Edie Falco

Here's what I learned about my new best friend Jackie Peyton (Edie Falco) from watching Monday's premiere of Nurse Jackie:

Jackie has a bad back — and a prescription-drug problem. "What do you call a nurse with a bad back?" Jackie asks. "Unemployed." As such, she's a highly functioning pill-popper who'll take whatever she can get her hands on. Literally take.

Jackie is dedicated. From the get-go, it's clear that Jackie owns the ER. She hits all the right notes with doctors, other nurses, cops and patients. She's knowledgeable, courteous, but not exactly what you'd call nice. Read on to see what we thought of Edie Falco's new show...

You're Edie Falco. You've got a rec room full of shiny acting awards. Everyone in town wants to work with you. What do you do next? For Falco, the answer is Nurse Jackie (premiering Monday, 10:30 pm/ET, Showtime), a dark dramedy about Jackie Peyton, an unconventional nurse at a New York City hospital who works unauthorized double shifts, robs from the rich to give to the poor and uses sex to get what she wants. Oh, she's also a highly functioning pill-popper.

In Nurse Jackie, Edie Falco said she had much more input into her character than she did while starring as Carmella Soprano.

It wasn't that The Sopranos writers didn't welcome her ideas: "They were totally open to input, but I didn't have any," Falco told TVGuide.com. "Partially because I wasn't used to looking at it that way, but also because we were all so in-sync. Every line that they wrote for her was right on."