Edie Falco returns to series TV as the star of Showtime’s caustic comedy ‘Nurse Jackie’

Edie Falco returns to series TV in ‘Nurse Jackie’

NEW YORK — It was two years ago, almost to the day, that everything went black.

You know: The finale of “The Sopranos,” which ended with a blackout that seemed to last forever. It left the show’s fans in the dark and drove them wild. It still does.

But Edie Falco, having capped her stellar run as mobster wife Carmela Soprano, carried on with her life.

Now she’s got a new series, a new role, a new short haircut. (Carmela’s big hair is history.)

“Nurse Jackie” is a prickly comedy starring Falco as an ER nurse in a hectic New York hospital. The 12-episode series premieres on Showtime Monday at 10:30 p.m. EDT.

And it begins not in darkness, but a burst of white — Jackie’s drug-induced relief as she lies on the floor somewhere secluded in the hospital, nursing her bad back and her fatigue before she starts another shift.

“She’s very complicated,” says Falco. “She’s very tough, very single-minded, very outspoken, a lot of things that I’m not — which is very therapeutic on some level and gets it out of my system: to want to be like that.”

Over coffee near her Manhattan home, Falco, who turns 46 next month, is personable. She modestly deflects any mention of her fame, acting skill or three Emmys.

Still, she’s no shrinking violet. She has a commanding presence that has powered her numerous film and stage portrayals, as well as her performance on the series that paved her way to “The Sopranos”: A decade ago on HBO’s prison drama “Oz,” Falco played correctional officer Diane Whittlesey, who tolerated a tough job with few expectations.

As nurse Jackie, Falco has returned to the ranks of working-class hero.

This is not the only nurse show in the offing. Jada Pinkett Smith stars in TNT’s nursing drama “Hawthorne,” which premieres June 16. And NBC has announced a nurse-oriented hospital drama named “Mercy” for next season.

But “Nurse Jackie” is its own thing. Its title character — a working mom from Queens with toughing-it-out relatability and lots of flaws — was what drew Falco to the series — not the hospital arena.

“I read other things and they didn’t activate me. This activated me,” says Falco. “It’s kind of on a kinesthetic level.”

Reading the scripts that came her way, she was looking for a New York-based show that would guarantee a stable home life for her and her young son and daughter, Anderson and Macy.

“And I wanted to be involved a lot,” she adds. “On ‘The Sopranos,’ I would show up every third day and hear about things that happened while I wasn’t there, and I hated that!”

“The Sopranos” was not a committee project, she notes. David Chase was the undisputed auteur.

“It was totally his show, and I trusted that. So he told me to do this and wear this, and I said OK. But now they’re saying, ‘What do you think Jackie should do and what should she wear?’ And I say, ‘I have no idea.’ And then I say, ‘What if she wore pink shoes?’ And they say, ‘C’mon let’s try it.’ I wanted her to have short hair — because I could. I was going to cut my hair anyway.”

The series has lots of supporting characters, among them Jackie’s British doctor chum (Eve Best), a first-year nursing student (Merritt Wever), and the hospital pharmacist, who is Jackie’s source for drugs and on-the-job quickies (he’s played by Paul Schulze, Carmela’s priest friend on “The Sopranos”).

But even with all this backup, Falco is the star. In the premiere, she appears in every scene.

“The challenge for me was to be awake and performing that many hours,” she says, marveling at the five-month shoot. “But luckily, I’m an emergency room nurse, so any kind of exhaustion was appropriate: She’s got back problems, she’s tired? Sign me up! That, I can do!”

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EDITOR’S NOTE — Frazier Moore is a national television columnist for The Associated Press. He can be reached at fmoore(at)ap.org