Patricia Arquette on Gaining Weight, Filming Steamy Scenes & Playing a Mentally Ill Mom in The Act

Golden Globe and SAG Award winner Patricia Arquette (for her role as Tilly Mitchell in Escape at Dannemora) plays another real-life woman in Hulu’s limited series The Act (streaming March 20). Arquette, 50, stars as Dee Dee Blanchard, a mentally ill mother whose toxic relationship with her daughter, Gypsy (Joey King), ultimately leads to something heinous.

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Do we find out why Dee Dee is a harmful mother?

We see a younger Dee Dee and how her mom was controlling of her. We see her really weird mind process and how she is slipping more and more away. Dee Dee wants attention because she feels like a nonperson, a nothing. Her concept of intimacy is distorted. She just wants it to be the two of them in this house forever. She has Munchausen by proxy, and everyone [experts] interview with Munchausen by proxy denies they have it.

Why do we love true-crime stories like The Act and Escape at Dannemora?

Since the beginning of time, we’ve been trying to figure out crime. We’ve written about it in the Bible, talked about it in Greek tragedies and people watch shows like Unsolved Mysteries. We want to understand what it takes for people to [make] this intense choice.

Is Dee Dee’s twisted desire more about not losing her daughter, not letting her grow up, or is it more about wanting the attention that she gets from being her caretaker?

I think it’s a little bit of both. A lot of psychologists will say it’s about you wanting the attention as the caretaker and all of that. Other people will say you’re working out trauma on your child that happened to you when you were a child.

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So The Act is about a specific type of mental disorder, but do you think it will bring much needed attention to mental illness in general? We’re still afraid of it.

I agree with you 1,000 percent. Mental illness is so beguiling because so many people look “normal” and are struggling with mental illness, and we’ve done so little research. We probably know more about the moon than we know about mental illness, and that’s so frustrating because so many people struggle with it.

They don’t even know how many people have Munchausen syndrome by proxy. Of the cases they know, one in 10 actually end in a child dying. That’s a very deadly syndrome. I don’t know of other mental illnesses besides depression that have such a high incident of death attached to them.

Is there a price that you’ve paid, emotionally or mentally, to go to these deep, dark places in these two roles, especially in such close proximity to each other?

I think it is a little bit heavy to carry around that stuff emotionally. I definitely feel like my mind and heart needs a break...I can leave it at the end of the day, but there is a little residual, because when you go home, then you’re working on tomorrow. So it never exactly goes away, but physically more than anything, it’s very hard. There was a point where I thought I was going to have a heart attack from gaining weight and keeping it on all this time. Plus, we were up in high altitudes and I was like, “Oh, my God, I can’t breathe great, you know? I am not good.”

How did it feel to gain weight for your character in Dannemora, and then do sex scenes?

I was like, “Yeah, I’m doing sex scenes.” There are women of all different sizes that are sexual and sexy and feel unapologetically sexy, so I want to have that conversation: Who’s allowed to be a sexual woman?

Congratulations on your awards season. You’re getting some of the best roles of your life. What is it like at 50 years old?

It’s totally shocking. I had no idea. I love Ben [Stiller, who directed Dannemora]. I’ve known Ben a long time. We did Flirting With Disaster [1996] together. I first auditioned for Ben 25 years ago for Reality Bites, so I’ve been wanting to work with him for a long time. There were movies that almost happened that he’d talk to me about, but I’m so glad he thought about me for Tilly. I think that opened up a lot of doors for me.

Related: Ben Stiller on His Seriously Funny Career, Family Life and Growing Up Famous

Are real-life women actually more intriguing to you to play than fictionalized women?

They’re based on real-life women, but they’re also innately fictional. If somebody hired me to play Patricia Arquette in a biopic, I wouldn’t play her the same way she is. It always goes through a filter of your concept of who they are.

You have a comedy coming up, Otherhood, with Angela Bassett and Felicity Huffman.

It was really fabulous. They’re such great actresses. Felicity has such good timing and humor and Angela is such a powerful presence and so warm and lovely. It was a much lighter subject matter than either of the other two. I got to just have fun and play with them and laugh. I got to be on the streets of New York: SoHo, Brooklyn and all over the city. It’s such a beautiful city.

You play Gillian Lieberman. Tell me a little about her.

I’m a mom who’s a little bit of a hippie, music teacher mom. All of our sons have stopped communicating to some level. We all feel like they’re taking us for granted, so we go track our sons down and force them to deal with us and reconnect with them.

You’re using your celebrity to speak out for women’s rights, especially equal pay. Has there been blowback for you with that?

At first, but not anymore. But even when there was a little bit of blowback, so many women were like, “Oh, my God, thank you so much for talking about that.” Then laws started getting passed, people started seeing more money in their paycheck and people started having a conversation about it. I knew women who were brought in by their bosses and given big pay raises because they realized they weren’t paying them fairly. I’ll say it’s been a good outcome.

Do you have fond memories of the TV series Medium?

That was a really fun show to make and I love those kids, and Jake Weber [who played her husband] is amazing.

Do you believe in psychics?

I do. I believe there’s a lot of charlatans, but I do believe. I don’t think love dies and I don’t think energy dies and I think we can get guidance sometimes and protection.