Filed in Interviews Mercy Street TV News

The Wrap Interviews Mary on Mercy Street

The Wrap has released a brand new video interview where Mary talks about her upcoming show Mercy Street, debuting this Sunday at 10 pm on PBS. Here’s what she had to say:

There is so much drama inherent in the story, inherent in the Civil War itself, and just the directions they go with the storyline — when I hear what they are based on — it’s kind of shocking, like, ‘Oh no, this really happened.’ It’s so fascinating and entertaining to watch.

The six-episode series follows the lives of two volunteer nurses on opposing sides of the Civil War in Alexandria, Virginia, and co-stars Shalita Grant (“NCIS: New Orleans”) and Josh Radnor (“How I Met Your Mother”).

“I’m pumped for people to see it. It’s such a talented group of people, such a great story, a great bunch of stories kind of interwoven together … I think it’s really entertaining but also sort of educational.

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Washington Post, USA Today Interview Mary

With Mercy Street less than a week to go before it debuts, both The Washington Post and USA Today caught up with Mary and her co-star Josh Radnor to talk about the show. First up are some highlights from the WP interview:

For Winstead, part of what was exciting about playing Phinney was the opportunity to portray a character whose views are commonplace today but were considered radical in their time.

“I almost felt like I had it easy, because women like Mary Phinney and Louisa May Alcott [both of whose nursing experiences informed Winstead’s character] and women of that time had these personalities that were so modern, and so like they were plucked and sent back in time and landed in an era that was unfamiliar to them,” Winstead told me last fall. “They’re sort of like ‘Everyone is so crazy, there are these basic truths.’ They believed that so passionately that it feels like a modern sensibility, so so much of the dialogue and how the characters sort of behave— or my character specifically — felt very relevant to now for me.”
 
Phinney, trained by Dix, finds herself in conflict with Anne Hastings (Tara Summers), who worked with Florence Nightingale in the Crimean War, when Dix appoints Phinney to be the head nurse at Mansion House Hospital.
 
“The number of dead, the number of wounded, you would think they would want to take help from anyone who would give it,” Winstead said of how hard women had to fight to be allowed to serve. “But to think that women were still kind of turned away, or treated with disdain, or treated like they couldn’t be helpful; the women who actually did gain some respect and gained a place, you can see how they would be threatened at the thought of losing that.”

 

And speaking with USA Today, Mary had this to say on what drew her to the project– the women of that time:

“All the nurses before that point had been men. This was kind of the first time that women went out there and said, ‘No, I’m going to be a part of this. I’m not just going to sit at home. There’s too many people out there dying and we need all the help we can get,’ and they basically demanded to be a part of this war.”

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New Mercy Street Interview with The Huffington Post

Mercy Street premieres THIS Sunday on PBS following Downton Abbey, and The Huffington Post caught up with Mary and two of her co-stars, Josh Radnor and Norbert Leo Butz to talk about the upcoming historical drama. All of the actors agreed though, they all signed up for the show because of how great the story was.
Here’s what Mary had to share:

“You have Union and Confederate characters together,” says Winstead, who plays Mary Phinney, a high-minded abolitionist nurse from Boston. “Mary wants to help people. But she immediately falls into a great sense of confusion by what she finds in this hospital. She’s thrown off her game.”

You can read the full interview by clicking the link above.

I’ve also added two new stills which you can view in the gallery.

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Filed in Interviews Mercy Street TV News

New Mercy Street Interview

With Mercy Street premiering Sunday on PBS, a lot of new interviews with the cast will be making its way online in anticipation for the series premiere. The Fresno Bee caught up with some of the cast and execs of Mercy Street, and Mary shared some thoughts on her character:

Many of the characters are based on real people. They’re not the famous names that dominate most tales about the conflagration, but ordinary people like Mary Phinney, who kept a memoir of her experiences as a nurse in the hospital. Mary Elizabeth Winstead (“The Returned”) plays Phinney. “I was sort of cast somewhat last minute, and flew in and got started right away, and kind of dived into her memoir,” she says.

“So I was shooting this at the same time as I was discovering things about her. And I sort of gave everything over to these guys who were creating such an authentic environment, that I really felt like I was experiencing what she was experiencing when she first came to this hospital, and met all these people.


“And all of it is in her text as I’m acting it from day to day. And it was kind of a wonderful, special thing to be a part of and to bring to life. And I also felt I related to her so much and felt that her ideals and her views and what she was trying to accomplish and the way that she behaved was so contemporary – and so much like myself and people that I surround myself in my life now with.”

You can read the full interview by clicking on the link above.

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Behind the Scenes Interview on Mercy Street

The Daily Beast caught up with several of the Mercy Street cast earlier this year and went behind the scenes with them to share their experiences on filming, what they’ve learned and more. Below are some highlights on Mary’s thoughts where she shares most of her scenes with How I Met Your Mother actor Josh Radnor:

“Mary and Dr. Foster have a bit of an antagonistic relationship,” Winstead says. “Even though Dr. Foster is on the Union’s side, he doesn’t necessarily share her views on slavery. She’s a very staunch abolitionist, so she’s shocked by his cavalier attitude towards slavery, and his lack of commitment to the cause of ridding it.” The two also have “completely different views on medicine and how to go about doing things,” Radnor says.

On filming the show: “It’s been quite a challenge, but it’s been really exciting. I feel so inspired every minute by all the actors, and the direction, and the camera team, the art department. Everybody is working at such a high level that it really makes us all feel like we want to rise to the occasion.”

The actors also prepared for their roles by watching Ken Burns’ PBS documentary The Civil War.

“I love how human this series really is,” Winstead says, “and how you’re able to see characters on both sides of the war, and how they justify their actions in a way that we can relate to.”

Mercy Street premieres on PBS Sunday, January 17 at 10pm.

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Mercy Street Blu Ray to be Released in February

Once Mercy Street makes its debut on PBS January 17, the six part mini series will be hitting shelves on blu-ray February 2.

Set in Virginia in the spring of 1862, the program follows the lives of two volunteer nurses on opposite sides of the conflict; Mary Phinney, (Mary Elizabeth Winstead), a staunch New England abolitionist, and Emma Green, (Hannah James), a naive young Confederate belle. The two collide at Mansion House, the Green family’s luxury hotel that has been taken over and transformed into a Union Army Hospital in Alexandria, a border town between North and South and the longest-occupied Confederate city of the war. Ruled under martial law, Alexandria is now the melting pot of the region, filled with soldiers, civilians, female volunteers, doctors, wounded fighting men from both sides, runaway slaves, prostitutes, speculators and spies.

No other details were provided, but you can pre-order the series over on Amazon!

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New Mercy Street Photo and Interview

With Mercy Street debuting in less than a month, PBS has uploaded new character posters and some info on the new characters we’ll be introduced to. Here’s what Mary had to say about her character Nurse Mary Phinney:

Mary walks into a world that is much more chaotic and messy and wild than what she was anticipating, so it is kind of a whirlwind for her when she first gets there and sees how things really work. She’s a little bit set in her ways, a little bit uptight.

I think she believes that her way of thinking is the only possible and right way, and she is forced to open her eyes to a lot of different points of view and a lot of different types of people, and also to let go a little bit of her past and her own experiences and accept this new world she is in.

Head to the site to read the full character bio and be sure to head to the gallery to view the new character poster!

Mercy Street debuts on PBS January 17 at 10pm/9c.

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New Alexandria Tour Photos

30 photos of Mary taking the Alexandria, VA tour with her Mercy Street costars have been added to the gallery. Check them out here or click the thumbnails:

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