In the new drama series “Good Behavior” (premiering at 8 p.m. Tuesday on TNT), Michelle Dockery (“Downton Abbey”) plays Letty Dobesh, a thief, con artist and grifter who has recently been released from prison. While eager to start anew and turn her life around, Letty is facing her problems with addiction to drugs and alcohol and the thrill of making a score, as well as her romantic entanglement with a hit man.
Two of her “Good Behavior” co-stars, Lusia Strus and Terry Kinney, have long ties to the Chicago theater scene. Both actors have worked in scores of productions here, and Kinney, of course, is a co-founder of the Steppenwolf Theatre Company.
Strus’ involvement was “something 20 years in the making,” the actress said with a laugh. She credited “Good Behavior” co-creator Chad Hodge with playing a key role in her being cast as Estelle, the tough-as-nails mother of Dockery’s Letty character in the show.
Hodge, who grew up in Highland Park, has had an eye on Strus since he was a freshman at Northwestern and she was a struggling young actress working with the Neo-Futurists and performing in the ensemble’s “Too Much Light Makes the Baby Go Blind.” Fast-forward to more recent times, when Strus appeared in “Good People” at Steppenwolf and Hodge contacted her via Facebook to let her know he was a huge fan of her work.
“At that point, I didn’t even know he was a writer or producer. I just thought it was such a lovely thing for him to write to me, and a friendship was struck up,” Strus said in a call from her home in the New York area. “It’s taken two decades, but finally we are working together.”
Strus is enjoying playing a character who bears little resemblance to her Ukranian-born mother — whom she regularly returns to Chicago to visit — but who is similar in one regard.
“In the show, Estelle is a single mom, and I grew up with my own mother, who was a single mom. Estelle had Letty when she was 15, and they have this very primitive female relationship that is often like that of sisters, but Letty happened to come out of Estelle’s body. I say the two women are viciously bonded. They don’t like it and they love it — sometimes at the same time.
“Before doing this, I must say, I have never read that kind of relationship in a TV show script.”
Known for her facility with accents, Strus noted that playing Estelle is an intriguing challenge. While the character comes from a poor background in the rural South, the actress pointed out, “there are lots of different ranges for the accent of a woman like that. Every now and then, when I get too comfortable doing a scene, I have to make sure my Chicago accent doesn’t slip out — sounding like ‘Get me a pop,’ or the equivalent of that coming out of my mouth!”
While in her early introduction to the audience, Estelle “is truly a major bitch,” said Strus. “you will see her evolve as things move along. All of the characters in the show are complicated and often surprise you by both what they say and what they do. They often are the best of the worst, and then sometimes they are the worst of the best,” she added with a laugh.
As for Kinney, he’s playing Christian, a parole officer who is working to keep Letty clean and sober. “I had some experience with that kind of thing from ‘Oz,’ ” the acclaimed prison-set series in which the actor starred from 1997 to 2003.
His character, too, evolves quite a bit in just this first season of the series. “He’s a guy who starts out in this boring, staid environment, checking up on people he really doesn’t like. Then along comes Letty and she’s such a spark of adventure for him — with a colorful personality and intelligence. He kind of becomes her savior. I liked that aspect of the role.”
As Kinney sees it, Dockery accepted the lead role of Letty because it is about as far could be from her long-running Lady Mary Crawley on “Downton Abbey.”
That kind of switch didn’t surprise him. “She is that kind of actor, and real actors — at their core — are character actors. They like to change it up all the time.”
