UnREAL is back. Lifetime’s drama about the behind-the-scenes scandals of a dating show is picking up right where it left off. Rachel (Shiri Appleby) and Quinn (Constance Zimmer) are an inseparable team after weathering contestant suicides and affairs with the bachelor last season. Chet (Craig Bierko) returns slimmer and fitter after a paleo fitness retreat.
Back in January, the cast of UnREAL were on a panel for the Television Critics Association, when all they knew at that point was about Chet’s paleo, and that Zimmer was already exhausted from playing the aggressive producer daily. We got to speak with Zimmer and Bierko at the end of their day, where they still spoke enthusiastically about UnREAL, although Bierko’s dog Boo, a hit on the panel, was curled up at his feet.
UnREAL airs Mondays at 10PM on Lifetime.
Interview with Constance Zimmer and Craig Bierko:
Thank you for keeping the energy up all day.
Craig Bierko: “Oh, I’m that rare type of actor who actually this is my favorite part of show business. Going on talk shows and stuff, for talk shows specifically, the people who prepare for them and they come on with bits and stuff, that’s what they used to do on Johnny Carson, or they’d just come on and talk. They weren’t even promoting anything. I love that.”
It looks like Boo has had it though.
Craig Bierko: “Boo’s always kind of mellow.”
Constance Zimmer: “This is always Boo. Boo is always the most mellow dog you will ever meet.”
Craig Bierko: “She’s a calming presence for everybody.”
Chet seems bulletproof. He survives a sex scandal. At least drugs were a health risk for him, but with paleo is he getting healthier too?
Craig Bierko: “Well, I know people who lost a lot of weight. They committed to paleo but there were other things going on too that helped things along. I don’t think he went paleo, my own theory, I don’t know anything about the season. We’ve all been told very little. I was told the paleo thing and I was told to look into it and I’m training that way now. I’m training really hard that way because I want to be able to embody it but I have a feeling, because these characters are complicated, that there’s going to be another factor in there which might be chemical. I don’t think people change that much.”
Do you think Quinn and Rachel are closer than ever?
Constance Zimmer: “We have heard that they start out as a team because I have now taken my ownership part of Everlasting away from him. I kind of become Chet and Rachel kind of becomes Quinn and we have a new Rachel that has to also play in to now this trifecta, because he’s constantly coming back in, trying to reclaim his leadership of the show. I heard that works for a little bit but it does not last.”
Even the last scene of the season finale where they seem really bonded, but knowing where their bond comes from, how uneasy is that actually?
Constance Zimmer: “Also because Quinn doesn’t know that Rachel knows that I pulled Adam away from her. I don’t know that she knows that which is what I thought was such a great way to end the show, was the audience knew more than one of the characters on the show. I always love that.”
Or does Rachel maybe, rightly or wrongly, think that ends up better for her so she appreciates Quinn?
Constance Zimmer: “You know, I think that’s what makes the relationship between Quinn and Rachel so great is that it’s constantly changing between need and want and hate and love. Rachel is so conflicted because I think ultimately she would love to be a Quinn. She’d love to be a producer and run a show. But her conflict lies in that she has a little bit more that she wants out of her life which Quinn didn’t have. So she has a little bit more of a conscious of, ‘If I do this, I lose this.’ Whereas Quinn doesn’t have that. Quinn is like, ‘This is my job, this is my life, this is what I do. Everything else will come later.’ I’m excited when they seem like they’re at each other’s throats but then all of a sudden they make each other’s worlds better, with almost no credit too by the way. That’s what makes it such a complicated relationship. They’re not looking for a pat on the back, like oh thanks for doing that. That’s what I think, that Quinn really becomes the mother to Rachel and believing that the stuff I’m doing is for her benefit, whether she wants to believe that or not.”
Did you ever overlap on Boston Legal together?
Craig Bierko: “Very briefly.”
Constance Zimmer: “Oh yeah. Our first day was together.”
Craig Bierko: “And I wanted her to say goodbye to me because my character left first. So I wanted to at least leave with her there. I wanted it to be a circular experience.”
Constance Zimmer: “We were together a lot in the beginning and then all of a sudden, they took his character and his character went over there, and then they took my character and I went over here.”
Craig Bierko: “You know, I knew at the very beginning that’s that. I knew, ‘Oh, they want a chemistry,’ and I sensed instant chemistry. I loved doing scenes with Constance from the beginning, but it’s all great because it’s set a few years later, this show happens and I am enjoying this much more than playing a lawyer. I didn’t know what I was talking about half the time. I just wasn’t enjoying it. It wasn’t the atmosphere that I enjoyed. This show, it’s a family and it’s creative. This character is the best character I’ve ever played.”
If you’re exhausted after playing Quinn for a day, how do you imagine a woman like Quinn doesn’t just collapse?
Constance Zimmer: “How do we now? You collapse after a day of that energy just running after a kid all day. Your time to relax is when everybody else is asleep.”
Craig Bierko: “Like Holly Hunter’s character who would take five seconds to cry every day at the beginning of Broadcast News. She would sit there on the edge of the bed and she had 15 seconds to cry and then she was done crying. That’s what I picture she does.”
Did you ever talk to Jeremy Piven about that? He says that about playing Ari, that the body doesn’t know it’s just acting.
Constance Zimmer: “It’s true. I haven’t but it’s funny I feel like I should because I did say that I felt Quinn was a combination of Anna Wintour and Ari Gold. It is true. You can’t tell your body, ‘I’m just acting.’ You do. It’s exhausting, but we get through it. As actors we get through it. We work 18-hour days and we have to act like we just woke up, right? So somehow we all do it and we all just find our ways. Then on weekends we just pass out.”
Craig Bierko: “So much of what happens between the audience and the actors in the middle, you suggest an idea. You’re not picturing the union guys leaning. The actress, unless they’re crazy, doesn’t believe it. The audience is in a state of disbelief so the performance exists somewhere in between. I sometimes still can’t believe. I know these people. They’re very nice and yet I hear all kinds of things about, ‘Oh, she’s so troubled, she’s so mean.’ You want to go, ‘They’re not at all. They’re just talented.’ A lot of this, give yourself some credit, you’re watching a performance and you’re adding what you’ve experienced in your life with mean people, or strong people.”
