Alicia Coppola

You’ve appeared in more than 140 episodes of primetime television, yet books clearly play a big role in your life. What has reading given you over the years?

Books have been a salvation for me. As a child, they were my escape, and as an adult, they are my vacation and my education. Some books have helped shape who I am as a person, a mother and a wife, and others have informed roles I’ve played as an actress. Other books allow me to close the door on my life, pour a glass of wine, and be transported somewhere entirely different. Authors are my heroes. It takes guts — and a lot of clenched colons — to write a single sentence that doesn’t suck the life out of the reader.

“Books have been a salvation for me.”

Your book Gracefully Gone draws on the journals you and your father kept during his illness. When did you realise those writings might become a book?

The idea first came to me in 1994 when I left the soap opera I had been working on. I suddenly had time on my hands and a lot of pent-up emotion from my father’s decade-long illness. It was three years after his death, and I felt there was something meaningful in our journals, but it took me 22 years to figure out exactly what Gracefully Gone should be. Clearly, I process slowly, and I’ve learned that things happen when they’re supposed to. The book wouldn’t be what it is now if it had been written a second earlier.

What message did you hope readers would take away from the book?

That we are not alone, cancer and terminal illness affect everyone in some way. Grief begins at diagnosis, children need to be heard, and healing is a lifelong process. Scars remain, but love never dies.

“Grief begins at diagnosis, and healing is a lifelong process.”

Has writing changed the way you think about storytelling, whether in books or in acting?

Absolutely. Writing forces you to slow down and examine your emotions and experiences more closely. As an actor, you’re interpreting someone else’s words, but when you write, you’re confronting your own. It’s a very different kind of vulnerability.

Do you see more writing in your future?

Yes. I’m working on a book guiding young women through loss, co-written with a specialist in Hospice and Palliative Care. I’m also writing about the women we were before we became the mothers we are. And to challenge myself further, I’m working on an eight-minute spoken word piece that I’ll perform later this year. It scares me more than anything I’ve done, which is exactly why I know I have to do it.

“Writing forces you to slow down and examine your emotions and experiences more closely.”

What advice would you give to anyone thinking about writing?

Sit down and write like everyone’s dead.

Turning back to acting, can we expect to see you in new projects over the next year or so?

Absolutely.

“Sit down and write like everyone’s dead.”

Jericho remains one of the most beloved short-lived television series. Do you think we might ever see it return?

That’s a wonderful compliment. I don’t think anything could quite replicate what Jericho was. It felt more like a shared experience and a journey than simply a television show, and I’m incredibly grateful to have been part of it. Of course, it would be wonderful if we all came together again for another episode, perhaps if God wills it.

Alicia Coppola is an American actor known for roles in Jericho, CSI, Law & Order, NCIS: Los Angeles, and Teen Wolf, as well as for her memoir Gracefully Gone..

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Interview by Carl Marsh