Angie Harmon was moved to tears when she saw the pilot for “Inconceivable,” her new NBC Friday night medical drama.
Then again, she was 8 1/2 months pregnant. She was moved to tears by a lot of things.
“I adored it, but I thought, ‘Well, I just love it because I’m pregnant and I see all these little babies and I’m just gushing with emotion right now,” the actress recalls. “Then I had my baby and I still liked it.”
Series creators Oliver Goldstick and Marco Pennette, both of whom had recently become parents themselves through surrogates, wanted Harmon, an audience favorite from her years playing assistant district attorney Abbie Carmichael on “Law & Order,” to return to series television as Dr. Nora Campbell, a partner in the fertility clinic where “Inconceivable” takes place.
Harmon, who had welcomed second daughter Avery just last June, was a tough sell, to put it mildly.
“Obviously, it would be completely irresponsible of me to have a baby and then, two weeks later, go back to a 90-hour work week,” says the actress, whose older daughter, Finley, turns 2 this week. “That’s just not right. NBC and the folks at the show all know that my family comes first and everyone has been incredibly conscientious about making sure I have time with them. This is a (workplace) that truly ‘gets’ what it is to be a family, and what it takes to raise good, healthy children.
“I work three or four days a week, and my day off usually is Friday, which gives me three days over the weekend with my girls. You don’t get that a lot in this business, people saying, ‘Absolutely, you need to spend time with your children.’ “
Of course, it didn’t hurt that the role on offer — a brilliant, quick-witted and filthy rich medical maverick willing to skirt the law to help infertile women — was a colorful one that included a torrid past affair with the show’s resident hunk, Dr. Malcolm Bower (Jonathan Cake) as well as a sunny but sassy personal style that gives Harmon an outlet for her comedy flair, which she had to keep in check on the poker-faced “Law & Order.”
“I love that Nora has a great sense of humor, because it’s fun to play and a lot of people didn’t even know that I had teeth from my years on ‘Law & Order,’ ” Harmon says, laughing. “I like that when Malcolm came to Nora in the first episode, kind of in a humble sort of way, she doesn’t feel she needs to rub his nose in it. She’s kind of like a big cat that bats him back and forth between her paws but doesn’t feel she has to really hurt him.
“I love the fact that they use the word ‘maverick’ to describe Nora, because that’s what she is: incredibly competent, incredibly strong-willed, and because she is that brilliant, she doesn’t have to have the ‘bitchy gene,’ because strong women usually are played as someone with a touch of anger who feels she has to push her way over and through everyone. Nora doesn’t have to do that. She knows she’s superior, and everyone else kind of does, too.”
