Solving Medium Mysteries with Patricia and Rosanna Arquette

Although the Arquette sisters have carved out there own unique paths as actresses in Hollywood, Patricia and Rosanna have barely worked with each other. Now that Patricia Arquette has had a success run for the past four seasons on the popular supernatural series Medium, it only made sense for her to team up with her older sister for an episode on her own show. On Sunday, April 7, Rosanna Arquette steps on to the set of Medium to play a dangerous femme fatale "cougar" who Allison and Scanlon set out to track down after the savage murder of two young men in the episode "Lady Killer".

The Deadbolt recently caught up with the Arquette sisters on a conference call to find out what it's like to work with each other, whether Patricia will ever have their brother David on the show, what it was like for Rosanna to play a femme fatale, and how Patricia arrived on the set of Desperately Seeking Susan with a shaved head to tell Rosanna she wanted to become and actress.

Particia and Rosanna on how it feels to finally be working together and why took so long:

PATRICIA ARQUETTE: You know, we did work together before one time; it was on a documentary, Searching for Debra Winger.

ROSANNA ARQUETTE: Oh, yeah.

PATRICIA: But that was a documentary, it wasn’t fiction. So this has been our first fictitious experience so to speak. I don’t know why it’s taken so long because we’ve always wanted to...

ROSANNA: Glenn [Gordon Caron], the creator, said he was just waiting for the right one - the right show; there was just never one that he thought was the right one. And then this one was written for a man and they decided to turn it into a woman. And so here it happened. But, I have to say, Patricia’s the hardest working girl in show business. No one knows how hard that show really is because they don’t have a full on script every day so it’s pages and pages of dialogue that the actors have to memorize, which was really challenging for me since my show got canceled a year ago. So I did not have that muscle memory and I was just like, "Oh, my god." It was intense. And she works very hard - those guys and David [Cubitt] and - her co-star, all of them.

PATRICIA: It was hard for me in that I was smiling so much at what Rosanna was doing and she’s cracking me up. So it was really enjoyable.

ROSANNA: I don’t know if it was supposed to be comedic but...

PATRICIA: It was. It was really good.

ROSANNA: I kept finding all this stuff and it made laugh - but, maybe. He has a sense of humor, Glenn.

PATRICIA: Think about Moonlighting.

ROSANNA: Yeah, that’s what it had, it had that little element. You do a great job, Patricia, I don’t know. It’s - the people don’t know - [it's to] the people that are watching that it seems very simple, but it’s hard.

Patricia Arquette on whether there's talk of getting their brother David on the show:

"I don’t know; I would love that. David’s directed two episodes. Rich - our brother Rich has been on - I’m not sure if it was the second year, I think it was the second year. He played one of our killers. And I would love Alexis to come on and David to come on. But David has directed two of them and I don’t know how many favors he owes me at this point."

Patricia on whether there's a "sister shorthand" that they have between them that makes it easier to work together:

"I was really enjoying Rosanna’s work [on the show]. And I kind of had to keep catching myself because my own self was coming through. I don’t think Allison is quite as on board. So I had to keep kind of putting myself in check. It was so fun to watch her, so in that way it was really fun being at work and fun to be around her. But I enjoy her so much, it was sort of weird to try to keep pulling myself back from that."

Rosanna and Patricia on growing up around the exploring nature of their parents:

ROSANNA: I did lots of exploring in in my life that I’d love to do some more. It’s constantly - a lot of self-exploration; I’m surrounded by a lot of self-exploration books right now. But I know, Patricia, you just went to Egypt. She’s always out and finding great things to do and traveling in the world.

PATRICIA: Yeah, I was just in Egypt and India. That was amazing. But I do think our parents, their main voyages were - my mom was born Jewish and supposed to go to school to marry a Jewish man. And then she ended up marrying a man who had been raised Christian. And then he converted to Islam, so their exploration was about different religions, comparative religions. So when I saw this warfare going on between these different religions, I really didn’t understand it because in our house we could do little Hanukah things or we would fast for Ramadan. So I didn’t see where the warfare came in...

ROSANNA: They’re so similar, both religions anyway, that’s the thing.

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