The Province - January 5, 1996

"Playing savant was a frightening task"
Damian Inwood

Canadian actress Megan Follows says that playing autistic savant Rosetta Basilio was a frightening and exciting challenge.

She had to throw away a lot of her traditional acting tools to portray the monotonal speech and the actions of the woman at the centre of Under the Piano, a gripping CBC TV movie that airs Sunday at 8 p.m.

"You cannot just come in, spontaneously, and be yourself," says Follows. "That's not going to work. I was very excited and very frightened because we didn't have an enormous time-frame to develop the character and rehearse."

In the film, Follows' riveting performance has strong echoes of the Oscar-winning role played by Dustin Hoffman in Rain Man.

Under the Piano is the harrowing story of Rosetta, the autistic daughter of a fading opera diva.

Rosetta's innate musical gifts are suppressed by her domineering and controlling mother, Regina, played by Teresa Stratas.

It's based on the true story of New York sisters Dolly and Henrietta Giardini.

Amanda Plummer stars as Rosetta's sister, Franny, whose love and support helps Rosetta recover from a suicide attempt brought on by her treatment by her venomous, uncaring mother.

Follows says she worked with Andrea Rifkin, an adviser who runs group homes for autistic children in Toronto.

"Rosetta echoes back sounds and dialogue she hears," says Follows. "What was difficult was that on the one level you can say it's blank and emotionless but I came to realize that it isn't -- it's a different way of expressing it.

"She does have her own language and it's a language of behaviors and gestures, more than words."

Follows says that Rifkin was on the set with her, breaking down every moment in the script and advising how an autistic person would react.

She also met Dolly Giardini in New York and asked her about her sister, Henrietta, whom Rosetta is based on.

"I also watched Henrietta and she would talk to me about things she wanted to talk about," says Follows.

She said she'd seen Rain Man when it first came out in 1988 and watched it again while preparing for her role as Rosetta.

"I knew that the people I'd spoken to, who worked in the autistic community, found his performance very believable," she says. "They're similar because they're both savants but he's more advanced in his verbal communication skills than Rosetta. She has a different range of expressions and a different dynamic with her sister."

Rosetta is a real departure and will probably lead to a slew of award nominations for Follows who's probably best known for her award-winning title role as Anne of Green Gables.

When I last talked to her in 1989, Follows was a 21-year-old actress living in a walk-up apartment in New York's Hell's Kitchen and shooting pool in a neighborhood pool hall.

"I've come a long way baby -- that was another lifetime ago," she laughs.

These days, she has a home in Silver Lake, Calif., and has two children.

In the last six years, she's made TV movies and was a regular on the CBS series Second Chances.

She was at the Stratford Festival last year, playing in Amadeus and in Romeo and Juliet. She will return to Ontario next month for the 1996 season.

"At the moment, stage is an amazing learning experience and it's such a beautiful theatre to work in," says Follows. "I'm doing King Lear, playing Cordelia opposite Bill Hutt's Lear."

Source: The Province