Mary-Louise Parker got into microwaving Moon Pies in a big way during the "Sugartime" shoot.
"Delicious," she reports.So is her portrayal of Phyllis McGuire, a legendary show-biz confection - and tough cookie, too, as we learn in "Sugartime," an HBO original film debuting Saturday at 9 p.m.
Phyllis, of course, was one of the McGuire Sisters, three saccharine chanteuses as brazenly wholesome as the era that launched them.
They imbued their glittery gowns and painted faces with 1950s-vintage virtue. They were Daddy's little girls as bottle blondes, singing in three-part harmony "We got the whole wide world in our hands," "You do something to me," and their signature hit, "Be my little sugar and love me all the time."
The rub: In 1960, Phyllis was swept off her feet by mobster Sam Giancana (played by John Turturro). And Giancana, a fearsomely powerful Mafia boss, was likewise smitten when he saw her onstage.
No wonder. Unlike the rest of the world, Phyllis gave Sam what-for whenever he pushed her too far. She was as uncompromising as she was kittenish. He loved it. Loved her. To his downfall. That's the bittersweet story "Sugartime" tells.
Mary-Louise Parker, who has played more than her share of the ailing and woebegone in such films as "Boys on the Side," "The Client," "Fried Green Tomatoes" and TV's "A Place for Annie," says she loved stepping into Phyllis McGuire's high heels.
"She was so positive in a lot of ways, and I've played a lot of people who've died or had a very tragic side to them," says Parker, adding, "It's fun to wear all those pretty dresses and look like a Barbie doll."
"It was a totally different time," says Parker, casting back to the McGuire Sisters' heyday, which was before she was born. "That ingenuousness and naivete and sweetness, it does not exist now. Today there's some kind of jaded, world-weary thing. You'd just be laughed at today if you got up onstage and did what the McGuire Sisters did."
"There was something so pure about them," Parker says almost wistfully, "and when you have struggled like they had to to reach success, and then you're able to give people something really nice ... well, why NOT smile, showing two rows of teeth?"
At that, she grins the big grin she put to such good use playing Phyllis.
"I have a place in myself that is very available to that kind of thing," she confides - "that thinks, I can go there."
But Parker went there without the help of the woman she portrays. The real Phyllis McGuire, now 64 and a Las Vegas socialite, was uninvolved with "Sugartime," and reportedly pretty sour on the project.
Therefore, Parker studied recordings, filmed performances and newsreels to prepare for the role.
"I had to find what the McGuire Sisters evoked when they were performing," Parker says. "They were so engaging and fun and clean and sweet, which I found exhilarating. And I loved doing the numbers. Sublime! The girls who played my sisters and I were in heaven."
But wearing crinoline and singing those squeaky-clean songs wasn't why Parker signed on. She says she did it mostly to work with John Turturro.
Turturro "is the best actor I've ever worked with," says Parker. Thus he eclipses in her esteem the likes of Alec Baldwin, Eric Stoltz and former beau Timothy Hutton. "John is the best ... the BEST!"
She had never met him before production on "Sugartime" began, "but right away we understood each other. We didn't have to translate things or explain things. He worked tirelessly. And he was so funny and so sweet."