The press seems to love pitting women against each other.

It was difficult every ten days having a new director. I'm a real collaborator and, as an actor, I want to be directed. It's hard for me to shift gears.

It was really important in my relationship with James Caan that I understood the relationship between the family and the father.

You hear about these shows where there are all these women are supposedly always in a catfight, and then you find out in reality that they're all getting along fine.

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.

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.

But on the other hand, I talked to a woman who was a working woman, and it was actually great for her, because she had her husband one week of the month and the other three weeks, while he was with his other wives, she got to pursue what she wanted to do.