"After trannies and mutants, it's refreshing," Rebecca Romijn says of playing free-spirited widow Roxie Torcoletti.
After watching Rebecca Romijn in roles like the blue-painted Mystique in X-Men and the transgender magazine heiress Alexis Meade on Ugly Betty, we’re pleased to see she’s portraying a real woman — albeit one with clairvoyant powers — in Eastwick, the new TV series based on John Updike’s 1984 novel The Witches of Eastwick (Ballantine). “This character is the closest to myself in real life that I’ve ever played, and it’s nice to just play a woman again. After trannies and mutants, it’s refreshing,” laughs the 36-year-old supermodel-turned-actress, whose character Roxie Torcoletti is a bohemian Earth-mother type who wears flowing dresses and tresses.
Glowing in a vintage Ungaro print wrap dress she bought on eBay, Romijn told us why Roxie felt so familiar. “She’s like so many mothers from Berkeley that I grew up around,” says Romijn, who is a new mom herself, having given birth to twin girls Dolly and Charlie last December. She hadn’t planned to go back to work so soon, but couldn’t pass up the fun role. “The babies were with me the entire time, and they were amazing about working around my nursing schedule,” Romijn notes, adding that her husband, Jerry O’Connell, has taken time off from work to care for the children and often brings them to the set.
While she never read the Updike novel, Romijn was a big fan of the 1987 movie version, which came out when she was 14. “As a kid I rented it and watched it over and over again,” she remembers, tickled that she gets to play the role Cher originated. Romijn draws the line at wanting psychic abilities off-screen, though. “It would be a bit of a double-edged sword. I think it would affect the way I lived my day-to-day life,” she explains.
We actually wouldn’t mind — being able to see into the future could have saved us from dating a few duds in our 20s and 30s. What superpower would you like to have?
Photo credit: Bob D’Amico/ABC
