After nursing an obsession, 'Sopranos' star Edie Falco gets a medical series
BY RICHARD HUFF
DAILY NEWS TV EDITOR
Monday, April 20th 2009, 4:00 AM

Regan/Showtime
Edie Falco as Jackie O'Hurley in "Nurse Jackie"
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Rather on rely on up-close examples of emergency-room nurses for inspiration for her new series, "Nurse Jackie," Edie Falco turned to something she knew well.
She watched television.
Loads of it. Seems she's addicted to the Discovery Health Channel and its hospital-based doctor shows.
"For years, I've been watching documentary medical things," she told the Daily News. "I've always been fascinated by them on Discovery Health. 'Trauma: Life in the ER,' 'Mystery Diagnosis,' 'Untold Stories of the ER' - all those things. I am obsessed and always have been, for years and years."
"Nurse Jackie," set to launch in June on Showtime, is a half-hour dark comedy that stars Falco as a strong-willed but flawed ER nurse in New York City. She's hooked on Vicodin for back problems and occasionally uses the stimulant Adderall.
It's her first TV job since she played mob wife Carmela Soprano on HBO's "The Sopranos."
"I read a lot of stuff, and I started to think maybe I'm not ready to start working again, because nothing's appealing to me," she said.
She liked "Nurse Jackie" when she first read it, but wasn't hooked. She put it aside. It was reworked. Soon, she was being fitted for nurse's scrubs.
Falco set out to observe real nurses at work, but found the experience being an actress in the frenzy of an emergency room a bit off-putting.
"I'm not a research person," Falco said. "I thought, maybe I'll do what other actors do and go to an emergency room."
So she went to Bellevue a couple of times and discovered it wasn't for her.
"Mostly because I was so sensitive to the people who were in there," she said. "Having been in emergency rooms, like all of us, it's such a horrible day and you don't want to be there and you're feeling like s-, and there's this actress walking around.
"I felt so ostentatious, pretentious and all that.
Falco makes it clear that while her character is a nurse, "Nurse Jackie" is not a show about nurses in general, in the same way that "The Sopranos" was not about every Italian-American family, just one.
One thing that makes the show different for Falco is that, for the first time, she's a producer, too. It wasn't a job she sought, but it was offered to her. Soon, the production team was soliciting her thoughts on a variety of issues, and she felt like she was part of the organization.
"It's very empowering - that is an appropriate word," she said. "I feel smart. You're treated sometimes, if you're the actress, the talent, you get this feeling people think you're not very smart. And there are a lot of actors who have happily added to that visage. I am smart, but I'm not asked to use it all the time in a way that people recognized.
"I feel like a smart person," she added. "I've been in this business for a long time, and I actually do know far more about other aspects that I never ever realized about this business."