‘Fire Country’ Finale: Diane Farr on Sharon’s Reaction to Bode Drug Test

TVLINE | When I spoke to Billy [Burke] at the beginning of the season, he had great things to say about you. He said that your acting process and his “non-process” gelled wonderfully.
I know. Billy and I were meant to be married on television. We are, like, the opposite of almost everything and it just freakin’ works. It’s so exciting when you like your coworkers.

TVLINE | It’s great what you two have been doing as Sharon and Vince. They’re fun, they’re fiery, they’re sexy….
And we need some sexy in our 50s on TV! Come on, let us be alive. What’s funny is that you never see a husband and wife on TV who are about the same age, and I think that’s the problem. When the wife is consistently 30 and the husband is consistently 50, yes, there’s that initial attraction but they don’t have any heat because they’re not in the same place in their lives. Billy and I have had similar losses in life. I mean, we’ve had a lot of gains, but similar losses, which really help with the Sharon-and-Vince of it all, because we know how to do that.

TVLINE | Speaking of Billy, who on the cast do you think has the best hair: You, him, Max [Thieriot], or Jeff Fahey?
Oh, Jeff Fahey. Come on. Like, first of all, who gets to have hair in their 60s? And then for it to be so long…. He looks like he could give Mick Jagger a run for the money. Jeff Fahey is killing it, and I think it’s because he’s such a good humanitarian that the universe let him have all that hair.

TVLINE | When I saw him on-screen, I was like, “That is some of the best father/son casting on TV in a while.”
I agree. To make it even better, Billy has brown eyes and Max has those bright blue eyes, and then you see the grandfather and you’re like, “Ohhhh, that’s where they came from.” Perfect.

TVLINE | Sharon is such a wonderfully active character. She’s out there in the field giving orders, she’s getting up in Nozzle’s face — all while juggling her own personal drama. What do you love most about her? 
Sharon’s allowed to have anger. I feel like sometimes we’re afraid to let women be angry, so I love that she gets to be angry. She gets to be angry at work. She gets to have pride. She gets to be disappointed. She gets to be angry at her son.

In one of those early episodes, Sharon and Vince have an argument about Bode and Billy [Burke] and I wanted to really fight, so I had asked the director if we could sit on the same side of the booth at Smokey’s. The director was nervous at first — it wasn’t how he imagined the lighting — but I knew I could fight with Billy if he was right next to my ear, and God bless our producers that they let us. That scene, I think, sets the whole tone of the truth of their relationship, because they fight. They fight like married people.

TVLINE | In the episode before the finale, Sharon sneaked off to surreptitiously take a call from Luke. And at the beginning of the finale, when it became clear that she and Luke did have some sort of secret, I have to say, I was thinking bad things about Sharon.
I know. It’s really scary to think bad things about Sharon….

TVLINE | Did you know that was where that was going when you picked up the script for last week?
I did. I was warned where it was going many eons ago, thank goodness. Sharon’s definitely not a bad guy but Sharon’s whole thing is she’s always trying to “fix,” so she’s often outside of her own hula hoop. She’s often digging around looking for a way to save somebody in a way that may not actually help them. So, she’s not betraying any of the people she loves, but she definitely steps over a line.

TVLINE | When Bode told his parents about his drug test, I was at first put off by Sharon’s inclination to immediately think the worst. But then I realized that I watch this from a place of privilege, where I’ve never had someone in my life with an addiction. I can’t know how hair trigger it can be for someone to relapse.
Yeah. I had the same feeling as you did. This is a woman that never betrays him. Even when he’s wrong, she stands by him, but it sort of seemed like it might be a better evolution if she can deal with reality. I think so much of addiction is that the people in your life have to live in denial, and we get into trouble when we believe an addict. The truest way to love them is actually to let them fall down.

Her reaction was totally shocking to me, also. It’s so out of character, I was like, “Maybe this is the evolution of what happens when you actually have a drug addict in your life.” Watching someone lie to your face is a hard one and the only chance for survival is to let them fall down and pick themselves up. So, I’m hoping that’s how Season 2 plays out.

TVLINE | What do you think was going through Sharon’s head at the parole hearing when Bode “confessed” to his drug relapse and everything?
The most interesting thing to me was Vince has a line where he says, “I need him to not be on drugs,” and Sharon says, “Why, because you need him not to be on drugs in order to love him?” It was so moving. Sharon meanwhile is going to love him no matter what his choices are. So I think, sitting in that room, what I was trying to hold onto is, “I’m going to love him either way, but I may not be able to be near him anymore.”

TVLINE | What are your wishes, hopes and dreams for Sharon in Season 2?
Well, Sharon’s a bit of a codependent. [Laughs] She’s always jumping into, like, Vince’s life and Bode’s life, everybody else’s life — and I found in my own life that if you put down one of those addictions of trying to save other people, it’ll pop up in really strange places. So, I’m hoping to see what happens when Sharon has to focus on herself, what’s going to go wrong from there. [She and Vince] have such a strong 30-year marriage, but now there’s a third person in it. Now there’s a son in it. So, I’m super interested to see how that unfolds.

TVLINE | I asked Billy this question, I’ll ask you the same one: If you could have played any one of your past TV roles for one more season, which would you choose?
Californication. If you look back at Season 3, you can see that we are playing out the movie Shampoo, where there are three women in Warren Beatty’s life. [Californication creator] Tom Kapinos was very kind and asked me which one I wanted to play. I chose to play the character of Jill [a grad student who falls for David Duchovny’s Hank]. That would be a fun one to pull apart.

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