I actually have a novelty cookbook with her in it. Because I collect themed cookbooks—not themes as in “Mexican” or “vegetarian,” though I do have a large stock of baking cookbooks. But themed as in I own the Friends cookbook. And the unofficial Harry Potter cookbook. And, relevant to today’s discussion, the Desperate Housewives cookbook, which appears to be an official one. There does not, alas, seem to be a Sports Night themed cookbook, which is kind of a shame; that could be interesting. (There’s a Twin Peaks one, and I would quite cheerfully accept that as a gift!) There’s a Frasier one, though, also on my list, and she was on eight episodes of that. I would also love a Kim Possible one, and she was Dr. Betty Director on that.
Felicity Huffman has a relatively quiet career with leaps into the greater public consciousness. As she herself will tell you, being Oscar Nominee Felicity Huffman is definitely one of those leaps. But I think another one is having Stephen Colbert decide that she and her husband needed a celebrity couple name and declaring them Filliam H. Muffman. And double checking that name led me to a page for something called The Splendiferous Zeppelin Escapades of Filliam H. Muffman, which I didn’t know I needed in my life until now. It appears to be from a Colbert fan Wiki.
But she seems an unlikely candidate for such attentions. Most of her career has been things like guest shots on The X-Files and being third-billed to Jane Fonda and Lindsay Lohan in Georgia Rule. Mostly what she has done has been to play ordinary middle-age, middle-class women. Not that there’s anything wrong with that; the only thing that saves me from being a middle-age, middle-class woman is being a poor one instead. I suspect that the main reason she isn’t more popular is that people somehow thing that women like us don’t want to see ourselves onscreen and are instead interested in escapism.
Her most successful role is not that. At least, I think it counts given her Oscar nomination for it. I’m not sure how people in the LGBTQA community see her performance; she is quite obviously not a trans woman. Still, I’ve always felt that, you know, at least she’s a woman playing the role of Bree in Transamerica and not a man in drag? And probably a cis het one at that? And while she didn’t win, it was an awfully crowded category that year; Reese Witherspoon’s win for Walk the Line was hardly a controversial one. (I would imagine having Dolly Parton’s song for it lose to “It’s Hard Out There For a Pimp” angered a lot more people!) The same could really be said of most of the nominees; Huffman was in fine company.
She so often is. Huffman is a talented actress who could so easily have just done the guest star circuit—she’s even done two episodes of Law & Order, though she’s just slightly too successful to have gone back for the NCIS and CSI trifecta. That she’s risen above that is our great good fortune as audiences, not just hers as an actress. I do, on the other hand, wonder why the Coens have never called on her at all; she seems like she’d be just their speed in a lot of ways. And, hey, wouldn’t you love to see her and Frances McDormand in a buddy picture? Maybe a Fargo sequel where they play sisters?
