Sasha Alexander interview with T.V. Guide

A Day Out With Rizzoli & Isles Star Sasha Alexander

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Sasha Alexander is nothing if not brave. After all, this is the same actress currently starring as medical examiner Maura Isles on Season 3 of TNT's smash procedural Rizzoli & Isles — who walked away from a lead role on NCIS after only two seasons. She married the son of legendary Italian sex symbol Sophia Loren, a gig not for the faint of heart. And today, Alexander, 39, is swinging upside down from a trapeze suspended far above the Santa Monica Pier her suggestion despite admitting that she's spooked by heights. We set out to investigate what fuels her fearlessness.

TV Guide Magazine: When you quit the plum part as NCIS Agent Caitlin Todd in 2005, did everyone think you were nuts?
Alexander: Yeah. People don't realize that on a network show, you make 24 episodes a year — that's 10½ months a year, 17 hours a day. It's hard core. Plus, people really loved the character, and the way they did it was really shocking...it was a bullet to the head, you know?

TV Guide Magazine: Any regrets?
Alexander: I really firmly believe in my heart that I would not be where I am today happily married, with two kids, doing things creatively that I want if I had stayed. I didn't want to wake up and be in my forties and go, "Oh, my gosh!" But people don't understand.

TV Guide Magazine: Let's travel even further back on your résumé — to a little place called Dawson's Creek. You played James Van Der Beek's older love interest! Do tell...
Alexander: I was so fascinated by how these very young people — James and Josh [Jackson] and Katie [Holmes] and Michelle [Williams] were dealing with being teenagers and going through all that. Fangirls were really jealous of me, like, "What's he like to kiss?" And I'm like, "Good?" What do you say?

TV Guide Magazine: So how'd the role in Rizzoli & Isles come to be?
Alexander: After NCIS, I wanted to be really diligent about picking characters I want to play every week and that show all sides of me. They brought me in to read with Angie [Harmon] — we'd never met, but we immediately clicked.

TV Guide Magazine: The show hinges on the chemistry between you as best friends a bond that was tested earlier this season. How would you describe the dynamic?
Alexander: There's a friction, a fieriness, that I think is good. I feel like, this season, we've really hit an amazing stride together...there's a looseness, a real synergy. Jane and Maura rebuilding their trust [after Jane shot Maura's biological gangster father] has made things much stronger.

TV Guide Magazine: Who's your real-life Rizzoli?
Alexander: She's an actress Jessica Capshaw from Grey's Anatomy. We met 12, 13 years ago because people would always say, "You remind me of my friend Jessica," and it was the same for her about me. So many people said it mutually that finally we saw each other at an audition and she said, "Hey, do you mind waiting for me? Let's go have a coffee." And that was it. She's the godmother to my daughter, I'm the godmother to her son. She's hilarious.

TV Guide Magazine: How did you and writer-director Edoardo Ponti get together?
Alexander: We met at film school at USC. He was always lovely he had a smile that gave me enormous comfort, even though I didn't know him. Eight years later, I'd worked an all-nighter on NCIS and I was sitting in a restaurant eating breakfast with a hat on, and he walked up to my table and said, "Sasha, do you remember me?"

TV Guide Magazine: What's it like having a bombshell for a mother-in-law?
Alexander: The first time we met, it was intimidating. This was six months in. But the minute I walked in, she gave me a hug and a kiss. She's an extremely warm person. She's phenomenal; she's stunning. She loves to eat and sleep and live. When we go out, we have Prosecco, chocolate and everything in between. It's funny: I took her to the airport yesterday, and she was like, "What is this book everyone's talking about?" I bought her Fifty Shades of Grey and told her she needs to read it.

People.com ignores Sasha Alexander

Angie and Sasha on People.com.

This is a little rant of mine that I posted on Tumblr and decided to also post here.

I don’t do a lot of ranting, but with this video [Pictured on the left] I simply have to. It’s not about the video itself. It’s actually very cute. It’s the fact that the video is about Rizzoli AND Isles and has BOTH Angie AND Sasha in it, yet People.com titled it “Angie Harmon: Even the Dead Should Get Pedicures.”


Was Sasha not in the video? Are they not promoting Rizzoli and Isles TOGETHER?

Now I understand that Angie is the one who talked about the dead getting pedicures, but it’s the title of a video that they’re both in. They’ve completely ignored the other half of the “team.” Even the subtitle mentioned Timothy Hutton’s appearance in it but NOT Sasha! That upset me.

Now I know you’re probably thinking, “Hey, relax. It’s not really a big deal.” Normally I would agree with you, however I know there are a lot of fans out there who have felt, as I do, that Sasha’s been given almost a secondary role in the media. Combine that with the fact that this is the second television series that I’ve loved with two female leads that has had the media make one actress take a back seat over the one that they deem the “star.” The other was Renee O’Connor on Xena. At least that show was named for only one of the characters. Rizzoli and Isles are the two leads!

Angie has been on how many daytime talk shows in the last two years and it wasn’t until the series third season that Sasha gets on The Talk and Racheal Ray. This isn’t Angie’s fault. Please don’t think I’m blaming her, because I’m not. Not at all. This is the media and television studios, and it really upsets me.

Maybe Sasha doesn’t mind. In fact it wouldn’t surprise me if she doesn’t, and If that’s the case then I completely respect that. It’s just that when I saw that there was an “Angie” video, and then realized it was both of them, It really bugged me that Sasha’s name was missing.

Does anyone else feel the same way?

Lee Thompson Young on watching Sasha Alexander & Angie Harmon work.

“This is really a treat for me as an actor, to watch Rizzoli and Isles playing off of each other, and I’ve developed this analogy in my mind that it’s like watching Charlie Parker and Miles Davis having a little improv session, because their styles are so different.”

“They’re almost like polar opposites,” he adds. “And yet they find this rhythm together so they can play back and forth, and it’s like a master class. I feel like INSIDE THE ACTOR’S STUDIO every day. I’m like,’ “Wow, how did she get there?’ It’s really a pleasure to watch the chemistry between the two [Harmon and Alexander].”

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