For seven seasons from 2005 to 2011, the CBS series Medium (available on Prime Video and Paramount+ in France) featured the endearing character of Alisson Dubois, a lawyer who has had the ability since childhood to communicate with the dead, to see the future and to read minds. A mother of three children, she works part-time for the office of the prosecutor Devalos (Miguel Sandoval) and helps Inspector Scanlon (David Cubitt) to solve criminal cases thanks to her gift. Beyond her involvement as the main character in the series, actress Patricia Arquette is also a committed activist in favor of women’s rights, and in particular equal pay. As we know, the film industry can be ruthless towards women, and Patricia Arquette has also paid the price.
Patricia Arquette refused to lose weight for Medium
The now 54-year-old actress revealed that a producer of Medium he had asked to lose weight while she starred in the television series. “I had an argument with one of Medium’s producers, who told me I should lose weight. I was playing a wife and a mother of three, I said no“, she had confided in 2019 to the journalists of The Hollywood Reporter. And to the actress to add: “You might be 40, but you gotta be a 40 that looks 30“. Ironically, Patricia had to gain weight for her character in Ben Stiller’s series, Escape at Dannemora (2018), where she played a fifty-year-old prison worker caught in an incredible escape affair.
The continuation under this advertisement
A committed actress who can play anything
In the miniseries based on a true story Escape at Dannemora, Patricia Arquette, ugly for her role, offers one of her most remarkable performances. Physically unrecognizable and deeply unpleasant, she lends her features to Joyce Mitchell, the employee of a penitentiary who helps two inmates, of whom she is the mistress, to escape. The actress, who won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor in 2014 in Boyhood, had explained that she had voluntarily wished to gain weight to camp this cynical character. It made her feel”matron, stocky, middle-aged“, and this appearance made her “an invisible person“, she had explained to THR.com. A posture which, according to her, led to the following questions: “Who is allowed to have sex now in this culture? When are women allowed to have sex? What type of body should we have?“. In the wake of the #Metoo era, the actress even went so far as to appear before Congress in Washington, in 2019, to demand the‘gender equality in the US Constitution.
The continuation under this advertisement
Article written in collaboration with 6Médias
