‘Shut Eye’ Stars Isabella Rossellini, KaDee Strickland on Playing ‘Eight-Dimensional’ Characters
Hulu’s latest original series, “Shut Eye,” held its Los Angeles premiere Thursday evening at ArcLight Cinemas in Hollywood.
The majority of the cast and creators graced the red carpet on the chilly December evening, including KaDee Strickland, Isabella Rossellini, and Emmanuelle Chriqui. Jeffrey Donovan, who portrays the series’ protagonist, was unable to attend.
Set in Los Angeles, “Shut Eye” follows failed magician/fraud psychic Charlie Haverford (Donovan), who begins to experience real visions of the future. The “darkly comic” show includes an array of characters who are flawed and complex, something that drew Strickland to the character of Linda, Charlie’s wife.
“Linda is not three-dimensional — she’s eight-dimensional,” Strickland said. “She blows my mind. She is someone I would never want to know as a friend, but someone I want to know more as an actor.”
Strickland, who signed on to “Shut Eye” early in the project’s development, was intrigued with not only her character, but also the story as a whole. However, according to the actress, sharing the screen with Rossellini proved to be the highlight of the experience.
“I remember the day I found out I got the job, I also found out [Rossellini] had signed on and I thought, ‘My god, I’ve just stepped in a pot of honey,'” Strickland said.
Rossellini portrays Rita, another con psychic who owns a slew of parlors with her son in L.A. The iconic Italian actress said she channeled her European roots to prepare for her role as the mystical matriarch.
“I read a lot of books — I wanted to learn as much as I could about the Romanic culture,” Rossellini revealed. “In Italy, there is a very big community of the Romani people, so I was already a bit familiar with [the culture]. It is a very old culture, where a woman’s power inside the family is quite dominant. These [themes] were very clear in the script when I first read it.”
Rossellini jokes that her character is really the boss in “Shut Eye.”
“I’m the boss,” Rossellini laughs. “I’m the one who controls them all.”
“Shut Eye” will begin streaming all 10 episodes on Wednesday.
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