Cable Credited for 'Older’ Women Stars

Beverly Hills, Calif.— During cable’s part of the Television Critics Association tour, actresses were repeatedly asked the same question: Why are women 35 and older suddenly winning lead roles on TV?

Cable is, in fact, now programmed with a batch of dramatic series with “older” women as their protagonists, from Kyra Sedgwick on TNT’s smash hit The Closer to Mary-Louise Parker on Showtime’s Weeds, as USA Today chronicled in a recent story. And the list is getting longer, with Holly Hunter starring in TNT’s Saving Grace and Glenn Close on the docket for FX’s legal drama Damages.

The other watershed discussed on several TCA panels was that the success of The Closer, and ABC’s smash hit Grey’s Anatomy — with its painfully “twisty” and dark main character — opened the door for flawed, lawbreaking, sexually aggressive, quirky females as TV anti-heroes.

On TNT’s Saving Grace panel, feisty Academy-Award winner Hunter initially made light of the question about older women being cast in juicy TV roles, suggesting it was a plot hatched by the gals themselves.

“Glenn Close and Kyra Sedgwick and Mary-Louise Parker and the women on Sex and the City and I got together about seven years ago, and I was living in New York … ” Hunter said, before being interrupted by laughter from the TV writers.

But she then elaborated. “It’s undeniable that something is going on, you know, zeitgeist,” Hunter told the TV critics. “But it’s true that this thing is happening. Often, people go, 'OK, we’re on the threshold of a big change in the cinema or something,’ and it never really holds true. It’s always just a trend. And hopefully, that’s not the case here.”

Hunter gave cable credit for the welcome mat being extended to 40-something actresses.

“I actually believe it’s probably because of cable,” she said. “It probably really and truly is that cable has kind of changed the landscape, semi-permanently at least, because it’s a moneymaker, and it happens to be alternative. It happens to be made for less money, and so risks can be greater because less cash is at risk.”

Michael Wright, senior vice president of Turner Entertainment Networks, said “you’re looking for stories always that haven’t been told, and you’re looking for characters that haven’t been explored.”

Hunter also told the TV critics that she liked the fact that her character was “a whole person,” sexual and a drinker.