Interview: Lauren Ambrose On The Return Of Jezebel James

Before it settles into its 30-minute format, Fox is premiering its new show The Return of Jezebel James this Friday with a special hour-long episode starring Parker Posey, Dianne Wiest, and Lauren Ambrose. The premise: When a book editor learns she can’t conceive, she asks her much younger sister to carry a baby for her, despite the fact that they’ve been estranged for many years. Preview the show on Fancast. Then read what attracted Ambrose, formerly of Six Feet Under, to the series.

Lauren Ambrose: The project seemed interesting because I’d never done anything like it before. “Six Feet Under” is my only other experience in television, really, and for that one we had two weeks to make every episode. It was fairly luxurious as far as these things go. This is a whole other world. This is in multi-camera. It sounded exciting to me when it was explained to me. You go in and rehearse all week. By the end of the week you’re ready to put on your play, your one-act play for the audience and shoot it. So that just seemed like something kind of wild, an interesting challenge. The half-hour comedy is in a way what made me want to be an actress. When I was a kid I watched “I Love Lucy” and shows like that. Of course, the script was very funny, clever. It seems like good old-fashioned entertainment. [And] I like the idea of just going to work everyday.