From Teen Sports Hero to Besieged Detective, Kate Winslet’s Character in MARE OF EASTTOWN Knows All The Local Angles

By BILL HARRIS Special to The Lede There’s a telling scene midway through the first episode of Kate Winslet’s new HBO limited series MARE OF EASTTOWN. Set in a hard-edged, blue-collar township fairly close to Philadelphia, Winslet’s police detective character Mare Sheehan is attending a sports reunion event at a local bar when she meets an author named Richard Ryan, played by Guy Pearce. Richard explains to Mare that he “just moved here from Syracuse a few months ago.” “I’m sorry, that’s too bad,” Mare says. A bit taken aback, Richard stammers, “It’s okay .. isn’t it?” “Give it time,” says Mare, wearily and ominously. Viewers definitely won’t have to “give it time,” so to speak, when MARE OF EASTTOWN debuts, Sunday, April 18 at 10 p.m. ET, only on Crave. By the end of the first episode, the palpable tension in the air has crystallized into something far more complex and sinister. “I just had never done anything like this,” said the OSCAR® and EMMY®-winning Winslet during a virtual panel interview. “Mare is nothing like me, so that’s pretty scary – in a great way – if you’re an actor like me who likes to feel terrified and exposed. But I really felt the sense of not just who she was, but the world that she lives in, where she comes from, that sense of community, being so entrenched in a society that you sort of forget who you are from time to time. The sense of responsibility and burdens that Mare carries, for lots of reasons to do with her backstory, really, really intrigued me.” Mare still lives in the place that she grew up in, where she’s a local celebrity from being a high school basketball hero in the mid-1990s. Her family life is complicated, to say the least, with multiple generations living in her house, including her mom, a daughter, and a grandson, with her ex-husband and his fiancée uncomfortably close in the neighbourhood as well. On the work front, Mare remains haunted but flummoxed by the case of a missing girl that has gone unsolved for more than a year. But when a suspicious death occurs, suddenly every pressure point in the community is on the verge of bursting open. “I’d be a f—– lousy detective,” said Winslet, cracking up reporters. “I’d be very good at the coffee and the after-beers, definitely. But I could never do the job that Mare does. I don’t think I have the mental stamina that is required. I have stamina, but in a different way. But I think the one thing I did feel I had in common with Mare, that I quite honestly was able to lean on a lot, was that real sense of family, and how much it means to her to hold that together at all costs. And also to be able to admit to herself from time to time that she has failed in a lot of areas, and she tries desperately to correct those errors, and to hold everyone as close to her as she can, even if she’s a difficult person to live with from time to time.” Winslet, who of course is from England, said she had to work extremely hard to get the Pennsylvania “Delco” (short for Delaware County) accent correct in MARE OF EASTTOWN. But beyond that, even for an actress as acclaimed as she is, she admitted to feeling that she has a duty to keep upping the ante in the current entertainment landscape. “It doesn’t matter how long I’ve been doing this job, you just can’t ever rest on your laurels,” Winslet said. “My dad has said to me my whole life, ‘You’re only as good as your last gig, babe.’ And I really believe that to this day. Plus, we live in a world now where there are so many incredible actresses, and it’s so exciting to see this. But it does mean that we all have to contribute. We’ve all gotta stay in the game. You’ve gotta work hard. You’ve gotta deliver on integrity every time. Because I think audiences can tell if you’re lazy, or you haven’t quite learned your lines properly, and you’re sort of skirting over the top of it. Audiences need to be respected fully, because if it weren’t for audiences, then none of us would have a job.” billharristv@gmail.com @billharris_tv