Patricia Heaton is by far one of the most talented female comedians on television today, and her portrayal of working mom, Frankie Heck on The Middle, is an example of such. Recently, the hilarious lady herself took some time out of her busy schedule to chat with journalists about The Middle and life in general.
Let’s take a look at what pearls of hilarity she had to impart.
On Frankie’s job loss
Patricia Heaton: Well, you know, I hadn’t. It wasn’t my idea. The writers told me about it sort of before we came back into this fourth season, and it was a little bit of a shock, but yet it was a little expected. We had, you know, kind of played out that arena for Frankie and, you know, after you kind of see how a show is going and at some point, you have to change direction because you can’t keep going back to the well for the same thing.
It was a little bit disappointing that I love (Chris Catan) and (Brian Doyle Murray) who were my boss and co-workers on the episodes. I’m sure that they’ll be back in some form at some point. But I think it sort of very reflective of what people are going through either for economic reasons in their lives where they’re having to refashion themselves and find a new way to identify themselves in the workplace because of circumstances, or for some people, it’s just they feel like they need a change in their lives and so they step out and take a risk and try something new.
So I was—and just as an actor, I was kind of excited to take Frankie into a new place. One of my first questions to the writers when I was considering first taking on the role of Frankie was like what if she, you know, did she go to college or what was her – like was her goal to be a mom or what? We had many discussions about, you know, where she was, because growing up I pretty much knew I was always acting in a sense that I was just doing community theatres and school plays and singing and things like that. But by the middle of my junior year in college I made the commitment to pursue acting. And so I had to kind of get my mind around someone like Frankie who sort of didn’t have quite have a passion and then got married, start having children, and so, you know, became a full time mom until she started working at the dealership. So this is actually kind of fun for me to kind of go on that journey with Frankie because it’s the journey I was sort of asking about that character from the beginning of the show and now we really, you know, we get to see like what is it that she – now that she was sort of forced into this opportunity -what is she going to do with it? So I kind of find it pretty exciting.
Jump ahead to see what else this awesome woman had to say. Continue reading
