Annette O’Toole is reveling in her “Virgin River” role as the unpredictable mayor of a small town whose woodsy, peaceful setting believes its residents’ roller-coaster lives.
Her character is older but not always wiser, including in love. That goes against Hollywood’s tendency to view midlife-plus as past the sell-by date for nuanced storytelling, and O’Toole counts herself fortunate to play Hope McCrea.
Make that doubly lucky. When the actor chose to stay with her 97-year-old mother during the worst of the pandemic, that meant Hope was largely absent last season. The fourth and current season is a comeback for both, thanks to series creator Sue Tenney.
“She called me and said, ‘You’re in the hospital. You had a terrible car crash,” Tenney said of Hope’s in-limbo state. When O’Toole asked if Hope lives, Tenney let the actor decide: Did she want to return to the series, which stars Alexandra Breckenridge and is based on Robyn Carr’s novels?
“Are you kidding?” O’Toole replied. Such eagerness is characteristic, as proven by her resume that includes few gaps and some 100 film and TV credits (“Superman III,” “Nash Bridges” and “Smallville” among them). She earned an Emmy nomination for playing Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy in the 1990 miniseries “The Kennedys of Massachusetts,” a role she took on shortly after the birth of her second daughter.
She’s also emphasized theater work and, with husband Michael McKean, is a songwriter: several of their tunes were in “A Mighty Wind” — the film by McKean’s longtime friend and collaborator Christopher Guest — including the Oscar-nominated ballad “A Kiss at the End of the Rainbow.” Then there’s her Spinal Tap back-up singer bragging rights, most notably at a London benefit concert including actor-writer McKean, Guest and others in the faux band of satiric movie fame.
O’Toole, 70, was breezily good-natured in a phone interview with The Associated Press during season-five filming in Vancouver, which stands in for Northern California on “Virgin River.” There’s more “emotionally at stake” than ever and the town is “really going to be unified,” she said of the next season.
There were no spoilers dropped, but O’Toole candidly discussed how her character is portrayed, Hope’s relationship with Doc Mullins, played by Tim Matheson, and the luck in finding the right partner in McKean, her second husband. Remarks were edited for clarity and brevity.
AP: ‘Virgin River’ isn’t sci-fi or fantasy, it’s simply human drama. Was that the appeal?
O’TOOLE: Exactly that. It’s about people and their issues and in a beautiful community. And Sue Tenney was so generous because this character is not really in the books very much, so we kind of had a blank slate to draw this person together. You don’t do it (a project) because you want it to be a big success. The chances of that happening are so slim. You do it because you want to, and you like the people. And at this point in my career it’s doing something that I haven’t quite done before. That’s why this character was attractive, because I could help form her into something a little more real than a lot of the stuff I read for characters my age, grandmothers and the sweet kind of homebody. That’s boring, I’ve done that.
AP: What did you want to see in Hope instead?
O’TOOLE: I just wanted her to be complicated, a woman who even at her age doesn’t have the answers. She doesn’t have, at the beginning, a relationship that is steady. It’s very rocky. That’s interesting to me, someone who has gone through most of her life and hasn’t figured it out yet. She’s impulsive and headstrong, and also very generous and can be very kind and loving. She’s just a person. I just wanted a full person.
