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“Raising Hope” star Martha Plimpton spills the dish on what’s to come for Season 3, working with Michael J. Fox on “The Good Wife” and her Emmy win.
Screen, stage and television actress Martha Campbell Plimpton had showbiz in her blood from the moment she was born in New York City. The daughter of actor Keith Carradine (“Dexter”) and Shelley Plimpton and the granddaughter of actor John Carradine (“The Grapes Of Wrath”), Plimpton attended the Professional Children’s School in Manhattan and made her first stage appearance in the short-lived Broadway play, “The Leaf People.”
But it wasn’t until 1985 when audiences really took notice, when she landed her breakthrough role as tomboyish Stef Steinbrenner (you know, the one who felt like she was babysitting and not getting paid?) in the Richard Donner/Steven Spielberg cult classic film, “The Goonies.” Later that year, she had a guest starring role on “Family Ties,” where she played an orphan girl, who tried to shoplift from Mallory’s (Justine Bateman) boutique.
It would be 27 years later when she would work with Michael J. Fox again on the CBS legal drama, “The Good Wife,” where the actress recurs at the firm’s rival lawyer, Patti Nyholm. Plimpton spoke to TVSource Magazine about working with Fox on both shows. “Family Ties was awesome. I love Michael. He is a fantastically funny person, incredibly generous actor and I just adore him,” she said.
“The sweetest thing about him was that he actually pretended to remember working with me all those years ago and I thought that could not have been classier of him, considering how many people he worked with when he did that show,” Plimpton said. “I just love him and I would kill to do it again.” She won an Emmy this year for Outstanding Guest Actress in a Drama Series for her recurring role on “The Good Wife.”
In 2010, Plimpton returned to prime time, starring as Virginia Chance on the FOX comedy, “Raising Hope.” She also was nominated for Outstanding Lead Actress in a comedy series, during her first year on the series.
The show returns for a third season, Tuesday, Oct. 2 and Plimpton promises more craziness from the dysfunctional, but loveable Chance family. Plimpton says, “[the show] will be branching out a little bit, meeting more of Sabrina’s family and seeing a little bit more of the world.” Plimpton also says that “there is a risk that Maw-Maw could be removed from the home, and we have to rescue her from a state-run nursing home. We sort of pull off a little Mission Impossible thing there.”
Plimpton had a lot of praise for the show’s writers. “The show is really well written and people are surprised by the sort of underlying sophistication of the show, and I think that as nutty and as crazy as it gets, it has sort of an underlying core of honesty and authenticity. They’re not mean to each other, they’re all in it together,” she said of the Chance family.
The new season will also have numerous guest stars, including Melanie Griffith as Sabrina’s mother; Tippy Hedren, “American Pie’s” Chris Klein and Wilmer Valderrama (“That 70’s Show”). Plimpton described both Hedren and Griffith as “lovely women” and was thrilled to be working with the two for the first time.
To kick off the new season, FOX will have a contest called, “The Raising Hope Clean Sweep,” which will give the show’s fans a chance to have Plimpton and her co-star Garret Dillahunt (Burt) fly anywhere in the country and clean their house. TVSource asked her if she knew what she was getting into and she said, “Absolutely, I always do. I was amazed that they thought it was a good idea, and that they wanted to do it. Somehow we managed to hoodwink Garret into it as well. He’ll be cutting lawns or cleaning pools, whichever is more appropriate.”
Catch all the crazy shenanigans from the Chance family on the third season of “Raising Hope,” which premieres Tuesday, Oct. 2 on FOX.
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