Peter Facinelli Talks Loosies, Nurse Jackie, & Almost Passing on Twilight

Italian good looks punctuated by piercing blue eyes have given actor Peter Facinelli legions of female fans. Facinelli’s preference for quirky, left of center film and television roles have built his reputation as a formidable contender among entertainment industry heavies. Peter Facinelli loves to play characters that don’t quite have it all together, are a few sandwiches short of a picnic… you get the idea. Perhaps he enjoys the stark contrast it offers in relation to his own solid, suburban life with wife Jennie Garth and their three beautiful daughters.
For Peter Facinelli, acting offers an opportunity to play and explore characters living on the edge of reason. As he explains to me, acting is all about “the journey” that a character goes on; no emotional pathology equals no significant journey, and for the NYU educated thespian, where’s the fun in that?


Peter Facinelli: Did you get to see Loosies?
PR.com (Allison Kugel): Yes, I watched the film on VOD the other day. There’s a big trend now with independent films debuting on video on demand before their theatrical release. Tell me about that.


Peter Facinelli: The game is changing. Indies used to platform movies in five or ten theatres and hope that people go to those theatres to then get a wider release. Now what we’re doing in the industry is starting to utilize the VOD and other sources like iTunes to actually get the movie out to people and get a buzz going, and then put it into theatres.


PR.com: Let’s talk about the plot in the film, Loosies. Your character in the film, Bobby, compartmentalizes his morals and he is on the wrong side of an ethical dilemma. Since you wrote the screenplay for Loosies, where did you get this character from?
Peter Facinelli: For me, this is like movies from the 1970s that had these characters that were anti-heroes. They weren’t exactly heroes, but they were anti-heroes that you rooted for. The world isn’t black and white. They’re not always doing the right thing, but you root for them anyway because they have more good about them than bad. I remember just riding the subways and thinking that it would be really fun to do a movie about a pickpocket on the subways. And then I thought, “What does his world look like? Why would he be stealing?” I started asking those questions and then I created this character, Bobby, and gave him a lot of moral dilemmas. Somebody wrote a comment, like, “Why would Peter write a movie where he gets the crap beat out of him for half the movie? It’s very masochistic.” (Laughs). But it’s a movie where [the character] deserves to get his ass beat up a couple of times. He needs to learn a couple of lessons before he can actually grow.

PR.com: Do you think a criminal can be a victim of circumstance?
Peter Facinelli: Yeah, for sure. There’s the guy who can’t pay the rent and he has kids to feed, and he goes out and steals a loaf of bread because he’s got to feed his kids. I don’t necessarily think all criminals are evil, and I don’t necessarily think that all people who do bad things are bad people. When your back is to the wall, given human nature, you have that fight or flight response and sometimes you do things you normally wouldn’t do, to survive. It’s about survival. With Bobby, when he is threatened in the way he is, when he finds out that his father left him in debt, his mom is at risk, his life is at risk… for him, in his mind, if he takes watches and money here and there he thinks he’s taking from people who won’t miss it and he’s justifying. But Lucy shows him the light, that it doesn’t matter what you steal or how much you steal. It’s still stealing.


PR.com: When you wrote the screenplay for Loosies, were you imagining your wish list of actors you wanted to cast for the film?
Peter Facinelli: No, I mean, I always knew that I wanted to play Bobby (the film’s lead character), but I didn’t have any other actors in mind for any of the other roles. I think originally I had Detective Sullivan written younger, and he was new on the job, and he was Hispanic. When we got Michael Madsen I re-wrote Michael Madsen’s role a lot, to fit Michael.


PR.com: Did the Twilight franchise give you the cache you needed to launch your own production company and to get the film, Loosies, made?


Peter Facinelli: I don’t know. I’d like to think it did. I had this movie around for a couple years. It almost got made several times and it just happened to get the green light after I did the Twilight movies. If that had something to do with it, I’m happy (laughs). If it didn’t, then I’m fine with that too. I think more people are aware of who I am now from those films, and in looking at me from the Twilight films they look back and realize that I’ve done thirty or forty other movies and television shows, and it’s easier to walk in the door and get meetings.


PR.com: As an actor, do you have a sixth sense for something like a Twilight, that it’s going to be a big breakthrough role for you? When you were filming the first installment of the Twilight saga, did you think, “This is going to be a huge franchise”?
Peter Facinelli: No. I don’t think any actor has that. I think I actually have the opposite effect. I read scripts that are good and I think that they’re bad, and when I read scripts that are bad I think they’re great. So I completely never know (laughs)!
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PR.com: This script is going nowhere (laughs).
Peter Facinelli: I almost didn’t read for Twilight. My agent said, “Do you want to do a vampire movie?” And I was like, “No.” I was totally thinking blood and guts and bats in caves, like some kind of horror movie. They literally talked me into reading the book and I actually enjoyed the book a lot. Then Catherine Hardwicke (Lords of Dogtown, Thirteen) was directing [Twilight] and I was a fan of hers. So I said I would go in and read for it, for sure, because Catherine is directing it, and I liked the book. But before I had read the script and they said, “Do you want to do a vampire movie?” I was like, “No.”


PR.com: I don’t know if you’re drawn to deeply flawed characters, or they’re drawn to you, but what’s the deal with that?
Peter Facinelli: When you play a flawed character, there’s more juice in the fruit. There’s more stuff to play, and it’s more interesting to watch people go through that turmoil and go through a journey, rather than just playing a straight-up character that doesn’t have a journey or isn’t really flawed. I personally think everybody is flawed, so…


PR.com: Of course. But, for example, your character in Nurse Jackie, he’s a pretty emotionally unconscious person.
Peter Facinelli: It’s more fun for me to play those characters. Coop (Facinelli’s character in “Nurse Jackie,” Dr. Fitch Cooper) is so psychologically damaged that it’s fun for me to play him.


PR.com: Are you comfortable in the role of the good looking leading man?
Peter Facinelli: That makes me completely uncomfortable (laughs). I don’t know how to play that. I don’t know what to do. I feel like I’d be really boring at that. I did a guest arc on Six Feet Under (HBO). When Alan Ball (creator of “Six Feet Under”) called and said, “I want you to play this role,” I said, “Talk to me a little bit about the role.” He said, “You’re Claire’s boyfriend.” I said, “Ok, well, does he have one leg? Did his mom kill his father? Is he blind in one eye? What can we do to spice this guy up so he’s not just Claire’s boyfriend?” So [Alan] said, “He’s a super famous artist and he gives Claire her first orgasm.” I was like, “Ok, I’m in!” For me, as an actor, it’s fun to be able to step into other people’s shoes and build these characters, and make them different, and not just play the same thing all the time.

PR.com: Where will your production company go? Now with the release of Loosies, and looking forward, where do you hope to take Facinelli Films?
Peter Facinelli: My career has been very versatile so my production company is very versatile. We have a lot of things in the works that are very different from each other. We have the rights to a book called Street Soldier which is based on Whitey Bulger (an alleged organized crime figure) and an enforcer that worked for Whitey Bulger. We have a script and financing so we’re looking for a director for that. I have a movie based on a documentary called The Last Word. I have a little horror movie called RV Park that I wrote. We’re going to start shopping that in January, we have a big broad comedy, and a lot of good digital media stuff, and a couple of reality shows in development. I also have a children’s book I have the rights to, called My Name is Not Isabella. [I’m] not the guy who does mob movies, or the guy that does horror movies, or romantic comedies. My production company jumps all over the place and does a lot of versatile things.

“Loosies” (PG-13) is currently available in 20 million homes through IFC Films, Video on Demand. “Loosies” opens in select movie theatres January 11, 2012.


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