Executive producer Kevin Sullivan chose two major stars to play against type in his new TV-movie "Under the Piano" (CBC, Sunday)
Set in 1950's Montreal, "Under the Piano" is the bittersweet story of Franny, an introverted girl with a leather brace on one arm, who spends her entire young life protecting her autistic sister Rosetta from a brutal medical establishment and an uncaring mother. (Autism is a severe mental handicap, barely understood today let alone in the 1950's.) Megan Follow, familiar to Canadians as the lead in Sullivan's 1985 TV-movie "Anne of Green Gables," plays the unstable and erratic Rosetta, while Amanda Plummer, the unstable, shrieking deviant in "Pulp Fiction," is the quietly heroic elder sister, Franny.
It's a departure for both actors, and it's difficult to imagine two more dissimilar women playing sisters. But when TV GUIDE visited the set of "Under the Piano," their rapport was obvious. Surrounded by movie mayhem, Follows and Plummer were friendly and forthcoming as they relaxed in Follows' trailer. After an eight-year absence from Canadian television, Megan Follows, 26, is back, but the inexperienced country girl she once portrayed is gone forever. In "Under the Piano," Follows plays a musically gifted autistic savant. Unable to connect emotionally with anyone, her only true expression is through her soulful classical music.
The daughter of Toronto-based actors Dawn Greenhalgh and Ted Follows, she started acting at age 9. At 16 she starred in the CBC film "Hockey Night," about a girl determined to play on a boys hockey team, followed by an acclaimed performance in "Boys and Girls," which won an Oscar for Best Live Short Film. Then, Follows became internationally famous as Anne Shirley. She got married, and moved to Los Angeles, where she lives with her two children. She guest starred on The Facts of Life and in 1993 landed a starring role in CBS's soapy, and short-lived, Second Chances with Connie Sellecca. Since then, she's starred in an episode of The Outer Limits and played Juliet as well as Mozart's wife at Ontario's Stratford Festival.
After deciding to take on such a differenty type of role as "Under the Piano," Follows says she was determined to get it right. "I was very lucky to get hooked up with Andrea Rifkin, who runs three group homes in Toronto for autistic children. I really learned something which was a real gift for me in this job." "You might think of Megan as the perfect Franny character," says Sullivan on the phone form his Toronto office, "but the subtleties in the requirements for an autistic character were different and I knew Megan's acting precision would make the part work. I felt we needed an actress who was enough of a chameleon to erase her own personality."
In the last few days of filming, Follows is emotionally exhausted from playing Rosetta, but values the experience. "My whole belief system has been broadened and shaken up," says Follows. "I know I certainly wouldn't want to raise my children in this way, but Rosetta's mother was a product of her time. We don't have tolerance, even today, for people who fall outside the norm. We had even less then."
MS. ECCENTRICITY
The last time we saw Amanda Plummer she was waving a gun and yelling obscenities in "Pulp Fiction." In "Under the Piano," her performance is equally powerful, but far more subtle.
Like Follows, she comes from an acting background: her father is renowned actor Christopher Plummer; her mother is stage actress Tammy Grimes. "Amanda was a wonderful horsewoman," says Christopher in a rare phone interview about his daughter from his home in Connecticut. "She wasn't the least bit interested in acting." But heredity won out when she joined the Williamstown Theatre Festival in her late teens, making her New York stage debut in 1979. Plummer won a Tony for her 1982 Broadway performance as the delusional nun in "Agnes of God" and continued to win awards, including best supporting actress in the TV-movie "Miss Rose White." Plummer also appeared as Benny's mentally challenged girlfriend on L.A. Law in the early 1990's/
"I've been fortunate," she says, "because I have been in theatre as well, to have played all kinds of women." Her approach to Franny was to forget about labeling her family situation as "dysfunctional" and to work on the emotion of her love for her sister. "Dysfunction is a robotic word," says Plummer, as her voice becomes passionate and excited. "To not function is like talking about a car and has nothing to do with human feelings. Enough of this hoity toity thing about dysfunction! I'm sick of it!"
THE STORY BEHIND THE STORY
"Under the Piano," is a dark story, but the inspired casting of Follows and Plummer (along with venerable Canadian-born opera star Teresa Stratas as the oppressive mother, Regina) will definitely attract an audience. Executive producer Kevin Sullivan is no stranger to difficult subjects: his TV movie "Butterbox Babies," based on a true story about adoption horrors, won CBC's highest ratings last year. "Small people in the world aren't necessarily small stories," says Sullivan.
"Under the Piano" is another true story, loosely based on material from an episode of 20/20 four years ago. Last February, a finished script hit Sullivan's desk, and he asked Follows, Plummer and Stratas to read it. "They all accepted within five minutes," he reports. Sullivan's decision to offer the subdued role of Franny to Plummer was partly strategic: he figured he had a better chance of getting the American star if she had a role that was different from anything she'd been offered before.
As for casting Follows as Rosetta, not only did Sullivan know she could deliver the performance he wanted, he was determined to get her working back in Canada. "People will be intrigued with Megan Follows because they associate her with 'Anne of Green Gables', says Sullivan. "She hasn't really done anything for television in the past 10 years that has been a tent-pole piece. I felt like it was time for us, as a company who's worked with her before, to offer her something really riveting."
Follows certainly agrees "Under the Piano" holds some vivid truths. "Dysfunction is just another label," she says. "That's a very dangerous thing to do- to put labels on people." END

The article is accompanied by a full page cover photo of Megan and Amanda from the film; a sixth page color photo of Megan and Amanda seated on a sofa, looking at the camera; A third page color photo of Amanda hugging Megan from the film- AMANDA PLUMMER plays it straight in Under the Piano; MEGAN FOLLOWS erases her own personality