TELEVISION : Is the End Near? : Patricia Wettig on her career--she shares the good news/bad news of playing a cancer victim on ‘thirtysomething’

Patricia Wettig woke from a dream one night, looked around the bedroom and, for about 10 very long seconds, couldn’t remember if she was sick or not.

“It really scared me,” she recalled recently, looking healthy, wealthy and calm, her blue eyes clear and curious as she reflected on her confrontation with cancer over the past year. “This whole thing has really taken a toll.”

Wettig doesn’t really have cancer. She just plays someone with cancer on TV, Nancy Weston of “thirtysomething.” Plays her so well that last fall she was awarded the Emmy for best actress in a dramatic series. Plays her so realistically that once, in between takes of a scene that included several actual cancer patients from the Wellness Community, a support group for people afflicted with the disease, one of the patients asked Wettig where she went for treatments. Plays her so convincingly that when she goes shopping or drops her kids off for school, strangers often walk up and, with surprise in their voices, declare: “Gosh, you really look great.”

Whether Nancy will survive this season of “thirtysomething” is uncertain. The actors and producers have all been sworn to secrecy, but Tuesday’s episode, in which she undergoes her “second-look surgery” to discover whether an oophorectomy and a grueling series of chemotherapies have conquered the scourge, will go a long way toward revealing her fate.

Live or die, however, Nancy’s ovarian cancer has been an acting godsend for Wettig, not only providing her with the chance to wreak emotional havoc every five or six weeks on ABC but also catapulting her ever upwards on Hollywood casting directors’ lists of preferred actresses. Already she has landed roles in two feature films: An alcoholic 1950s movie star alongside Robert De Niro in next month’s “Guilty By Suspicion,” and Billy Crystal’s wife in the comedy “City Slickers,” due out in June.

In the first, a McCarthy-era drama set in Hollywood, she portrays Angst and illness and more of the same emotions she’s mined in “thirtysomething.” But in “City Slickers,” which she filmed late last year between cancer shows, she was trading one-liners with Crystal, singing and dancing Hollywood show tunes during breaks and arriving home at the end of each day bursting with song and smiles.

“I’d open the door and yell, ‘Hi, kids, let’s do songs from ‘West Side Story!’ Quite a change from all that depressing cancer stuff. And they were kidding me yesterday at the read-through of the next heavy cancer episode because there were a few lines that I did in a very comedic way and everyone started saying, ‘Oops, she’s been around Billy Crystal too long.’ ”

For the last two seasons, Wettig, with the help of some wrenching scripts, has taken Nancy and her TV family on a journey through hell. She’s undergone surgery, cried and screamed and cried some more; she’s fought with her husband, fought with her friends, suffered through chemotherapy, lost her hair and the color from her cheeks; she’s struggled with her sexuality after sacrificing her ovaries, she’s lost the will to live and struggled to win it back again, she’s told her son that she might die; she’s spent endless nights throwing up in her bathroom only to arise the next morning to make breakfast for her kids.

In short, cancer on “thirtysomething” has been nothing like cancer as usually depicted in TV movies--something that results definitively in death or life at the end of two hours. As in life, cancer on “thirtysomething” has been a continuing ordeal.

“That’s what has interested me the most about this, because I don’t think anyone has ever shown cancer as the ongoing disease that it actually is,” Wettig said. “One of the most tragic things about cancer is that people live with it for years, and it eats away at everything and yet they have to keep on going with their normal lives.

“This last episode (that dealt primarily with cancer, Dec. 11) was the first time we had shown the physical deterioration. The palate for my makeup was purple and yellow, and I would come to work in the morning feeling really good and then they put on the makeup and wig.

“I don’t think of myself as a vain person. I have always relished playing characters. But when you start to look like that every day, you do begin to wear down and you do begin to realize just how difficult that must be for people because they don’t ever get away from it. I could get away from it.”

Wettig, 34, said that her role has worn on her, taxed her, prompted her on occasion to stand back and “really see and appreciate” her life with husband Ken Olin (who co-stars on “thirtysomething” as Michael Steadman) and their children, ages 7 and 5. But like anything that spurs a person to stop taking things for granted, Wettig said, that rarefied look at the preciousness of her own life’s blessings quickly dissolves the minute her kids start fighting or asking for help with their homework--and all the noise of her everyday life flings her back into the ordinary.

Yet Wettig’s family is also an integral part of her performance. Nancy, like Wettig, is the mother of a young boy and girl, and Wettig said that her own mortality and the fear of not being there for her children is the one emotional connection to Nancy’s plight that she can unfailingly tap into.

“Since having kids, I don’t get on an airplane the same way,” Wettig said. “Your job in this world is to protect and take care of your children. I can’t think about this too much, but that’s where I have 100% vulnerability in my life. Even though I’ve never actually experienced a terminal illness, when I get in touch with that sentiment of being a mother, there are always emotional resources there for me.”

“One of the extraordinary things about Patty,” said Olin, who has directed her in several of the cancer episodes, “is that her emotional life is very accessible to her and yet by nature she’s a fighter. So while she seems very vulnerable to the emotions of this illness, she’s no pushover, and so you really feel this enormous struggle, this enormous pain.”

The road from Wettig’s two lines in the pilot episode of “thirtysomething” 3 1/2 seasons ago to her two Emmys for playing Nancy and the film roles beside Crystal and De Niro originated in such a deep pothole that even her mother was worried about her image. What series creators and executive producers Edward Zwick and Marshall Herskovitz planned for Nancy was to strip her of all self-esteem and then explore her metamorphosis from a depressed and self-loathing “victim” into an accomplished human being.

“I was the wife, the person you’d least like to be stuck speaking to at a party, and I was really out there,” Wettig said. “Even my mother called and said, ‘Patty, you can’t be that unattractive and depressed on television. You’ve got to get it together.’ ”

She did. First, she and Timothy Busfield, who plays Nancy’s husband, Elliot, portrayed a marriage falling apart. They separated, went through therapy and came a signature away from getting divorced. As an actress, Wettig said, she loved it.

The second year, Nancy climbed out of the abyss. She wrote and illustrated a book with her son. She got it published. She started dating. She liked the way she looked in the mirror. She was happy.

But Wettig, the daughter of a high school basketball coach in Grove City, Pa., a woman afflicted with so much wanderlust that she attended four different colleges in four years, was bored silly.

“By the third year, (my character) had no problems. I had nothing to do,” Wettig said. “It sounds a little weird, I know, but the worst thing in the world is always the most fun thing to act. In real life, you say, ‘No, no, no. I’d rather have a good life, with no tragedies and no problems and everyone healthy.’ But as an actor, you want some stuff to do. So I went in to Ed and Marshall and I said, ‘Give me some stuff here. Give me a challenge. I can’t imagine sitting around here for three more years worrying about boyfriends.’ ”

Zwick said that he and Herskovitz wanted to explore the implications of disease and illness through one of their characters, but it was difficult--”hubris,” Zwick called it--to presume to pick one of them to get sick, even if they were just characters on a TV show. The decision to give Nancy ovarian cancer, he said, was made “intuitively” and because they were confident that Wettig could do it.

“She’s unblinking, unflinching in the face of emotion and in the face of risk-taking,” Zwick said. “What has made her performance so vivid, I think, is that she identifies, she internalizes and identifies with the truths of the character that she plays.

“And more and more as she has come to trust the inside, there has been an increasing simplicity that has informed her work. And the net effect of that simplicity is a portrayal of infinite shadings. The temptation with something like this is to play everything on a histrionic scale. But as she has had to live with this portrayal, so too has she come to understand what it might be like to live with this specter. That she has to let it affect everything, yet at the same time give up its specialness.”

Since Nancy got cancer, “thirtysomething” has almost become two separate shows. There’s the cancer story, with its grueling heaviness and life-and-death emotions. And then there’s everything else: boyfriends, girlfriends, career Angst , surprise parties, potty training and all the myriad trivialities of life.

But that, too, is just like life, and by design. One of the philosophical points that the producers wanted to make by exploring the course of cancer, Zwick said, was that while cancer patients grapple with excruciating pain, sickness and drama, their friends--while empathizing, while perhaps feeling guilty for fretting over a flat tire or a lonely night--nonetheless continue to be consumed with the mundane.

But even more important, to the producers and surely to actual cancer patients who have found some solace and inspiration in the show, “thirtysomething” has been committed to making this “a story about a person and not about a disease,” Zwick added, “that however overwhelming and daunting this kind of turn of events is, someone doesn’t stop having a life when they get sick. Vestiges of a life force, of humor, of romance, of contradiction and digression have always been a vital part of this portrayal.”

“We are thrilled with what they have done,” said Harold Benjamin, executive director of the Santa Monica-based Wellness Community, a support organization for cancer patients designed to teach them that they don’t have to be “hopeless, helpless and passive, but can participate in the fight for recovery along with their physician.” “Thirtysomething’s” producers have consulted with The Wellness Community and have used it as a model for the support groups Nancy has attended in some episodes.

“What they have done, without lecturing, is to insinuate into the public consciousness the fact that cancer can be talked about,” Benjamin said. “That cancer is not inevitably fatal. That people don’t die with the diagnosis. That there is life to be lived after the diagnosis. That people don’t have to be ashamed of the fact that they have cancer. Nancy is not ashamed of it. And the reaction of patients has been unanimously favorable. It has shown them that they are not alone. I think it has been wonderful.”

Dr. Leo Lagasse, a specialist in gynecological cancer at the Cedars-Sinai Comprehensive Cancer Center, also praised the cancer story for heightening awareness about ovarian cancer and encouraging many women with a family history of the disease to go to their doctors and get screened for it. Before “thirtysomething” and Gilda Radner’s book about her battle with ovarian cancer, Lagasse said, many women who needed to be screened and even some who required surgery would refuse their doctor’s recommendation. Now, he said, that isn’t happening as often.

Because ovarian cancer is the most difficult gynecological cancer to detect, 62% of all ovarian cancer patients die within five years, according to the American Cancer Society. When detected early, however, as many as 85% of ovarian cancer patients live longer than five years.

“Some of my patients watch, and some don’t,” Lagasse said. “Some can only watch a little about it. These people are fighting a tough battle, emotionally as well as physically with chemotherapy and surgery and often more surgery. It’s a difficult disease even for the winners, so for some it’s pretty tough to watch. But there is no question that it has been a big plus.”

Wettig said that she has spoken with many cancer patients and has incorporated some of their thoughts and gestures into her portrayal. Most of them, she said, have been grateful for the show’s attempt to “demystify” the disease. Relatives and friends of cancer patients, too, have written to say thank you for helping them understand the myriad feelings intertwined with the disease and for showing them that cancer patients need and want to be treated in a normal way.

“They all seem to appreciate that we’re showing a person who is a real person and she’s part of everyday life,” Wettig said. “One of the big stigmas is that people are afraid of it, and even though they know they can’t catch it, they often treat cancer patients as if they are different. It makes them uncomfortable and they are unsure about what they should say, what they should notice. I’ve had many people tell me that we have demystified cancer a little bit and helped them to not feel so isolated.”

Busfield, cast as the cancer patient’s supportive husband, confessed that he and Wettig privately moan to one another, “When is this crap going to end? This is the most depressing stuff in the world to play.” And publicly, neither of them seems disappointed that the resolution of the story is apparently at hand. One way or another, Wettig will soon be able to let her long, stick-straight blond locks fall all over her face again.

The big TV question: Will Nancy die?

“I’ve always hoped they would kill her,” said Busfield, who added that he would enjoy the new challenge of playing a single father with two kids. “I think Ed and Marshall would like to kill her, but I don’t think they have the guts to do it. They would be chastised by too many organizations and viewers, and producers have to be concerned with that. But that’s not my concern. I like making people angry at the TV set with my character. And I can guarantee you that even if she dies, Patty Wettig won’t disappear. She’ll be back a hundred times in all kinds of flashbacks and fantasy sequences.”

Neither Zwick nor Wettig will say whether Tuesday’s episode will toll Nancy’s demise. There have been hints: In December’s New Years’ Eve party episode, which Nancy was too sick to attend, Elliot flirted heavily with a new character played by Mary Kay Place, while his son befriended her pubescent daughter, opening up all kinds of new story lines should Nancy pass away. And then again, Zwick warned, “This is not just some capricious attempt to introduce life and death into the quotidian of day to dayness. There is some purpose to it all.”

The Wellness Center is hoping that one of those purposes is to illustrate that cancer is not always fatal. “I’m worried they will let her die,” Benjamin said. “I don’t want her to die. In all the TV programs in the world, if a person coughs, you know they’re finished. But that’s not true to life. Not everyone with cancer dies. Not by any means do they all die.”

Whatever happens, Wettig is thrilled that the cancer story has roused Hollywood into noticing her. Yet at the same time, saying that “cancer has been good for me” gives her the willies.

“I was talking to people from the Wellness Community about things it would be good to bring out,” Wettig said, “and when one of them asked me where I go for my treatments, that stopped me. I believe that this show has done a lot of good, but I have mixed emotions about benefiting from it, of having some great movie script come to me because of it. I have not suffered what these people have suffered. I don’t know that pain.

“It makes me feel kind of funny. It’s like the old show, ‘Queen For a Day,’ that I used to watch all the time. These women would get up and tell these tragic stories and the one who told the most tragic story would win a refrigerator or a fur coat or something. And people would applaud and cry. I mean, they needed the refrigerator. But every once in a while there is that weird thread to life.”