Maggie Gyllenhaal says she had to grow up for ‘The Honorable Woman’

In “The Honorable Woman,” an eight-part miniseries airing on SundanceTV, Maggie Gyllenhaal stars as Baroness Nessa Stein, a British Israeli heiress whose life is inextricably bound up in one of humanity’s most enduring conflicts.

As a child, Nessa witnessed the brutal assassination of her father, a Zionist arms dealer, and three decades later she is committed to using her wealth and influence to foster peace and prosperity in the Middle East. The series opens as Nessa announces plans to bring high-speed data cables to the West Bank in a lucrative deal with a Palestinian businessman.

“Terror thrives in poverty, it dies in wealth,” she declares idealistically. But within minutes, the businessman turns up dead under suspicious circumstances and viewers are thrust into a complex mystery that involves secrets buried deep in Nessa’s past.

“The Honorable Woman,” written and directed by British TV auteur Hugo Blick, landed on Gyllenhaal’s doorstep at a time when she was frustrated about being sent the same kind of part over and over again — “sexy single mom” roles that were bad versions of the character that earned her an Oscar nomination in 2009′s “Crazy Heart.”

“I was really looking to play an intelligent, powerful woman who was also all the other things that we women all are,” says the 36-year-old over breakfast at a Brooklyn cafe not far from the home she shares with her husband, actor Peter Sarsgaard, “which is confused and weak and broken and not broken and sexy and not sexy.”

Nessa, a character whose stylish and poised exterior barely disguises a profound emotional vulnerability and a history of intense personal trauma — she sleeps in a high-tech panic room, and with good reason — certainly fit the bill. Still, Gyllenhaal says she hesitated to accept the part.

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“My husband and everybody who works with me were all like, ‘What are you talking about? You have to do this, it’s a very unusual and extraordinary piece.’ But I really did try not to do it. I tried really hard. I knew that in order to play her I would have to grow up in some major way as myself and that I would probably be a different person by the end of it than before I began.”

Blick had no such reservations about Gyllenhaal. “I didn’t want a casting that suggested a kick-ass action girl or a Barbie doll,” he said via telephone. “She needed to have a cool exterior of intellectual presence. You have to have this outside of calm and then inside you have to be emotionally in bits. I really needed an actor who could perform all those layers, and Maggie was that.”

Related: Sundance’s ‘The Honorable Woman’ a brave foray into conflict Mary McNamara In recent weeks, the creator of “The Honorable Woman,” an eight-part series debuting Thursday on Sundance, has gone out of his way to express what the show is not: A reaction to recent events. Although the story deals specifically, vividly and hauntingly with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict,… In recent weeks, the creator of “The Honorable Woman,” an eight-part series debuting Thursday on Sundance, has gone out of his way to express what the show is not: A reaction to recent events. Although the story deals specifically, vividly and hauntingly with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict,… ( Mary McNamara ) –>

In a rarity for a spy thriller, even one with the complexity of a John le Carré novel, “The Honorable Woman” is populated with female characters who are more than mere honey traps. Chief among them are Janet McTeer as a steely MI6 boss who coolly gives orders to her ex (Stephen Rea), and Lubna Azabal as a formidable Palestinian woman who works as a nanny for Nessa’s brother (Andrew Buchan) and tightly wound sister-in-law (Katherine Parkinson).

“I was really intrigued to take the chassis, the vehicle of the genre which is quite masculine, and place women at the center of the story,” says Blick, who also wrote and directed the noir series “The Shadow Line.”

Gyllenhaal, who will be making her Broadway debut this fall opposite Ewan McGregor in a revival of Tom Stoppard’s “The Real Thing,” joins a growing list of movie talent migrating to television for creative fulfillment. “Not only are there not that many interesting independent scripts, there’s no real systems to help get them distributed anymore,” she replies when asked about the challenges facing the independent film business. “If you’re making work so that people will see it and be affected by it, it makes a lot more sense to do it in television.”

But even though Sundance is a comfortable small-screen home for an actress who burst onto the scene in the 2002 festival favorite “Secretary,” the move to television was not without risks. For Gyllenhaal, used to the three-act structure and two-hour arc of feature film, the sheer scope of “The Honorable Woman” was unprecedented. And as the mother of two young daughters, she also had to consider how she’d juggle a lengthy shoot that would take her family to London and Morocco with the more quotidian demands of child rearing.

“About the third day, I remember just crying quietly in my trailer and I tried not to mess up my makeup. I hadn’t ever taken on anything like that,” she recalls.

Executives at SundanceTV, which co-produced the series with the BBC, also a partner on last year’s “Top of the Lake,” had few such qualms.

“When Maggie’s name was suggested, it didn’t even take us a beat to be fully in,” says network President Sarah Barnett. “She’s such a nuanced performer, and she’s so able to convey such layers within a character, and she has this incredibly physical presence.” Barnett, a Brit, also jokes that Gyllenhaal’s plummy English accent “is more impeccable than mine.”

Critical reaction to the series and in particular to its lead performance has been just as positive. Gyllenhaal’s Nessa is “like no modern woman we have ever seen before on any screen,” said Times critic Mary McNamara.

Despite such a rewarding experience, Gyllenhaal isn’t sure she’s ready to leave the world of cinema for the supposedly greener pastures of series television. “I did see also how if it weren’t great, to be involved in something of that scope could be awful. I can’t imagine reading one episode of something and signing up for seven years,” she says. “That seems very scary to me.”

For an actress accustomed to the director-driven world of feature film, having a single writer-director overseeing the entire project — in contrast to most television shows — was essential.

Though she’s dabbled in such high-octane blockbusters as “The Dark Knight,” Gyllenhaal’s résumé suggests an artist drawn to projects with broader social and political themes, including “Hysteria,” a period comedy about female sexuality, and “Won’t Back Down,” a drama that follows two mothers fighting a powerful teachers’ union.

“The Honorable Woman,” filmed last summer at a time of relative peace in Israel and the Palestinian territories, debuted just weeks after violence had exploded in Gaza, and it is possible to see its troubled protagonist as a one-woman metaphor for the tumultuous region.

“The story suggests that individuals have to experience the very worst thing that could have possibly have happened to them and understand that they have to draw a line under it and move on in order to reach genuine reconciliation. It is a hard, steep and rocky road but absolutely necessary,” Blick says.

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Franklin County judge sends sex offender to prison for 70 months

A convicted sex offender who pleaded Friday for treatment instead is going to prison because she failed to show much remorse for encouraging a lingerie-clad teen to participate in a lengthy photo shoot.

Suzette Angela Razzolini was ordered to serve five years and 10 months for the September 2011 crime.

She told the court that 23 hours a day for 203 days she has sat in her cell with more questions than answers about why she’s there and thinking about what her future might hold.

Razzolini has been in custody since a Franklin County Superior Court jury convicted her Jan. 24 for sexual exploitation of a minor with the aggravating circumstance that she used a position of trust.

“I strive to be the best possible person I can be while in here, and I want to continue to be the best possible person I can be out there,” she said.

“I’ve heard it said that children are a product of their environment. Unfortunately I’m proof of that,” said Razzolini, who told a counselor she was sexually abused during her childhood and has been diagnosed with mental issues. “This is not an excuse for the choices I’ve made.”

Her 10-minute speech before the court included a tearful request of the victim to forgive her and to take advantage of counseling.

“This is not your fault. None of this is your fault and, no matter what this sentence is, it’s a life-changing sentence,” Razzolini said.

But Judge Robert Swisher — after taking a 23-minute recess to think about the “difficult sentencing” — said Razzolini didn’t deserve a Special Sex Offender Sentencing Alternative because her story has been inconsistent and changed late in the evaluation process as she prepared for sentencing.

The sentencing alternative usually carries a county jail term of six months to one year along with extended sex offender treatment.

“I’ve done a fair number of these SSOSA hearings, and every one I’ve done in the past starts with the defendant saying, ‘I know what I did was wrong,’ ” Swisher said. “This one hasn’t started that way. I don’t believe (Razzolini) has truly accepted responsibility for what she did to (the girl).”

Razzolini, 42, originally was charged in Benton County, but the case was dismissed and refiled in Franklin County because the incident occurred in Pasco.

Benton County sheriff’s Detective Scott Runge discovered video of the photo shoot on a computer during a child molestation investigation involving Razzolini’s husband, Daniel Paul Devorkin.

Jurors had to watch 41/2 hours of that video during Razzolini’s trial. In the video, Razzolini can be seen posing with the young teen girl and an older teen, while also telling them what to wear and how to model seductively, according to court documents.

Devorkin took pictures and shot the video, which also shows the couple providing alcohol to the younger girl and drinking it with her, documents said.

The older teen was not included in the charge because she was not considered a minor by law.

Devorkin pleaded guilty to attempted second-degree child molestation and sexual exploitation of a minor for the same victim. He is serving his five-year, eight-month term at Airway Heights Corrections Center.

Deputy Prosecutor Brian Hultgrenn had asked for a seven-year sentence for Razzolini because she admitted to perjuring herself at trial in the “heinous case.” He questioned if her claims of wanting to change were genuine and how treatment would help her when earlier mental health counseling didn’t stop her from committing the crime.

Defense attorney Norma Rodriguez said her client underwent an extensive evaluation process with a Yakima counselor to determine that she is amenable to therapy. She also pointed out that a few jurors after the trial said it was their wish to see Razzolini get community-based treatment.

Rodriguez represented Razzolini along with attorney Michelle Alexander.

Rodriguez blamed Devorkin for taking advantage of their client’s vulnerability, said “to a significant degree the victim was a willing participant” in the photo shoot and noted that Razzolini wouldn’t even be standing before the court if she had not turned over the video in her husband’s investigation.

The victim told Swisher she supports the request for treatment so Razzolini can “get the help she needs, get back on track and slowly start getting better.”

Razzolini was ordered to have no contact with the victim for four years.

– Kristin M. Kraemer: 509-582-1531; kkraemer@tricityherald.com; Twitter: @KristinMKraemer

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