INTERVIEW Italia Ricci on playing cancer-stricken April in ABC Family’s Chasing Life

Just days after the big screen adaptation of author John Green’s brilliant and unabashedly honest look at a young woman diagnosed with cancer, The Fault In Our Stars, brought in a whopping $48.2 million at the box office during it’s opening weekend, ABC Family is set to premiere Chasing Life, a new drama series that also tells the story of a young woman diagnosed with cancer who aspires to earning an identity separate from her diagnosis.

The main character in Chasing Life, which premieres tonight at 9/8c, is April Carver — a bright young journalist living in Boston whose life has just taken a professional and romantic turn for the better when she receives a devastating diagnosis. From the network’s press release:

The series follows April through her journey in the face of this daunting revelation, during a time in her life when the challenges of finding love and success would be enough to keep any girl occupied. But April is determined to fight and refuses to give up her dreams and goals. Along the way, she’ll find new reserves of strength and passion within and discover that facing death may really be the only way to truly live.

Actress Italia Ricci (above), who plays April on Chasing Life, talked with various media outlets in a conference call interview about the difficulties of the role and how she prepared for playing April.

“Immediately after I booked the role, I thought I was going to learn everything I could about cancer, become and expert and be able to handle anything that the writers threw at me,” Italia says. “But then I realized that my character doesn’t know everything about cancer, and so I thought it would be better for my performance if I didn’t know more about it than April knew. So I wasn’t anticipating anything that was going to happen to her.”

So what about the inevitable comparisons to John Green’s book and the film adaptation? “I’ve seen The Fault in Our Stars,” Italia reveals, “and it’s pretty similar to our show. The types of cancers are different and some of the plot points, but it’s a wonderful movie and I hope people watch it.”

Here is the preview trailer followed by more from the interview with Italia in Q&A format:

Do you think Chasing Life can properly portray what cancer patients go through?

Italia: The show isn’t all about cancer. From the people that I’ve spoken to everybody goes through it differently, so there’s no one way to try and show the world what somebody would be experiencing. So I did my best to play April as authentically as we can within the confines of entertainment television. I’m sure there will be some people who completely disagree with how she’s reacting to certain things physically and emotionally, and then there’s some people who might say that’s exactly what they experienced, or what they saw somebody experience.

I hope people can at least understand. They’re going to know it’s still television. It’s not a documentary, but at the same time, being on set doing some of those scenes, it does get scary when you have to remind yourself that you’re not sick.

How do writers keep a show like this from getting too dark or depressing with such a heavy subject matter?

Italia: People just have to take my word for it, it’s not depressing. It’s not dark. It’s not going to leave you feeling heavy after you watch it. The writers are so brilliant. It’s funny. They deliver the bad stuff or the dramatic stuff and then it’s right back at it just like real life is. There’s comedy in it and there’s so much more to it than the cancer. It’s about friendship and her family and her romance, and there are episodes that you totally forget that she’s even sick.

How would you describe your character April?

Italia: She’s so many things. She’s just a regular girl. She’s a stubborn, smart, ambitious girl who just wants happiness and success in her career and love, everything that most people want. She’s written so well that I feel like she’s every man’s woman because she’s not always in the same head space. She gets giddy and girly and goofy and then she’ll just be an angry drunk, we’re all a little bit bipolar [laughs]. It’s just the way the world works, but she’s so inspiring and she makes mistakes and then she relies on people to help. She’s not a hero. She’s definitely a role model, but she knows she’s not perfect. I think that’s really important for a character we want audiences to relate to.

Can you talk about the significance behind all the things April is chasing in Chasing Life?

Italia: Oh gosh, she’s chasing everything! She’s chasing that success as a journalist. She’s chasing the happiness for her mother to find love after her father. She’s chasing her sister all around as she’s figuring out who she is becoming. She’s chasing — before she gets diagnosed — she was already chasing life. You can see she’s already working hard. The first scene of the episode shows you that, but now she’s just got to run a bit faster.

What is the hardest part about playing April?

Italia: At the beginning the hardest parts were days when I would have scenes where I’d have to get to a pretty emotional place and then we would finish the scene and move on to a happy scene or a regular scene. I would feel like I hadn’t finished letting all those emotions out, so I would end up just crying in my car on the way home or in the shower or something just to let it out [laughs], so I didn’t project it onto to some other part of my life that didn’t deserve it.

But now that I’m getting a lot of fan mail and people are sharing their stories with me and it’s so beautiful and I’m so grateful that I can be somebody that makes them feel like they’re being heard. The hardest part, I don’t feel so great when I get to come home and not be sick when there are so many people who can’t turn it off.

What is April’s role and relationship like within her family?

Italia: April’s dad passed away two years before the pilot in a car accident, so she’s become almost the rock, the man in the house so to speak. Her mom is still dealing with it in her own way and her sister is just trying to become who she is and her grandma is just hilarious, so April is sort of keeping it all together. And you learn that she was planning to move away after college, but had to stay home to be there for the family, so she’s definitely the foundation that keeps all the wheels turning.

When she gets sick, I think a lot of her hesitation before coming clean about being sick is because she doesn’t want the people who she feels she has to take care of are needing to take care of her. She feels so much responsibility to make sure that everybody is happy and when she tells them that she’s going to need the help now and she can’t play that role as well as she would before then, then she thinks it will sort of all fall apart. Obviously she’s scared. She’s terrified.

What will viewers be most surprised by when they watch Chasing Life?

Italia: How funny it is. The pilot is always tough and general audiences don’t always realize that you have to jam so many stories and so many characters and so much information into a pilot episode that a lot of the times it’s not like the rest of episodes. But even in our pilot, you feel that it’s not heavy. It’s a feel good show. It’s a feel good family show and I think that people are going to be surprised at how much more they’re going to laugh than cry.

Can you share anything about the new upcoming season?

Italia: The season is going to explore how the diagnosis elevates all of the stakes in April’s life. All of her decisions matter to her a little bit more than she thought they did at this point and how she handles that and the mistakes that she makes and the victories that she also accomplishes. It’s interesting to see her whole world getting massaged because of this big awful thing, but people can expect to see so many things. I read the scripts and I get so into it like “seriously, what, where, why?” It’s so cool.

Do you feel because you’ve taken on a role like this that means that now you have a responsibility when you’re off the set to help with cancer awareness?

Italia: Yes, absolutely. As soon as I booked it, I was like what can I do. It always felt like this massive dark presence that I was uncomfortable addressing or even looking at because I didn’t know very much about it. Now it’s all about awareness we’re bringing and we’re taking that stigma away from that. We’re taking the power away from that and I think that’s great.

When I first started shooting and even when I booked it, it didn’t really cross my mind that people would look at me and I would be taking on these responsibilities. I don’t want to screw it up. I obviously hope that it’s going to help some people, but I’m still just a really lucky girl who booked a really great job.

Chasing Life premieres Tuesday, June 10 at 9/8c on ABC Family and will then air Tuesday nights at the same time.