Amid creepy terror: a huge acting challenge

We know that actors can stretch far beyond themselves. They can… well, act.
But they don’t usually stretch this far.
Judith Light (shown here) is one of the most involved and articulate people in show business. In the six-part “The Terror: Devil in Silver” (debuting Thursday, May 7, on AMC+ and Shudder), she’s Dorry, her life crumbling inside a mental hospital.
“She’s fragile and she’s heartbreaking,” Light told the Television Critics Association.
And now even her simple world is wobbling. This hospital — the only place she’s known for 30 years — is full of death and dismay.
This is not where we expect to see Light, 77. Her early fame came from a sitcom (“Who’s the Boss?) and a soap opera, with lots of deep roles following. She’s won two Tonys, an Emmy and two Daytime Emmys, plus honorary awards — ome from the Tonys, the other a doctorate from her alma mater, Carnegie Mellon.
But as usual, she’e with gifted colleagues. “A lot of the people that I’m working with on this were people I had been in theater with in New York.”
Staffers at the hospital are played by CCH Pounder, Stephen Root, Assif Mandvi and more. They manage patients who lost hope .long ago .. plus a new arrival (Dan Stevens, of “Downton Abbey” fame) who’s perplexed.
Like previous newcomers, he finds Dorry creepy and then deeply human. It’s a complex role that involves everything, including her long hair.
“Nobody has really taken care of her hair,” Light said. “They just let it grow. It’s the one thing that’s almost like her security blanket.”
Actors can turn anything into a prop. In another role, Light had her head shaved; in this one, she’s forever toying with tangles of hair. “It’s like she plays with it because it defines what’s in her mind.”
But beyond the props is the inner soul, playing someone totally unlike herself. Light has been there before.
A half-century ago, as a young actress who’d already done Ibsen on Broadway, she detoured into the “One Life to Live” soap opera (whee she met her husband, Robert Desiderio). She took over the role of Karen Wolek, a doctor’s wife who crumbled in a courtroom, admitting to being a prostitute. She promptly won a Daytime Emmy in the role, winning again the next year.
Yes, Light is the mirror opposite of Karen or Dorry. Still: “There are things that you can find in yourself that you can draw in …. Places where I have not stood up for myself are places I can find in Dorry.”
But was there really ever a time Light didn’t stand up?
She recalled a girl in school who was ignored. “I always talked to her, but I didn’t say to other people, ‘Don’t treat her like that.'”
Now she tries to speak up for everyone. She was an early advocate for AIDS victims, then for gay rights and trans rights.
Some of that was spurred by her roles — as the mother of an AIDS victim in “The Ryan White Story” and as a woman whose husband transitioned in “Transparent.” She also sees extra meaning in her Dorry role: “What does it mean to be in a world and a healthcare system that diminishes people?”
But Light also does straight-out entertainment. She did three seasons of “Ugly Betty,” was a judge on 25 episodes of “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit” and had guest or continuing roles in countless others, including winning an Emmy as a retirement-home rebel in “Poker Face.”
And now she’s in an outright thriller. Those can be helpful, too.
“Particularly now, we feel scared,” she said, and a fictional jolt helps. “There’s some way in which it makes us feel alive or connected …. Maybe it’s people reaching out to have someone hold them.”