| Advertisement |
LOS ANGELES, April 12 (UPI) -- Ally Sheedy is so invested in her character on Single Drunk Female, returning Wednesday on Freeform, that she refers to Carol in the first person. Carol is the mother of recovering alcoholic Sam (Sofia Black-D'Elia). Sheedy, 60, said Carol makes Sam's recovery about herself.
Advertisement
"I take everything she does personally as Carol," Sheedy told UPI in a recent Zoom interview. "I take umbrage at quite a few things that are meaningless."
The series began on day one of Sam's recovery. Sam moves back in with Carol while she attends Alcoholics Anonymous meetings and tries to hold down a job as a writer for a lifestyle website.
While Carol wants her daughter to get sober, Carol is less fond of the AA slogans Sam repeats at home.
"I don't want to hear the program, the program, the program, whatever," Sheedy said. "I just don't have any idea how to deal with her at all."
Single Drunk Female Season 2 does force Carol to confront her role in raising an alcoholic daughter. Sheedy said towards the end of the season, Carol begins to take a more proactive role in supporting Sam.
"I do think she breaks down so completely that she's able to take a look, even if it's for just a second, at the kind of damage that she causes," Sheedy said. "That's a big deal."
When Season 2 begins, Sam has been sober for a year and a half. Sam also embarks on a new romantic relationship, but keeps her mother out of it.
"If she's not going to let me meet the boyfriend, I can't have an opinion," Sheedy said. "She should have but she didn't. I'm not allowed to know that."
Carol's own relationship creates challenges for her, too. Carol's boyfriend, Bob (Ian Gomez), moved in with Carol and Sam at the end of the first season.
Sheedy said Carol is not quite ready to move on from her husband's death eight years prior. The new roommate confronts Carol with that realization, Sheedy said.
"I need to control him and I end up driving him away," Sheedy said. "He can't take up a certain kind of space and he can't be Samantha's father."
A flashback to the funeral of Carol's husband and Sam's father introduces more family members. Molly Ringwald plays Carol's sister-in-law in the seventh episode of the season.
Sheedy said she and Ringwald remain real life friends since co-starring in 1985's The Breakfast Club. Welcoming Ringwald onto Single Drunk Female was easy, Sheedy said.
"We work the same way," Sheedy said. "We have a history together. We're relaxed with each other and we had fun."
Since beginning her career in 1981, Sheedy starred in several popular movies such as Wargames, St. Elmo's Fire, Short Circuit and Maid to Order. Sheedy continued to appear in movies from the arthouse hit High Art to blockbusters like X-Men: Apocalypse.
Sheedy has also done episodes of shows like Oz, Kyle XY, Psych and SMILF but Single Drunk Female is the first series regular in her four decade career. No matter what her latest project is, Sheedy still fields questions about her '80s movies.
However, Sheedy was surprised when the 1993 killer dog movie Man's Best Friend came up during the interview. Sheedy said it was funny to be reminded of a movie that wasn't one of her iconic hits.
"It's the worst," Sheedy laughed. "I'm just giving you an honest reaction."
In the horror film, Sheedy plays a reporter who frees a dog from a genetics lab. The dog has been enhanced with DNA of other predatory animals as a military weapon, in a macabre satire of family dog movies like Beethoven and Turner & Hooch.
"I loved all four dogs because they had four different dogs to play that one role," Sheedy said. "It seemed like a good idea at the time and then later maybe not so much."
Single Drunk Female airs Wednesdays at 10 p.m. EDT on Freeform and all 10 episodes of Season 2 hit Hulu Thursday.
