Post-partum depression can cause women to do strange things-even infanticide. That’s the premise of “I Know My Son Is Alive” (8 p.m. Sunday, NBC-Ch. 5), starring Amanda Pays and Corbin Bernsen.
“Your hormones are suddenly out of balance immediately after you’ve given birth,” says Pays, who is married to Bernsen. “Most women get an overwhelming sense of being out of control. Their life has changed so drastically, and they fear never being able to regain what they had before. You do feel depressed.
“I had it . . . for a day. In a few hours you’ve lost what you’d been growing for nine months. There’s breast-feeding as well. It’s such a strange time, almost surreal.”
In “I Know My Son Is Alive,” Pays and Bernsen play “a happily married couple,” she says. “After the baby comes I feel so depressed I start to believe I might harm our baby. Then the story takes a different direction. You don’t know if she’s done something to the baby or if someone is manipulating her.”
Pays described her part as “a let-your-hair-down, no-makeup emotional role.”
At first she declined the role, which was filmed in Toronto in December. “We’d had a family skiing holiday planned for a long time. I burst into tears at the prospect of canceling that. Fifteen minutes later I was eagerly anticipating Toronto.”
Some actresses pretend to be able to detach themselves from thinking about their families when they’re working or talking about their work. But not Pays. Everything she says, personal or professional, is filtered through her involvement with her home.
It’s easy to play a woman whose child is in danger, she says. “I just think about my own children and how I’d feel if they were in jeopardy. The emotions were right there. I was able to keep surprising myself.”
The people around Pays are so used to her family-first attitude that when the actress mentioned one day that she wasn’t feeling well, she recalls, “My manager looked at me cross-eyed,” assuming she might be pregnant.
“I was born to have children. I always knew that, but I had to meet the right person.” Married from 1978 to 1988 to Peter Kohn, she says now, “We had 10 great years, but he was never meant to be a father.”
She met and married Bernsen in 1988. They had their first child, Oliver, five months after the wedding. He will be 5 in April, and twins Henry and Angus will be 2 in March.
“I was never great with other people’s children, but I knew that the first thing I wanted to do with Corbin was have a large family. Three’s enough, I think. I love it, but motherhood definitely ages you.”
Even with Bernsen and a couple of full-time helpers?
“A lot of men aren’t equipped for going through the battles of child-raising,” she says. “The noise level can be unbelievable. It’s five personalities not necessarily getting along all the time.
“When Oliver was a baby, Corbin was very hands-on-up at night, doing diapers. He’s had to work harder lately, so he hasn’t been as available with the twins. He’s very strong at home, and everything we go through, we go through together.”
Pays say the California earthquake of Jan. 24 helped crystallize plans for the future. She recalls not the things that broke in their house or her own terror but rushing around grabbing the kids. Oliver, who was sleeping with Pays and Bernsen, and the twins were outside on the lawn almost before the ground stopped shaking.
“The twins are still very nervous,” she says. “But they’ll get over it because we’re moving to England. We’re going to put our house here on the market. I’ve done 10 years here. Now we’ll give it a try over there and see if it works.”
She figures they can do it because of Bernsen’s high worldwide recognition from his eight years on “L.A. Law” and her own steady track record in Hollywood. The daughter of two actors, she studied drama in London. Succeeding as a professional there, she came to America to do the U.S. version of the British-originated “Max Headroom” in 1987.
She also starred in another series, “Flash” in 1990-91, and in a dozen theatrical and TV movies, starting with “Oxford Blues” in 1984. Pays describes her position in the Hollywood pecking order dispassionately.
“I’ve worked not too much, not too little, and not too many people know who I am. I’m at a level I can sustain. I’m not at the `God, will I ever work again’ level, and I’m not in every movie that comes along. I like where I am.”
For their plan to work, Pays says, “Corbin should have something lined up beforehand” and his commitment to “L.A. Law” would have to be completed. “I’d do the rounds in London, auditioning for the BBC, looking at theater. . . .”
Is it all a dream?
“Last summer Corbin and I discovered Shackleford, a great village in Surrey, an hour out of London. We passed this beautiful house and we kept driving by it. I got home and wrote a letter to the owner asking if they wanted to sell.
“They wrote back, and I got so excited I screamed! They said they were beginning to think the house was too big for them!
“Maybe it’s just a fantasy, but Corbin and I have got a little bit of magic around us. We put everything into our house here-urns from Spain, a 16th Century birdbath, tiles we had made in Italy. We did it once, we can do it again!”
