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NEW YORK, Nov. 1 (UPI) -- Rosie Perez says she wanted her new psychological thriller, Before, to accurately portray life in the U.S. foster care system because she actually experienced this firsthand as a youth. With new episodes airing Friday nights on Apple TV+, the series follows Eli (Billy Crystal), a child psychiatrist and widower determined to help one last troubled kid , Noah (Jacobi Jupe), before he retires.
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Perez plays Denise, a former foster kid and now Noah's loving, anxious foster mother.
"Being a child of the child welfare system -- I was a ward of the state myself -- it really was important to me to get the relationship correct," the 60-year-old actress told UPI in a recent Zoom interview.
"It's really important to me to portray Denise in a way that I have not seen on screen -- a foster mother who really wants to be a mom, a foster mother that puts herself second to the child, a foster mother who doesn't pity the child, and looks at the child as a real person," Perez said. "It really hit close to home for me."
The star of Do The Right Thing, Fearless and The Flight Attendant said she spoke at length with Crystal and Before showrunner Sarah Thorp about the nuance she wanted to bring to her Denise, who is initially reluctant to seek help when Noah starts to suffer from night terrors and behaving violently.
"[Crystal and Thorp] were 100% on board when I said I wanted to have underneath a layer of nervousness, because she doesn't want to mess it up," the actress said of Denise.
"Denise perceives him being emotionally disturbed as a result of his traumatic experiences of being in the foster care system," she added. "He's been rejected family after family, and Denise, [growing up] in the system herself, she's coming from a certain understanding, and yet she doesn't understand completely, and she's a little bit baffled."
Denise won't give up on Noah because she wants to give him everything she never had.
"She's not talking about materialistic things," Perez said. "She's talking about love and a stable home and guidance and patience and understanding. But it gets to a point where she admits that sometimes he's scary."
Jacobi, 11, described Noah as a boy who acts out after "some bad things happen to him."
"His connection with Denise is really special," Jacobi said. "She just really, really wants to help him, and it's hard because he's really not very well."
Noah's relationship with Eli is complicated because the therapist enters the boy's life while Eli is still grieving the suicide of his wife, Lynn (Judith Light).
No matter how much he wants to help the child, he is not in a good place emotionally.
As he begins to question and counsel Noah, the two inexplicably begin to share nightmares and hallucinations.
"Noah's connection with Eli is very strange," Jacobi said. "He seems to really trust Eli, but then, at the same time, really, really tries to stay away from him. He does not trust Eli at exactly the same time. It's kind of a mixture between the two .... And Noah really depends on Eli."
Jacobi said he loved sharing scenes with the When Harry Met Sally, City Slickers and Monsters Inc. star.
"Billy is just the best," he added. "He's so funny. He's such an incredibly talented actor and we would always mess around off set. We used to do movie quote quizzes and that was fun."
Perez said she first met Crystal in the 1990s when they participated in a Comic Relief fundraiser against poverty with Whoopi Goldberg and the late Robin Williams.
"They asked me to come on and I was so excited because I used to have -- I don't think Billy knows this -- the biggest crush on him from his time on Soap, that TV show," Perez recalled.
"II remember saying to myself, 'I'm gonna work with that man one day,' and it manifested itself. I would see him here and there. It wasn't a solid friendship until we really worked together. But he's so supportive and sweet and kind," she added. "He was great."
Perez admitted she never expected to collaborate with the comic icon on such a serious project.
"Absolutely not," she said with a laugh.
"I was like, 'Billy Crystal! Yay! It's gonna be so much fun!' Cut to me eating my feelings and crying. Oh, my gosh!" she added. "But it was wonderful, as well, because I got an opportunity to put out there a real person instead of a negative stereotype of what a foster parent is."
