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Molly Parker
Plays Alma Garret
HBO: Tell us a little about your character.
Molly Parker: I play a woman named Alma Garret, she's a New Yorker. She has very recently married a very wealthy man. It is in almost all ways a marriage of convenience for her and for her family. This man (Brom) brings her out to the West because he wants to have a gold claim — he's a dilettante.
Alma's a woman who has lived very much the life that she was supposed to live. She's done the things that she's supposed to do for her family, for her father, for this society in which she lives. One of the ways that she's been able to do that is by self-medicating. So basically she's also a junkie. She's a laudanum addict. Laudanum is a tincture of opium that was prescribed very often to both men and women. But mostly to women for headaches or hysteria — because god forbid women became hysterical. But anyway, without giving too much away, it's safe to say she's the richest person in town.
HBO: Have you ever played a character like this before?
Molly Parker: No, I haven't played a character like her before. She's a fascinating woman. And as much as she is a woman of her time, she's really also is a woman who's trying to forge an identity for herself outside of the boundaries that have been assigned to her by the society that she comes from. So part of that is, is making a choice to come to this place, where there are no rules, it's completely lawless. And in that sense, there's no society to speak of. I mean Deadwood's society is being created by these people who come here. So in Deadwood she is given the opportunity to discover who she really is. And who she wants to be and to choose her own identity.
HBO: What was it like working on Deadwood?
Molly Parker: I haven't done a lot of television before. I've mostly worked in independent film, so it's a very different process for me. I have to say, I just love my job. I love to come to work every day.
Most of that has to do with David Milch, who hired me and who writes extraordinary things for me and has given me this character to play whose potential seems sort of limitless. She's flawed and she's smart and she's wrong and she sort of has it all. And she's rich. Which is fun. She has great outfits. I love it.
It's been a really different kind of work and this sort of idea that there's no beginning and end, that you just sort of keep creating, I haven't worked in such a collaborative way before. Everything gets brought to work, then David sees and it, gets excited, and then writes from there. And so its sort of becomes at a certain point this living organism that just keeps growing. It's extraordinary. All of the actors that I'm working with are extraordinary. I feel like I have this secret that I'm walking around with just the best job.
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Deadwood Nuggets
It was estimated that 90% of women living in Deadwood in 1876 were prostitutes.
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Deadwood History
For more information and on the Real Deadwood, try the following source:
Adams Museum and House
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