Big Love

The hype surrounding the recently-raided polygamist compound in West Texas has certainly attracted more attention to the HBO series Big Love.  Although the premise of the series centers on a Utah polygamist family that practices plural marriage and keeps it a secret from the outside world, cast member Ginnifer Goodwin says that the show is a far cry from the renegade sect run by fundamentalist Warren Jeffs.

On Big Love, Goodwin plays Margene Heffman, one of Bill Paxton's character's three wives.  While her character's clothes are dowdy, the 29-year-old actress points out that Margene doesn't really identify with those women in the Texas sect.

"My character does not come from that world," the Big Love actress told People.  "She's married into a family who come from that world but are no longer a part of it.  My clothes on the show are a little outdated, not my personal taste, but certainly not 'compound chic.' "

On the other hand, Goodwin does admit that the show, despite being fiction with the mere purpose to entertain, certainly implies violence and abuse in its storylines, which is also quite relevant on what's currently happening in the news where teens are physically and sexually abused by the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, a renegade Mormon splinter group suspected of forcing underage girls into marriage with older men.

"We're acutely aware of what goes on in real life," the Big Love actress said.  "Ours is a sugar-coated version.  But we feel we are educating.  We find the human story very compelling."

Big Love, which also stars Chloe Sevigny, Jeanne Tripplehorn, Amanda Seyfried, Douglas Smith, Harry Dean Stanton, Matt Ross, and Daveigh Chase, just to name a few, has already been renewed for a third season.  Unfortunately, it has been delayed until the fall.


-Kris De Leon, BuddyTV Staff Columnist
Source: People
(Image courtesy of HBO)