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Looking at Constance Zimmer’s acting credits over the past three decades, you might assume the actress, who has had roles in HBO’s Entourage, Netflix’s House of Cards and Lifetime’s UnREAL, only picks series she knows will be cultural and ratings hits. But that’s not quite how she does it.
“When I did UnREAL, I had never even read the script,” Zimmer admits of the drama in which she starred as the conscienceless boss of Shiri Appleby’s young, impressionable reality TV producer. “I was just told what the character was going to be and how we were going to collaborate to create this woman that I had never been given the opportunity to portray. And I went with that.”
When the role of Ann Messina Freeman, the mother of Carolyn Bessette (Sarah Pidgeon) and Lauren Bessette (Sydney Lemmon) in FX’s Love Story, came to her, Zimmer did at least read the script for the character, but it only took one scene — and her admiration for the real-life John F. Kennedy Jr. and his partner, whose romance is at the center of the series created by Connor Hines and executive produced by Ryan Murphy — to get on board.
“When I read the wedding speech, I said, ‘If this is all I do in this show, it’ll be worth it,’ ” the actress recalls. “I’ve always chosen the shows I’ve been on based on the characters I get to play because that’s all I have control over.”
