Returning to ‘Green Gables’: It’s Not ‘90210’

Two of the most popular installments of the PBS children’s series “Wonderworks” were the 1986 Emmy Award-winning miniseries, “Anne of Green Gables” and the 1987 follow-up, “Anne of Green Gables--The Sequel.”

Based on the beloved stories of Lucy Maud Montgomery, the family dramas followed the adventures of Anne Shirley (Megan Follows), a lonely orphan who goes to live at the Avonlea farm on Prince Edward Island in Canada, where she is nurtured by the Cuthberts (Richard Farnsworth and Colleen Dewhurst).

The final two-part installment of the trilogy, “Anne of Green Gables: The Continuing Story,” airs Sunday and July 30. Follows returns as the spunky heroine, now grown up and engaged to her beloved Gilbert (Jonathan Crombie).

In the romantic and suspenseful four-hour drama, Anne goes on a journey that takes to her the New York publishing world, London and war-torn Europe as she battles danger and intrigue trying to find her husband, a doctor missing in action in France.

Follows was all of 17 when was chosen to play Anne. The Toronto-born actress, who is now the mother of two, began acting at the age of 3 doing commercials. She’s appeared in several feature films, including “Stacking” and “Termini Station,” and was seen last year locally on stage at the Geffen Playhouse in Anton Chekhov’s “Uncle Vanya.”

The actress recently talked about “Anne of Green Gables” and what it was like to return to the role.

*

Question: Do you have great affection for Anne?

Answer: I think she’s a wonderful character. She’s bright and she’s really her own person. She’s not an appendage to someone else in the story line. She’s not seen through male eyes. She’s really kind of judged through the merits of her own character, which is unfortunately something that seems to be quite rare.

*

Q: Was it easy to return to the character after 12 years?

A: In some ways yes, in some ways no. She is very specifically a character and a character of a certain time. There is a style to the piece and, in that sense, you have to really put yourself in a whole different environment. You have to get into the head space in a sense. The flavor of the piece is not contemporary. Although like all acting [it] should be obviously believable and naturalistic, the story line itself has elements to it which are rather circumstantial. It is not like an episode of “90210.”

*

Q: Were your co-stars also from the previous two miniseries?

A: They were in the originals.

*

Q: Sounds like it was a high school reunion of sorts.

A: It was. That was the best part of it. That was a lot of fun. We had kept [in contact], some of us closer than others. Certainly doing this got us close again, particularly myself and Schuyler Grant, who plays [Anne’s friend] Diana. We had both lived in New York for a while after the sequel had been done and then we sort of lost touch. This brought us back us back together, which is nice.

*

Q: Is it true that this story was originally about Anne’s daughter?

A: The story was originally around 1875, and when we did the very first one, it was put into 1895--sort of around that time. That was for a number of reasons, like the look. They liked the design look of the costumes. I know they did a spinoff of the series [“Avonlea”] which I was not involved with. That series went on for a number of years and basically brought up [the story line] to the beginning of World War I.

*

Q: Were you a fan of Montgomery’s books as a child?

A: I confess I was not a fan, but because I wasn’t familiar with the book. I had grown up reading the “Oz” stories. They had been my mother’s favorites as a child, though I had seen a production of [an “Anne of Green Gables”] play when I was little and I remember getting the books for my seventh birthday, I did not read them until it looked like I was going to play the role.

*

Q: Did you have to audition for the role of Anne?

A: It was one of those rather nightmarish auditioning processes where they auditioned about 3,000 girls and went across the country to do a big search. I was the first person they saw and the last person they saw.

I was not the first choice for the role. They were hoping to discover an unknown and find somebody who was really Anne, whatever that meant. There was a long process of actually fighting for it.

PBS played a role in me getting the part in the end. In looking at everybody, they felt I was the one who could do it.

The shooting schedule was crazy. The director at that time was a novice. It was a huge undertaking, and they knew they needed to find somebody who could be professional. It is one thing to discover someone who is fabulous but then to require them to play four or five different ages in a day and work them 14 hours in a day is another story.

I always laugh when I think about that because it is just typical of our industry; very often people never see the forest for the trees.

*

Q: Working with Colleen Dewhurst and Richard Farnsworth early in your career must have been a great acting education.

A: That was a wonderful experience. They were both--Richard is still with us--highly professional, very gentle and made it easy to work. Colleen was a real ballsy broad and many more things than that. She was down to earth, sexy, funny and really professional and an excellent example of how to work and how to carry yourself.

* “Anne of Green Gables: The Continuing Story” airs Sunday and July 30 at 9 p.m. on KCET and KVCR. The network has rated it TV-PG-VS (may be unsuitable for young children with special advisories for violence and sex).