Weeds New Season Is Still Smokin'

To celebrate the return of Weeds (Mondays at 10 pm/ET, Showtime), we sat down with  Mary-Louise Parker and Elizabeth Perkins to discuss getting naked, kissing Albert Brooks and what to expect in the  trippy new season.

TV Guide: What are Mary-Louise and Elizabeth like versus your ever-battling characters, pot-dealing Nancy and her frenemy, Celia?
Mary-Louise Parker: Well, unlike our characters, I want time with Elizabeth. I don't know what the similarities between Celia and Nancy are, though — well, except they're both very particular about their footwear.
Elizabeth Perkins: Yeah, I don't know how to be Celia without high heels on. So, yes, we both have shoes in common in our very in-depth approach to our characters. [Laughs] We'd love to do more together. We're very similar in our work.

TV Guide: How so?
Perkins: We're pretty laidback. There's no drama.

TV Guide: Is it true that the cast teases Mary-Louise over the fact that she's never smoked pot?
Perkins: Totally! We can't believe it. She's the pot mom who's never smoked pot? It's an innocuous drug, and how many people are truly marijuana addicts?
Parker: Well, I know a couple of 'em. But, generally, people don't get up on steeples with rifles when they're on pot — they just don't do their taxes for a year. [Laughs]

TV Guide: Mary-Louise, do you have any outrageous vices?
Parker: I was fairly guileless when I was younger, but when you have two young kids, you have to redirect the monorail. So I'm pretty square.

TV Guide: On the other hand, Elizabeth, you posed nude for Allure in 2006 and…
Parker: Dude, I'm naked every time I turn around on the show! I'm, like, "Hey, when do I get to wear clothes?" But I don't think of nudity as being outrageous.
Perkins: Me neither.

TV Guide: That's good, because there's lots of very creative, um, coupling on Weeds, isn't there?
Parker: I gotta take a little credit for some of that, 'cause I like to block the sex myself —
Perkins: — because you always want to do something that's completely not where the music whooshes and the lights dim and you're suddenly in the missionary position. Boring!

TV Guide: Got it. So what's new on the show this year?
Parker: Silas [Nancy's teenage son, played by Hunter Parrish] gets it on with an older woman [played by Julie Bowen].
Perkins: And Albert Brooks is on the show [as Nancy's father-in-law].
Parker: He's fantastic. I have a little crush on Albert. I mean, I don't want to knock him to the ground and put my tongue in his mouth, but I do have a little G-rated crush.

TV Guide: Well, it won't be Weeds unless somebody puts their tongue down his throat, right?
Perkins: [Laughs] I would hope Celia does at some point soon.

TV Guide: Is there anything as actresses you'd refuse to do?
Perkins: Anything X-rated. Sometimes I don't know how the women on
The L Word do what they do.

TV Guide: Will Nancy get deeper into the drug trade? Like, she'd never deal hard stuff, would she?
Parker: I don't know…. It's possible.
Perkins: Well, Celia discovers drugs this year. [She's living on the border], and she's like a kid in a candy shop. Poor thing, she needs a new addiction — booze just wasn't enough.

TV Guide: Exactly why is bad behavior so fun to watch?
Parker: 'Cause people are so repressed. And, also, there's just something delicious about watching people misbehave without any sense of conscience. I loved Absolutely Fabulous because of that. Hey, Elizabeth, I'd like to remake that with you!
Perkins: I watch it every time they rerun it.
Parker: OK, that's what we'll do after Weeds. [Laughs] God, we'd be fabulous!

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