by Gill Pringle
Inspired by Brockovich’s life, Sagal’s Annie “Rebel” Bello is a blue-collar legal advocate without a law degree; a funny, messy, brilliant and fearless woman who cares desperately about the causes she fights for and the people she loves.
With Brockovich serving as an executive producer on this series, created by Krista Vernoff (Grey’s Anatomy, Station 19), Sagal is quick to point out that she is not actually playing Brockovich.
“I’ve met Erin a couple of times and we got on immediately. She’s really a gal’s gal but it was made clear to me early on that we don’t have her life rights so I’m not actually playing Erin Brockovich; I’m playing a woman ‘inspired’ by her. But her energy is certainly evident in Rebel,” she says of her single mum character who has three kids by three different dads.
Noting how her own life is not that dissimilar to that of her character’s, she says, “One of the things that appealed to me about this role is that I know what a difficult juggle that is. I also have three children of my own, and I believe that I’m a better mom because I am a working mom and because my life outside of my family life is just as satisfying.
“I feel that this is the situation with a lot of women. For myself, I think that I would not have been a role model for my children, of which I have two daughters and one son, if I had not been true to myself and what it is that I’ve always intended to do which is be in the arts, in the creative field,” says Sagal, 67, who actually began her career in show business as a singer-songwriter, performing backup vocals for Bob Dylan and Etta James as well as being a member of Bette Midler’s backup group, The Harlettes.
But once she set her sights on an acting career, there was no stopping Sagal and she has hardly been off the TV screen in the past 35 years, thanks to her breakthrough role as Peggy Bundy on Married . . . with Children, through to Cate Hennessy on 8 Simple Rules; Gemma Teller Morrow on Sons of Anarchy to, more recently, Dr Jones on Shameless.
Continuing to list the likenesses between her own world and that of Rebel’s, she finds that there’s more than she previously imagined. “I, too, have stumbled a few marriages and, if you talked to my children, they’d say I missed a few too many school outings and I wasn’t necessarily the carpool mom, because I had to be at work.
“But I think, at the end of the day, they would be so proud to have had a mom that modeled that life and, actually, two of them are now following, which is very similar to Rebel,” says the thrice-wed actress who was previously married musicians Freddie Beckmeier and Jack White [not of White Stripes], and currently wed to writer-producer Kurt Sutter.
Both older children from her marriage to White – son Jackson James White and daughter Sarah Grace White, who has a small role on Rebel – have followed in their mum’s footsteps while her 14-year-old daughter with Sutter is still in high school.
“It’s interesting that Rebel has two older children that really get into the fact that she wasn’t around very much and they blame her a lot, and like ‘why weren’t you there?’ But, if you look at the bigger picture of this story, they’ve both gone into service work, like their mother did – one’s a doctor and one’s a lawyer, so something rubbed off in the name of fighting the good fight and doing the good work. So, they can be pissed off at her for not being home for dinner but they’ve also admired her as well.”
Sagal herself is in huge admiration of Rebel. “I love that she is somebody who does service in the name of social justice and also balances this kooky family life. As with most women, she’s trying to juggle a whole bunch of things at one time and it doesn’t always work out, so I liked that it wasn’t perfect and tied up in a bow,” she says.
The biggest challenges of the role, she muses, is finding the characteristics that she doesn’t already share in her own life: “Rebel is very aggressive; she doesn’t take no for an answer and she gets in people’s faces. She’s very impolite, at times,” laughs Sagal, the daughter of director Boris Sagal (The Omega Man).
“She’s always right about her particular thing that she’s fighting for, but she doesn’t always use the most diplomatic means to get her point across. So, that’s been really fun and quite a bit different than me because I tend to be way more diplomatic than she is.”
If the streaming services have opened up opportunities for older actresses, then Sagal insists that there’s still not enough of those roles: “Most times I’m just grateful to be offered the job, like this job,” she says. “I’ve been offered quite a few opportunities in different scripts and this was the one that really jumped out for me, but I have to say this was the rare time that happens as a working actor, where usually it’s the luck of the draw. And also, being a woman of a certain age, there are fewer roles written for us, and so I just feel grateful and lucky that this landed in my lap. It’s just been a combination of a lot of years of hard work.”
She certainly believes Rebel is just the kind of woman we need today. “One of the reasons I think the show is timely and important is that Rebel’s main focus is that she empowers people; this is not some ego gratification of hers.
“What she likes to do is give people the fishing pole rather than catch the fish for them and I think that in the times that we’re living in, and especially what we’ve all been going through this last year, it is all the more important that everybody not feel powerless and that their voice matters. And Rebel’s point of view is that every voice matters.
“I think we live in a time when people have been telling us that we don’t see what we see…that we’ve all kind of looked at the world’s situation and there’s a real fine line that’s being crossed and people are told, in certain situations that, ‘No, you’re not seeing this as horrible as it is..’ There’s just so much misinformation and different opinions and I think the point is that if you see injustice and if you see something wrong, don’t be swayed from getting your point of view across and that everybody’s voice matters. One voice is loud,” she argues.
“So, Rebel’s point of view is really to speak up and to not give up because a lot of people, when you speak out for injustice, will tell you that you’re wrong. But if you’re seeing what you’re seeing, then talk about it. So, yes, I can’t think of a more timely time to have a character like Rebel to help empower people.”
Having worked in the industry for so long, she appreciates that her primary role is to entertain. “We’re entertainers, we’re not necessarily passing on a social message, however, if that were to be combined within the entertainment realm, I think this can be a fantastic thing. We’re not schooling people; we’re hoping to slide that schooling in while you’re laughing and crying at the same time,” she says of the series which also features Sex and the City’s John Corbett alongside Andy Garcia as Rebel’s long-suffering legal partner.
Sagal’s own meetings with the real Brockovich were inspiring. “When you meet Erin, she is a very big enthusiastic full-of-life person who believes in what she believes in and that energy was around all of us making this series.”
Rebel is released on STAR on Disney+ on Friday May 28, 2021
