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'The Hot Zone' happened because of Ridley Scott: Julianna Margulies

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Press Trust of India New Delhi

Julianna Margulies says she has so much trust in Ridley Scott that she would not mind reading even a phone book for her longtime collaborator.

The actor, who worked with the Oscar-winning director on her most acclaimed project, "The Good Wife", said starring in "The Hot Zone" was a no brainer as Scott was one of the executive producers on the new show.

"Ridley Scott, who was my boss on 'The Good Wife', was a very big pull for me (for this show). I knew I was in good hands. He's the one who got me to do 'The Good Wife' actually. I would pretty much read the phone book for him," she told PTI in a telephonic interview from New York.

 

In the six-part limited series from National Geographic, Margulies plays real-life figure Dr Nancy Jaax, a US Army scientist who is appointed to work on the Ebola outbreak operation for their United States Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID).

The show is based on Richard Preston's 1994 book of the same name.

The actor said the project was sitting on Scott and producer Lynda Obst's desks for around 30 years and was supposed to be a two-hour film.

Margulies said the fact that the movie didn't happen was a "silver lining" as she believes a 120-minute-long project would have hardly done justice to the story of "The Hot Zone".

"... We got to tell it in six hours, which is I think the most important part of the story, is that you can't really tell this much of a complicated story in two hours. You needed the six hours. So I think in the end it was a real blessing in disguise that they weren't able to make it when they wanted to make it originally."

The 52-year-old actor said she was "dumbfounded" when she read the script that she had never heard about Ebola hitting the US soil in 1989.

She said Jaax is "an unsung American hero" whose story deserves to be told.

"This project really highlighted not just her heroic efforts, but the global crisis of Ebola. So I thought what a better way to show it than with a company like Nat Geo, and to be able to tell her story and wake people up to science and how much we need it, and to support our scientists so we can end this horrific epidemic," the Golden Globe winner told PTI.

Margulies met Jaax early on in the process of the project but she got ready for the role by studying with her real-life nephew, Dr Michael Smit, who is one of the top infectious disease specialists in America.

"I learned a lot from him, because he was in Sierra Leone in 2015 when there was an Ebola Zaire outbreak and 11,000 people died. So that was an incredible education for me, because I knew nothing about Ebola or the science behind finding a vaccine and a cure, or the story of it."

Besides Margulies, "The Hot Zone" boasts of powerhouse performers like "The Americans" star Noah Emmerich, "Game of Thrones" star Liam Cunningham and "BlacKkKlansman" fame Topher Grace, and the actor said a project is as good as its cast.

"Topher Grace, Liam and Noah signing on after I had accepted the role only made it that much richer because I think that's what makes the series so good. Acting is reacting. It's like playing tennis, when you're playing with someone who's really good, you get better... We all sort of held each other up, because it wasn't the easiest story to tell," she said.

"The Hot Zone", which hails from Fox 21 Television Studios, starts streaming on Hotstar premium on Thursday. It will premiere on National Geographic soon.

Disclaimer: No Business Standard Journalist was involved in creation of this content

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First Published: May 30 2019 | 12:30 PM IST

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