Finally, after a lot of searching and digging, it was simply the love of family that gave me a road into the character. Once I got into that, and we delved into what it would be like to survive cancer and the ability to see how precious life is, it became easier to play her.

Finally, after a lot of searching and digging, it was simply the love of family that gave me a road into the character. Once I got into that, and we delved into what it would be like to survive cancer and the ability to see how precious life is, it became easier to play her.

I've had the same friends for ten, fifteen years.

The press seems to love pitting women against each other.

I've been working on Barb for a while. I looked at her as a sort of every woman. She's incredibly strong; she's incredibly generous. She's seemingly insane because she is in the situation of a polygamous relationship, but she had definite reasons to do it.

The government doesn't really prosecute for polygamy anymore, but a lot of the arrests are of groups supporting themselves through welfare scams or for child abuse. So that was all I'd really heard about polygamists.

But we're all so different, we're different ages; we're not vying for the same roles. There's no competition, there's really kind of a sisterhood, on and off the set, you know?