Connie Britton Reveals the Heartbreaking Lesson She Learned About Grief While Filming 'Dear Edward'

'The White Lotus' star on why she signed onto this Apple TV+ series and whether she'd do a second season.

Nashville, Friday Night Lights and The White Lotus star Connie Britton, 55, faces a major tragedy in her latest role for TV. In Dear Edward (Feb. 3 on Apple TV+), Britton plays Dee Dee, a woman whose husband died in a plane crash that killed all aboard except for a 12-year-old boy named Edward. In an examination of the human spirit, the story follows Edward and the relatives of those lost as they come together after the crash.

This is a story about unexpected loss. Did you learn something about grief playing Dee Dee? 

I did. Grief is such a profound and organic topic. It really is something that we all deal with and it’s fundamentally human. Yet it’s something that feels so elusive, I think, particularly, in the American culture. I find having gone through grief in my own life that a lot of times we don’t have ways to work through it and to handle it. We’re not given the tools or the language for it. This was really a wonderful opportunity to try to explore that. And one of the things that I really learned playing Dee Dee was that grief comes in many forms. Because grief can certainly come from the loss of a loved one, but it can also come from the loss of your own sense of self or your own sense of what you know or what you perceive your life to be.

Dear Edward has funny moments. Does humor play a role in grieving? 

One of the things that I’ve learned is and how important it is to connect in some way to a sense of laughter and a sense of humor. I’ve lost both my parents, and in both cases when we were having the funerals and we were working through community and grief around that, there was so much laughter. That’s the thing that I remember most of all. I hope this show suggests that we all have permission even in the midst of grief to find that fundamental human sense of joy and lightness.

You have a thriving career as an actress. But Dee Dee not so much. What was it about her that spoke to you? 

I really loved the character right off the bat. [Showrunner] Jason [Katims] really had me in mind with this character, which I also loved because in a way it’s a surprising choice for me. But one of my favorite things to do as an actress is to find our sort of universal womanhood in all of the various different versions of ourselves as women. This character represents a woman that we could see from a distance, and we’d have all these ideas of who she is, all these perceptions of who she is. Frankly, she has all those perceptions and projections about herself. What’s really fun is to dismantle and unpack that. It was a wonderful opportunity to explore this woman who grew up thinking that she had a certain set of values and then realizes that her values are something else entirely and her life is something else entirely, and she grows from that.

Since Nashville, you really haven’t committed to anything that’s longer than one season. If there was a second season of this, would you like to return so we can start to see Dee Dee heal? There’s so much more of her story that could be told.

I have to say I would. I really loved playing this character and I agree with you, I think there is a lot more to explore with her. Again, going back to the bigger picture of what I personally love to do as an actor, I love to explore women discovering their own power and all the different ways that we do that, sometimes in surprising and challenging ways. I think that there is a lot of potential with Dee Dee for that kind of exploration. I really loved playing the character. I loved being reunited with Jason and there was actually a really strong Friday Night Lights contingent there, as well. It was a great joy to be able to do this. I wouldn’t necessarily say no to that.

Part of the story is that various characters learn things about their deceased loved ones that they had no clue about when they were alive. How real do you think that is that we don’t always fully know the people we love? I think it’s very real. The show explores how truly difficult and complicated intimacy is. Even in the midst of intimacy in relationships and in love and in life, we have closed doors and dark rooms. Within those closed doors and dark rooms, there’s grief there, as well. I think it’s really interesting to realize that sometimes it is hard in life, even with those we love, to be our whole selves and to show our whole selves. It's actually pretty unusual, I think, to explore that fully, and so I like the way the show does that.

Related: Connie Britton on The White Lotus, Choosing Roles and the Being Inducted into the Hair Hall of Fame

The showrunner for Dear Edward also worked on Friday Night Lights. Do you see that show as a turning point in your career? 

Oh, absolutely. That show did change my life. In many ways, certainly, it was the first time that I did a show that really got into the zeitgeist and got on the radar and was really beloved. Friday Night Lights has had a long life. Because of the way modern media is, people have continued to discover Friday Night Lights over the years, which is so great.

That show really became a benchmark for me of what I love and what I value creatively because of the incredibly collaborative nature of it. I loved that cast so much. But, also, just the way everybody, the writers and the actors and the crew, every single person on that show worked together in such symphony and such collaboration. Everybody had this great vision of what we were trying to do there. There’s a real commitment to honesty in that show, and authenticity.

There were just so many things that I learned from doing that show that have held true for me going forward in my career and I always refer back to: Yeah, those are my values, that’s my goal, that’s what I’m going for. It was really a joy to find that again working again with Jason.

You very bravely did your own singing as Rayna Jaymes in Nashville, and you charted on the country charts. Did you ever think of continuing to sing after the show wrapped? 

My goal is always to learn from every single experience that I have in life, and particularly as an actor. Each one has its own risks and its own rewards. And most important, its own learning experiences. That one, boy, taking on singing, I really did not have the experience in that. It was like a really steep learning curve, and I ended up loving it so much even though it was one of the scariest things I’ve ever done.

I’ve always revered incredible singers and incredible musicians so much. I think that show even more made me respect the immense talent and capability of incredible artists like that. I joke that I need to leave it to them, and yet I love singing. It’s not that I wouldn’t go back to it, because in the right circumstances maybe I would. But more than anything, it makes me hold those musicians in such high esteem.

Callie Khouri, who was the creator and executive producer on Nashville, said she cast you because you’re a woman that other women really relate to. That is such a terrific compliment that is. Had you heard that? 

Oh, gosh, that is such a great compliment. I have heard that, and I’ve had people say that to me. That is really a compliment because what I try to do in the roles that I play is I really try to show women themselves. I think women are so trained to take care of everybody else and to nurture everybody else, and to look at ourselves last. In every role that I play, my goal is to really allow women the opportunity to know themselves better and to see themselves more. I really try in every character that I play, even though they’re all really different, including Dee Dee. No matter what the woman’s experience is, I try to tap into aspects that feel very universal to what it is to be a woman. Whenever I hear something so kind as what you just said, it makes me feel, Oh, good, it’s working sometimes.

Your next project is called Winner and it’s a whistleblower thriller based on a real-life incident. Who do you play and what’s the story? 

It’s a movie about Reality Winner, who was a young woman, a decorated veteran, who had dedicated her life to trying to help people around the world. She was in the Air Force and then she ultimately ended up working at the NSA [National Security Agency] in 2016. She was 26 years old. She saw classified documents that said that the government was basically covering up the fact that the Russians had meddled in the 2016 election.

If you remember that was a very tumultuous time. Trump had just been elected. There was a lot of concern about what was happening. Anyway, she anonymously sent the document to journalists, but it was immediately discovered and the FBI locked her up. She remained locked up for more than five years. She was treated as a terrorist and received the highest sentence ever given to anybody under the Espionage Act.

I play her mother, Billie Winner, who became her greatest advocate. It’s a fascinating story and I think a really important story for us to see as Americans, because she was such a patriot, as are her mother and her family. I want more people to know about her and how she was treated. Also, it brings up issues about our justice system and our prison system.

Other than acting, is there an organization or a charity or something that you’re passionate about? 

I’m still a United Nations Development Programme ambassador and I’ve been doing a lot of work with Feeding America. They’re doing incredible work right now with the hungry all around the United States. I know we’ve all been paying close attention to what’s happening in Ukraine, but there’s also been a terrible war in Tigray in Ethiopia. Ethiopia is where my son is from. There’s a huge famine as a result of that war and millions of people have been and are being affected.

My son’s adoption agency, Wide Horizons For Children, because they have such a strong presence on the ground in those areas, they are actually able to get to people and get food to them in a situation where they’re just being blocked from anything. It’s really a terrible human crisis. I’ve been working with them and donating money so that they can try to get in to help bring emergency food to these people.

There are so many parts of the world right now that need that, including areas here in the United States. 

That’s why I’ve been so involved with Feeding America, because they are basically doing that work on the ground right here in our own communities. They’re doing a really wonderful job of it. Sometimes it’s hard for us to realize that right here in our own neighborhoods there are people going hungry, and we can help so much.