Debi Mazar

Interview By: Rocco Passafuime
RoccoPassafuime@TheCinemaSource.com

You often recognize her for her highly distinguished characteristics. She has brown hair and piercing, tough eyes and what comes out of her mouth is an often street-smart acerbic tongue laced with a distinctly Queens accent.

These traits belong to none other than Debi Mazar. While she has consistently maintained a fairly low profile over her 20+ year career, Mazar always has made an instant impact.

It has run the gamut from Debi's early days as a hip-hop dancer, particularly in music videos for her longtime friend Madonna, to memorable roles in more odd high-profile films like Beethoven's 2nd, Batman Forever, and Space Truckers to her many TV roles in TV series like L.A. Law, Friends, to her current one as pretty boy actor Vincent Chase's fierce publicist Shauna Roberts in the HBO hit Entourage. Now, the 44 year-old actress's latest role is in as Tanya in a new film remake of Claire Boothe Luce's play The Women, which stars an all-star array of female talent, including Meg Ryan, Annette Bening, Eva Mendes, Debra Messing, and Jada Pinkett Smith.

We first asked Mazar how it felt in being in such an environment dominated by so many strong female actresses in such a male-dominated industry and her response was just as direct and no-nonsense as the many characters she has inhabited over the course of her career.

'It wasn't all women,' she recalls, 'We talk about men all the time, so they're always there in a sense. We talk about men ad nauseum. So there's always the idea of men around, all the hot Irish drivers. The point is we shot a huge remake of a movie with a huge cast of very busy actresses in 36 days. So we came to work, having had the rehearsal, with our characters very well thought out. Diane had a vision that was very clear, so when we were at work, it was like doing any other movie.'

'These are my lines, I'm showing up, how are we going to do this scene, OK, let's go, take 20, you know,' Debi continues, 'It was like, we have to get this day finished. So it wasn't like this talking about our periods and clicking glasses of wine and going, what kind of shaving cream do you use' It wasn't that kind of a thing. We didn't have time for that. We had to make a movie. And everybody was so busy, so it was kind of great in that way. It was like doing any other film. It wasn't a big bonding fest.'

We also asked Debi what it was like to work with so many prominent female actresses in one room.

'When [Eva Mendes] got invited to Cape Cod and Martha's Vineyard, I wasn't invited, but the thing is I was working,' she says, 'I may not have been invited, I don't know, but our characters, like my character would never hang out with the Connecticut chicks, number one. And the thing is in the movie, we actually are girl friends, we meet through Sachs, the store, so we're all shop girls. So Eva and I had a scene that's not in the movie, where we're at the apartment, she's attempting to cook, so we see a lot more about Crystal.'

'Nobody really wanted to hang out with me,' Mazar jokes, as she continues, 'I bonded with her no sooner than when Ana Gasteyer's scene got cut, too. She was in this scene that we did and she was the other spritzer girl and it was a great moment for her. She drove the scene. She was so funny. She was pregnant that day. Then she left to Chicago.'

When asked about whether she had inferred of possible tension on setbetween her and Eva Mendes, Mazar quickly shot down any such possible innuendo and did not mince words in her genuine praise for Mendes and how she tackled her role as mistress Crystal Allen.

'In the movie, she really played it in such a fresh way,' Debi believes, 'I love what she did with it. When I read it, Crystal really could have been'like I was afraid they were really going to make it close to the original. And what made it so fresh is [Eva] made the choice. Because the great thing about all the centrifugal characters getting together is they all had to find a way to make it modern and to really create their own.'

'Like I had a little bit of screen time and my thing is pivotal, so it's not like I really need the chemistry, you know, because it is what it is,' she continues, 'For her, she had to recreate Joan Crawford, so Eva, I really felt, added this modern thing where she doesn't want to steal the husband, she just wants that little piece of that kind of a life. What I love about her character is she made her a little bit more likable, to me anyways.'

Considering how the character of Crystal Allen has an affair with a married man, we asked Debi if whether she ever had concern of her circle of friends ever suffering the many tests of friendship endured through the course of The Women.

'I have a close-knit circle,' she replies, 'I was raised by a single mom. My grandmothers were both single mothers. I've been around strong women my whole life, so, but the only time I ever got mistrustful actually was when I became famous. Because then, you saw people coming at you all of a sudden that didn't pay attention and the next minute, they're like, 'Hey, what's going on' You're fabulous!' And then you're like, you didn't even talk to me a week ago.'

'So that was a weird cross in my life, but I, in general, have five or six people around me that I can confide in,' Mazar adds, 'When it comes to my marriage, it's pretty much between me and my husband, because there's a certain sacredness in marriage. I don't discuss my personal stuff, even with my girlfriends, because that's just between me and my man and it's safer. I don't want to ask about their stuff or my stuff. I just think people's sexuality is the least interesting part of them anyway. So for me, it's trust issues like I let you know what I want you to know.'

Debi also adds that the nuances of likeability Mendes added to the character contributed to modernizing the 1936 Claire Boothe Luce play for 21st century audiences.

'The other demographic is, when Claire Boothe Luce wrote it, she was stunned by the Idle Riches' behavior, which is so incredible about the movie and the way he spoke about those things in 1939,' Mazar notes, 'But in this movie, to cover all demographics, at least, you had the normal working girl in it. I would like to have seen maybe a little more of that.'

Known for playing such distinctly tough and urban women, we asked Mazar if she felt Tanya was any bit like who she really is.

'I created a character in knowing, I have a friendship with Madonna for probably 27 years and I was playing sort of a Madonna fan,' she replies, 'I was playing a very provincial character from the boroughs. I'm from the boroughs, but I can't wait to get out and get very worldly, so I got to do an accent, very Brooklyn/Queens.'

'And she thrives on her boredom and gossip and knowing things of people and delivering bad news and enjoys it and I'm completely the opposite,' she continues, 'I'm not like my character at all. I'm very private and I'm afraid of people's gossip, so it was really fun to play somebody like that.'

Debi also shared with us some of her favorite scenes from The Women.

'I love the scene when Eva and Meg first meet up,' Mazar says, 'It's just classic and poignant. Another scene with the opening of the movie when Annette Bening, a woman in the shop goes, 'Oh, would you like a little facelift'' and she goes, 'It's my face! Deal with it!' And I love that as a line. And Debra Messing giving birth made me cry.'

We asked if Mazar herself has personally experienced one of her girl friends giving birth.

'I have two children, so I have experience with that,' she replies, 'I had this really interesting thing happen. Because I'm a celebrity, this really sucks. I'm in the hospital. I give birth emergency via C-section, even though I had wanted to go in and do the whole natural thing, it didn't happen that way. So I'm carrying the baby back into the room. I'm on the cart and I'm on morphine with this new thing.'

'I don't even know what to do because it's your baby and it's like, oh, my God. So I'm on the thing, I'm going back into the room,' Debi replies, 'I walk in and they let 20 of my friends. They show up into the room with this sterile new baby. I had just been cut open. And it was a great group of friends that I wanted to see, but in my actual delivery room, they let my husband and my best girl friends in. I put my own music on, it was, some random, any old Afro-Cuban record, actually. My husband's a percussionist, so we had that going and it was great.'

In keeping up with the movie's theme of women bonding, we asked Debi what she believes is the ideal girls' night out.

My ultimate girls' night out is unfortunately a girls' night in,' she says, 'I like to stay home and crack open a bottle of red wine and just chew the fat. That's enough for me. It's changed over the course of the years. It used to be a girls' night out of me maybe going salsa dancing, cocktails, flirting, kicking back at somebody's house, and like, talking about good stuff, real stuff. That's mine basically.'

'Usually, the topic is kids and whether or not we're going to have sex with our husbands, can we make the time, oh God,' Mazar continues, 'We have this conversation. It's interesting because Annette Bening's character does not care that she hasn't had kids, so we always have this conversation amongst women who's had them or hasn't, the experience before, after, how you feel. You have to work on it harder after, as we all on it, as we all know. You should work on it no matter what, regardless.'

As the new season of HBO's hit Entourage had recently premiered, we asked Debi Mazar whether we expect to see her back again for another go this season as publicist Shauna Roberts.

'On Entourage, Shauna has an arc,' she replies, 'She's back to being the ultimate mother/shepardress. And I feel this season has returned back to some of its original roots about being about the guys and the relationship between them as opposed to the big premiere and Cannes and eh. This is really about the guys and Shauna's also representing Johnny 'Drama', Kevin Dillon, so I got a new client. And it's a really good season, lots of really great guest stars, Michael Phelps.'

We asked Debi if she still enjoys working on the hit comedy series, despite being overshadowed by the mostly male cast and her character being fairly underutlized.

'It's fun,' Mazar replies, 'I wish she had more to do. That's always my wish. Shauna's very crude. She's like, 'Give me my fucking kid!' I get very'I mean, I curse, but she's really crude. I mean, he writes these things for me and I'm like I can't'He's really very definitive about how she wants her.'

'It's not based on [Mark Wahlberg's] publicist,' she adds, 'It's completely fabricated and spontaneous. I was hugely pregnant when I came into season three and he didn't really know what to do it. But basically, he doesn't feel he has to like explain, which is genius and that's why I like about the show. We don't care about Shauna anyway, it's about five men, so I accepted that from the get go. I know that was a side-character situation.'

When it was openly spoke out about how it was felt that Shauna's character was underrated on the HBO favorite, the reply she gave us lived every bit to the quick wit that Mazar has employed in her many characters throughout her long, yet memorable career.

'Well, thanks, tell HBO to write me more episodes (laughing),' Debi replies, with a smile.