Amber Tamblyn
got her start in television, and drew wide acclaim in CBS’ Joan of Arcadia, a blend of Quantum
Leap and Touched by an Angel,
centering on a frustrated teenager with a direct line to God. The big screen
has been nice to her as well, though, with The
Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants and The
Grudge 2 turning into solid hits, and affording her the opportunity to do
small, intimate indies like Stephanie
Daley, in
release now. Still, Tamblyn isn’t turning her back on the small screen.
Cuesta wrote it. Cuesta did L.I.E.
and 12 and Holding,
and created Dexter and has done a lot
of Six Feet Under. He’s a very
interesting director,” she says. “It’s a show called Babylon Fields and it’s with Ray Stevenson, Kathy Baker and Jamey
Sheridan and it’s about everybody coming back from the dead — everyone in the
world, Indian tribes, everything. It’s not an apocalyptic scenario, but it
really focuses on this one tiny town on
this girl, Janine. Her father comes back from the dead, played by Jamey
Sheridan, and he’s a corrupt cop. What we, the audience, find out is that
someone, either Kathy Baker or myself, put an axe in the back of his head, and
that’s how he died. He finds the axe and places it in the back of his head and
realizes that that’s how he was killed, and then goes on to investigate his own
murder. So it’s about him trying to fix all of these awful situations and
relationships that he had, as well as other characters.”
like ‘zombie AA,’ where they all go to meetings so they don’t eat flesh,”
continues Tamblyn. “I mean, it’s really dark, dark comedy. It’s right up my
alley. I guess when I read it I was like ‘CBS is going to do this? Are you
kidding me?’ They said, ‘Yeah, they want their Heroes or Lost, they want
something along those lines.’ So I said, ‘Well, if they’re crazy enough to put
money behind it, I’m crazy enough to do it. Let’s do it.’ It’s great.”
and it hardly seems to have the ingredients of a fuzzy, feel-good break-out
smash. Still, she’s not worried. “It’s a great character role,” Tamblyn says.
“My character, Janine Wunch, is this
who carries a gun, and is really kind of clumsy but sort of sweet and even a
little hardcore. I read it and everybody was saying, ‘Don’t go back to CBS, don’t
go back’ and I said, ‘I don’t have a choice, this is amazing.’ I mean, I don’t
want to go do Scooby Doo 5. There
aren’t enough roles to keep me sustained. A good script in
for me, comes along maybe three to four times a year, which is not enough. I
know that sounds ridiculous, but even then, sometimes I can’t do those, so that’s
the way it goes. So I’d rather be doing something like this where it’s
consistent and it feeds me. I feel like I’m always hungry for it. It’s very,
very cool. I think it’s going to be a big cult thing. I like sticking with the
cult themes — soap operas, horror films, that’s my target. All I need to get
now is a guest role on Battlestar
Galactica, then I’m good to go. I love that show. That and The Wire; it’s all I watch.”