Entertainment, TV, Television - Navy Times

‘Big Love’ all around

BEVERLY HILLS — Has Bill Paxton let his polygamous character go to his head?

The playful star of HBO’s “Big Love,” about a renegade Mormon juggling three wives, is happily married to his artist wife, Louise Newbury. Even so, he can’t hide his deep affection for TV wife Jeanne Tripplehorn.

Noticing their matching outfits over breakfast at the Four Seasons, he leans in close and says, “I just realized — we’re black on black.”

Acknowledging his flirtatious nature, he explains: “I don’t get to have a lot of girlfriends, obviously. I’ve been married a long time.”

“How many years?” Tripplehorn asks.

“Twenty,” he says. “I don’t advertise that. I find people who advertise themselves as virtuous family people usually get caught splitting up the next day.”

Having completed filming on their second season, the eldest players of HBO’s familial foursome have forged an extra-tight union. The second season, which premieres tonight (9 ET/PT), finds Tripplehorn’s Barb searching for her identity by walking out on Paxton’s Bill Henrickson and her “sister wives,” Nicky (Chloe Sevigny, 32) and Margene (Ginnifer Goodwin, 29).

Tripplehorn, 44, knows about that inner turmoil. She recalls the morning before she married her husband of seven years, actor Leland Orser: “I ran 3 miles because I was so nervous.”

“Was that away from the church?” Paxton jokes, causing them both to erupt into laughter. “You were a runaway bride!”

Though his character gives Barb the space she needs to work through her feelings, Paxton, 52, says that would be extremely difficult to do in his own marriage. “I can’t go to bed feeling [unresolved],” he says. His wife, on the other hand, “can harbor it a bit. She’ll give me the silent treatment, which drives me crazy.”

Paxton, born a Catholic in Fort Worth, and Tripplehorn, raised Baptist in Tulsa, first crossed paths at a John Edwards fundraiser a year before they were cast as husband and wife. He was a fan of her work, “among other things,” he says with a devilish grin. “I saw her across the room and wanted to meet her really badly.” Instead, he tells her, “I just watched you the whole evening.”

Tripplehorn, mother to 5-year-old son August, steers the conversation in another direction.

“I genuinely adore Bill’s wife,” she says, recalling an intimate dinner at Paxton’s home last December. “I don’t think I even talked to you,” she tells him. “The invitation still stands for you and Louise to come over to our house for a double date.”

Paxton, father to James, 13, and Lydia, 9, calls Tripplehorn “a confidant” who provides “an escape from our personal lives.”

“We get the best of each other,” she agrees. “We’ve had our days when you come in and you’re not in a great mood or we’re exhausted, but overall ...”

“You can’t act a certain kind of chemistry,” he says. “I instantly fell in love with her in the [casting] room.”

Just the other night, the two spent an hour on the phone “just catching up” as friends, she says. “We genuinely love each other’s company. I love going to work and looking at this mug in the morning. When Bill’s there, your whole day lights up.”

But they are split when it comes to understanding how actual practicing polygamists make their unions work. She doesn’t get it. He does.

Paxton says his character is “the worker bee with three queen bees who has to work hard to get his honey.”

He’ll display that drive this season in an episode that explores the sexual differences among Bill’s three wives.

“There’s a part of me that could love three women,” Paxton says. “It’s crazy.”

Tripplehorn adds: “We’re just like “The Waltons” On acid.”