. “If there had been a tremendous age gap between Mariska and Chris, she could not have risen up to continue to tell deep stories.”

He believes “the difference in experience and status” when a younger actor is paired with an older star “robs a younger actress of agency, which in turn robs her character of it as well.”

And that’s not the worst that can happen. Pairing actors closer in age to a parent and child and asking them to be physically intimate seems dangerous — emotionally and financially. On screen and off. Megalyn Echikunwoke and I starred in a series together when she was just 19. Now 40, she released her first short film, Weathering, last year on Netflix. Wondering if her experience as a young actress informs her casting decisions today, I ask about age parity. “I understand the heightened emotional and financial risks of age-divergent couplings on screen — and behind the scenes — and how it could and most certainly does contribute to many forms of harassment,” she explains. “As a director, the thing I find equally troubling is the creative risk. It’s also just not as interesting.”

Clearer on her wants already, I wonder if Megalyn has ever felt she could have given more of herself in a role as an actress if she and a costar were within 10 years of each other. Tears come to her eyes: “No one has ever asked me that. Not even myself. Which is so sad because when I think about my experience… the answer is yes.”

I approached Entertainment Weekly to write this piece because I am buoyed by other parities taking form. I am proud to be on a series where every race, ethnicity, and sexual orientation is represented honestly. I offered to include my over-40 colleagues here to give a fuller perspective. I didn’t imagine how much I would learn listening to them.

The Bear’s Liza Colón-Zayas was quick to tell me how long it took her to get near a leading role as a Latina actress from the Bronx. “Diane, you have no idea,” she laments. That was echoed by Chandra Wilson, who is entering her 20th year on Grey’s Anatomy: “Because I have always been an actress who could be perceived as having a few strikes against her — skin color, height, weight — I was always submitted for roles where I didn’t quite match the description, but casting agreed to see me anyway.” Christina Chang had many roles playing a smart, sexy woman over 40 before landing on The Good Doctor, “but they were guest spots where I played the foil to the main female and then quickly went down in flames.”

Hearing my fellow matriarchs on the biggest TV shows today, I realize from age 28 to 42, I was almost always the only female in every cast. Marcia Gay Harden and Sarah Wayne Callies had the same experience — seemingly when the token female in a film or show was also white. Sarah says, “Having no older females in a cast left me with no one to learn from — when my wardrobe didn’t fit or my call time was too early or there was an inappropriate ask of any kind.”

How do you become a professional in a male-dominated field if there are no other females to learn from? “Slowly,” Christina says. “When I was the newbie, there was no consciousness. It didn’t occur to anyone to guide me.” Liza had Mariska Hargitay to emulate when she finally got her first recurring role, on SVU. “Mariska led with all grace and kindness, and then when I got to In Treatment — working with the incredibly professional Uzo Aduba — the diversity there opened up my mind to even more.” Liza’s hopefulness sounds a lot like her character Tina on The Bear, moving up from the short-order cook to a more vital member of the team in season 2.

Warren says he found that a set filled with only young women “adds to bro culture and microaggressions,” while adding women over 40 to his writers’ room “allowed me to see my own biases when writing female characters.” Chandra feels change is possible for women in every department now — if we choose to make it: “I look forward to an over-40 career because, to me, the possibilities of the human experience to be portrayed are limitless. If folks are willing to take a chance on telling the stories.”

We’ve proven as an industry that we are willing to take chances to make change, like when Frances McDormand told us how to achieve gender parity while accepting the Oscar for Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri. By stating the words “inclusion rider,” Frances didn’t just change the way we do business, she became the matriarch we needed that year to keep our species evolving toward greater success. So I know we can do it again.

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