Sometimes you stop dead in your tracks when a headline comes across the news, as it’s so hard to believe something like this actually happened. Lifetime knows that all too well and continues to deliver ripped-from-the-headlines original movies with some serious star power. Cybill Shepherd and Steve Guttenberg headline How to Murder Your Husband (Saturday, Jan. 14, at 8pm ET/PT) about Portland-based romance-thriller novelist Nancy Crampton-Brophy (Shepherd), who has a knack for writing about murder and women fantasizing about killing their own husbands … and then she ends up killing her own husband (Guttenberg). Here’s what the stars had to share on this one.
When you got the script, what was your first reaction when you read it, knowing it was based on a true story?
Cybill Shepherd: I was terrified to play her, because it was a true story. It was both a sense of horror and fascination — [fascination in] that she could love someone so deeply and then allegedly murder them.
Steve Guttenberg: It was a head scratcher. Why would Nancy do this? And truth is stranger than fiction.
How much did you research Nancy, and did you try to pick up any of her mannerisms/nuances or did you purposely stay clear of that?
Shepherd: I read her story and looked at pictures of her online when I first received the script. For me it’s about 50% on the inside and 50% external when I approach characters. So, when I got to wardrobe before filming and she started dressing me (with clothes so different from what I would wear), I started feeling Nancy from there.
Being married to a woman who just wrote an essay on how to kill her husband, you can’t help but think how that didn’t raise some flags of concern.
Guttenberg: Your wife is an expert at murdering husbands. Hello! This guy had to be in some deep love to miss that little firecracker of a clue.
You both have had iconic careers. What role do fans still ask you most about?
Shepherd: Taxi Driver. True story, Scorsese called my agent and said he’d like a Cybill Shepherd type and my agent responded, “How about the real thing?” Scorsese never considered me for the role because there was no dialogue for this character. My agent told me, “Just show up for the casting, say nothing and you’ll probably get it.” After I was hired, Scorsese put me and Robert De Niro in a room together ad-libbing, which became the dialogue for the movie
Guttenberg: Fans ask about Police Academy, Short Circuit, Three Men and a Baby, The Bedroom Window, Cocoon, Home for the Holidays and It Takes Two.