Rita Wilson accepted her very odd role in the very odd Lifetime TV movie "Invisible Child" because, well, it was just so strange.
She plays Annie, a lovely, charming and intelligent woman who has a great husband and two beautiful children. The problem is, she thinks she has three children -- thus the title of the movie."When I read the script, I thought it was a story I had never seen before," Wilson said. "I had never heard of anything like this.
"I did research. I called around to some doctors and said, 'Is there anything that exists at all like this?' And it doesn't. It was completely made up, and I was fascinated by that."
The movie itself is sort of surreal. Annie is convinced that, in addition to her daughter, Doc (Mae Whitman), and her son, Sam, she has a 5-year-old daughter named Maggie. She talks to the non-existent child, she cares for her, she worries about her.
Her husband, Tim (Victor Garber) plays along with all of this. As does young Doc. Sam, a preschooler, genuinely believes he has an invisible sister.
"I was fascinated by their relationship because I think you could look at it two different ways," Wilson said. "You can sort of look at it as a family that's very, very dysfunctional or a family that loves each other so much that they are willing to put up with something because they have faith that it's a temporary thing. And they offer their love in this sort of unconditional way."
Into this bizarre but somehow idyllic family comes Gillian (Tushka Bergen), a young woman Annie hires as a nanny. Gillian doesn't know quite what to make of the invisible child but comes to love Annie, Tim and the children. But her concern causes her to set in motion events that could destroy the family.
David Field ("Amazing Grace and Chuck") penned the script, from a story he wrote with Ron Bass ("Rainman" and "Stepmom"). In the hands of director Joan Micklin Silver ("Crossing Delancy"), "Invisible Child" is at once charming and puzzling.
And, while there are some possible explanations for Annie's behavior presented, there are no definitive answers.
"What I loved about the script was that that wasn't quite explained," Wilson said. "And I think that there are all sorts of mysteries about people in life and sometimes things are just inexplicable. . . . For me, it was more a feeling of loneliness and a desire to create something that made her feel less lonely."
In the movie, Wilson plays a mother who's just about perfect -- even when it comes to mothering a non-existent child. And in real life, she almost didn't take the part because of her own children.
(Wilson and Tom Hanks are the parents of Chester, 8, and Truman, 3.)
"It was originally supposed to shoot in Oregon. And I thought, 'This would be so great -- I'd love to do this movie,' " Wilson said. "And then I realized that it would be really, really hard at that period of time that they wanted to shoot it, because it was right when school was starting. Tom's movie ('The Green Mile') was going over schedule, and the time that I thought I could shoot it was now not going to be available because we'd both be working at the same time."
So Wilson reluctantly turned "Invisible Child" down -- until Lifetime came back and asked what they could do to get her on board.
"And I said, 'Well, if you shot it in L.A., it would be a lot easier," Wilson said. So they did, "which I thought was incredibly gracious and incredibly accurate in terms of their caring for kids. I mean, they put their money where their mouth was."
And, as busy as both Wilson and Hanks are, she said being actors/parents actually works out quite well.
"I sort of think actors (are) really lucky," Wilson said, "because they're able to go in and do a job and have a definite end to the job, after two months or three months or whatever. Then you can take time off. So it's kind of a luxurious job to have, in a way.
"We try to work only when the other person is not working. That's a good thing to do, I think, because we take the family with us, and we keep the family intact."
Which is not to say that the two of them won't work together, as they have in past projects since they got married, like "Sleepless in Seattle," "That Thing You Do" and "From the Earth to the Moon." Although Wilson's parts in those projects have been relatively minor.
"It's been, sort of, smaller parts or something where I can go in for a couple of weeks and do something and then come out. And that's manageable," she said. "But it's just if you're both working intensely on a movie, it's not 9 to 5, it's 5 to 9. And that's kind of hard to do if you're both not in the house."
And Wilson and Hanks are always looking for good projects to work on together.
"You just wait for something good to come along that you like and that's basically all it is," she said. " 'Earth to the Moon' was, I thought, a really quality project. And, of course, my husband produced it so that was a really good thing."
At which point her co-star in "Invisible Child" couldn't resist. "Who's your husband?" Garber asked.
"A little actor guy," Wilson replied.