Michelle Forbes Community Blog: Durham County 2nd Season US Premiere Only Days Away

Michelle Forbes is not the kind of actor who avoids variety and challenging roles. If you liked her as the tough Admiral Cain in Battlestar Galactica, the enchanting Maryann in True Blood or the lovely but troubled Kate in In Treatment, you should definitely add Pen Verrity from Durham County to the mix. A new, challenging role takes her to the award winning Canadian series with an unique, dark and realistic tone. The first season, which contains 6 episodes, anatomized male violence through the story of Detective Mike Sweeney (Hugh Dillon) and investigated how it affected us. Michelle joins the cast in the second season as Pen Verrity, the sexy, mysterious forensic psychiatrist, who has more skeletons in her closet, than we can imagine. Women can be as nasty as men, that’s for sure.

Penelope is quite troubled, to say the least, because of what’s happening and because of some trauma that had not been dealt with or transformed when she was younger,” {…}. “All of this comes bubbling to the surface. There’s a certain fracturing of her soul and her mind, and she’s desperately trying to grab onto Mike Sweeney.” said Forbes. This character is not less complex than she played before. “I was really seduced by the darkness of it, by the truth of it. Laurie Finstad (Knizhnik), our writer, has this extraordinary ability to hold up this frail, human dark side of ourselves and confront it. That was what was so compelling to me and made me jump at the chance to be a part of it.
Source: Tv,eh?

The writing is extraordinary, sensitive and very expressive, as is the cinematography. The show is perfectly cast, which adds to its quality. Every part of the production seem to work flawlessly. Michelle plays Pen Verrity with much complexity. Her ability to express a dozen emotions in one look comes to the surface now more than ever before. As we witness Pen desperately try to control herself and others, we constantly swing between feelings of hate, pity, love, sympathy, frustration towards her. She leaves us in a daze. If you thought Maryann was scary, you haven’t seen anything yet. Durham County challenged my intelligence and I loved it.

Switch your television on on Sunday, January 3 from 9:00 – 11:00 PM, ET and tune into ION Television and watch the second season of Durham County which launches with episodes 1 and 2 back to back. In case you missed the beginning of the story, they’ve set up a marathon of the first season on January 2. - Akima

Pre-order DC Season 1 from Amazon.com. (Available from January 19th, 2010)