IN PLAIN SIGHT returns to USA for its fourth season on Sunday with US Marshals Mary Shannon (Mary McCormack) and Marshall Mann (Frederick Weller) ready to deal with more witnesses, more personal complications, and more dancing around their feelings for each other. The new season also has the added complication of weaving Mary McCormack’s real-life pregnancy into the show.
Daemon’s TV was there when Mary McCormack and Frederick Weller answered questions about Mary Shannon’s pregnancy, Marshall’s increasingly buried feelings for Mary, and season four’s theme. They also tease some of the upcoming guest stars.
On why Mary McCormack still loves Mary Shannon
It’s always good when a show’s star still likes the character she portrays, and Mary clearly still enjoys playing the other Mary, Mary Shannon. “I love that Mary Shannon is really good at her job and not so good at her personal life. I love that she’s cynical and sarcastic. It’s fun to play someone so grouchy. It’s sort of refreshing, and I can be a little grouchy myself, so it’s a comfortable fit.”
Don’t worry that pregnancy will mellow Mary Shannon too much. Mary joked, “Even knocked up, I’m still pretty butch.”
On Mary’s pregnancy
The writers have just begun working Mary’s real-life pregnancy into the show, so there aren’t a lot of details yet about exactly how it’s going to go for Mary Shannon, though we know she’s “not really into pregnancy” and she “made the baby herself the old-fashioned way.”
Mary thinks the pregnancy adds depth to the show. The theme for the fourth season was already supposed to be “change,” and Mary thinks a pregnancy falls right into that. “Mary Shannon’s mother is now sober, her sister’s engaged, Marshall is in a working, meaningful relationship and she is left wondering what she’s left with. All of a sudden, Mary has this enormous change in her own life and I think it’s going to be really rich for stories. You don’t think of Mary as necessarily maternal, so it’s making for some interesting story and character stuff. I think it’s refreshing to see a woman who’s passionate about her career have to come to terms with this new area of her life, which I think all women deal with.”
Fred joked, “I think Marshall has a pregnancy fetish, but they haven’t written it in yet.” Getting serious, he said, “The pregnancy is the huge shift around which all other shifts are defined. I think it’s interesting how it informs the relationship with Mary’s mother and sister and her relationship with Marshall. It’s definitely a huge twist and I don’t think they could have planned a better one.”
Mary likes that viewers will see an actual pregnant woman playing pregnant on television because she said “it’s not as pretty as someone who is all chiseled does it,” to which Fred retorted, “You’re every bit as pretty as any fake-o pregnant lady.”
On Mary and change
There are some big changes for Mary Shannon to deal with. Mary said, “I think she’s sort of confused. In the first episode, you see her expecting her sister to fall into old patterns and it turns out she really hasn’t, so that kicks off the theme. It’s one of those things where your whole life has been taking care of other people and when the people either randomly get sober or start taking care of themselves, I think her identity is in question. I think part of her was walking around feeling smug and proud of herself for being the only adult in the room and now she’s not the only adult in the room, so I think for her it’s a big shift. Now on top of it, she’s becoming the one thing she never thought she would be-a mother.”
Normally a quieter family life would be an unequivocally good thing, but it’s a bit more complicated for Mary Shannon. According to Mary, “The stabilization of the family will continue along with our theme. This year Brandi is engaged and getting married. So far, her relationship seems to be going great. Mary’s mother is sober and doing great, which is all confusing for her, but in an interesting way.”
On Marshall’s feelings for Mary
Fred said, “Marshall’s feelings for Mary are now inevitably more submerged-and submerged like underground lava or tunneling to Viet Cong. They’re more dangerous there.”
Mary said that despite Marshall’s new attachment, his feelings for Mary are “always there. This season it is interesting because all of a sudden Mary’s pregnant, which is confusing in terms of their feelings for each other and then there’s also his new relationship that throws a wrench into it. You’re going to see all the stuff percolating along the way. We never leave that story altogether because it’s just there-it’s in their friendship and their friendship is so close that it’s obviously more than that all the time.”
Fred went deep into the classics when asked to delve into his thoughts on Marshall and Mary. “I think that he’s a romantic and he looks at himself and Mary kind of like that famous Isaiah Berlin essay about Dostoevsky and Tolstoy where humanity is divided into foxes and hedgehogs. Marshall thinks he’s a hedgehog and Mary is a fox. The hedgehog defines all existence by one controlling idea and the fox sees existence as a vast variety of experiences. For Marshall, the controlling idea is love and Mary has no controlling idea.”
On repercussions of the shortened third season
Season three of In Plain Sight was cut from 16 to 13 episodes due to showrunner John McNamara’s medical leave of absence. That led to new showrunners this season, Ed Decter and John Strauss, whom Mary said were already fans of the show, so they came in “respectful and sweet, wanting to continue the show down the path it was on.”
There will be a couple changes along the way because of the new showrunners: there are some new writers, a new opening theme, and we’ll meet a few new characters in the office, some of whom Mary Shannon doesn’t exactly love right away.
Luckily, the voiceovers won’t be changing. Mary said, “The voiceovers will continue and will be written in the same way. One of my favorite things about the voiceovers is that Mary Shannon is a person who doesn’t let people in. She barely lets Marshall in and he’s the closest person in her life, so to me, it’s an opportunity for the audience to know the real her. The audience has a really intimate relationship with her even though she doesn’t really allow anyone else to.”
On upcoming guest stars
The West Wing will once again be well represented on In Plain Sight. Bradley Whitford shows up this season in episode two. Joshua Malina’s back, of course, though Mary teased having him on the show is a “nightmare,” and Richard Schiff might be back. Mary joked that Allison Janney is busy on another show, but she’ll call her every week to coax her into returning.
When asked about Steven Weber returning as Mike Faber, Mary said he hasn’t appeared in the episodes they’ve shot so far, but she noted “you never know” if he’ll show up in the second half of the season. She also said she wasn’t sure how much she was allowed to say. “I don’t want to be a bore and be all coy, but I might have to be a bore and be coy. There’s a little bit of a whodunit regarding my pregnancy.”
Ali Marsh (Fred’s real-life wife) is returning as Dr. Shelley Finkle in the third episode and Fred teased that “the latent sexual tension between Marshall and Dr. Finkle will appear a bit. There’s a very interesting subplot where she’s calling Marshall in for therapy and it seems like she’s doing it really because she wants to date him.”
Aaron Ashmore, who played Mary’s half-brother Scott Griffin, has not yet been scheduled for a return. Mary said, “I haven’t heard any mention of the brother coming back this season, though everyone was a fan of that actor’s work. I thought he was sensational and we do mention him this season. I don’t know if there is a plan to have him back later this season, but hopefully we’ll have him back eventually.
The fourth season of In Plain Sight premieres on USA Sunday, May 1 at 10pm eastern/9 central.
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