So ‘Six Feet’s’ Over

HBO’s series “Six Feet Under,” a sometimes surreal drama laced with dark humor, set in a family-run funeral home, ends its five-season run today. Life (and death) at the Fisher & Diaz Funeral Home was filled with grief and dysfunction that had little to do with the business itself. For the actors it’s been an amazing ride as the show’s creator, Alan Ball, stretched the boundaries of television. We asked some of the cast about the experience.

Michael C. Hall

David Fisher

What will you miss most about your character? I enjoyed the fact that David was inherently conflicted, because that makes a character juicy. Fundamentally he is conflicted with his relationship to his sexuality and his relationship to his work, to his family and to his faith.

What will your funeral be like? I would hope it was something that turned into a party. Hopefully people would be celebrating my life and not the fact that I had died.

Your most surreal moment on the show: Having the experience of burying Nate’s body with people I’ve spent five years with who felt like a family to me. We were all, in a way, mourning the fact that the show was ending -- there was a collision of fact and fiction.

Your favorite scene: The scene that Peter, Lauren and I did in the hospital, when we went to sleep and Nate died. There was something really sweet about it, and there was a sense of relative peace in the room. We all knew it was the last time we would be on screen together

What are you going to do now? I’m going to shoot a pilot called “Dexter” for Showtime in Miami. It’s about a blood-spatter expert with some substantial secrets. It’s certainly a change of pace.

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Peter Krause

Nate Fisher

What will you miss most about your character? Nate wasn’t having much fun most of the time after the pilot, [so] maybe that brief encounter with the girl in the janitor’s closet at the airport. I got to exorcise a lot of demons playing Nate.

What will your funeral be like? I guess I’d want it to be very simple. Lots of good food to eat, good music to be played and lots of wine to be drunk.

Your most surreal moment on the show: Seeing myself on an embalming slab down in the prep room. I had to go have a latex mold made of myself. You sit there while they put algin all over your whole body, head to toe.

Your favorite scene: I got to film myself with what’s called a doggie cam strapped onto me. There were lots of drugs being done; we were smoking out of a bong, and Brenda had a friend visiting her from Australia who was naked. That was a fun episode.

What are you going to do now? I’m starting a film in September called “Civic Duty,” in Vancouver, about an American obsessed with watching cable news and keeping track of news about terrorism with a Middle Eastern student living next door.

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Lauren Ambrose

Claire Fisher

What will you miss most about your character? It’s been interesting to chart [Claire’s] journey from childhood to early adulthood. It’s strange to leave that person behind. It’s been a big fraction of my life as a young lady.

What will your funeral be like? I guess Nate’s funeral was kind of a good option. It was a green funeral and very natural -- he was buried in a shroud in a park, and it was very earthy, maybe too earthy.

Your most surreal moment on the show: The first season, I walked by a pile of overturned coffins -- props that were sitting in the corner -- and I thought, “This is a weird job.”

Your favorite scene: I will always go back to the scene where we are burying our dad, in the pilot. Frances slowly puts dirt on the grave, and she gets herself into this state, and her hat comes off and snot is running out of her nose. We did it like 20 times from all these different angles.

What are you going to do now? I just finished a movie called “Diggers,” about Long Island clam diggers of the ‘70s, with Paul Rudd.

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Frances Conroy

Ruth Fisher Sibley

What will you miss most about your character? I’ll think fondly of Ruth whenever I meet a woman who is just delighted to talk to me. People just relate to [Ruth], they like her, and to see the person who has been playing her astounds them and makes them really happy.

What will your funeral be like? That’s one of the great mysteries of life, and I just hope that life has had some meaning for me when it comes to its completion. It’s strange to talk about your own funeral. I’d rather think about life than death.

Your most surreal moment on the show: There was sort of an awfully comic situation where a very large person that died had fallen off the embalming table. Four of us had to somehow get him back on it. The reality of that was kind of astounding. It was terrible to the point of being comic.

Your favorite scene: I will always love the episode where [Ruth] chases the bear through the woods in her nightgown. I always smile when I think of that.

What are you going to do now? I’m working on a film with Nicolas Cage and Ellen Burstyn called “The Wicker Man.”

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Rachel Griffiths

Brenda Chenowith

What will you miss most about your character? [Brenda’s] got such brass that no episode is going to have predictable behavior. It’s kind of the great pleasure of not knowing what she’ll do or say.

What will your funeral be like? I don’t like to think about my own funeral. I think it’s bad luck.

Your most surreal moment on the show: I was in the nursery one day and my [real-life] little boy came in and said, “Lady flying, lady flying.” I went out to see, and they were filming the blue screen where the sex dolls were flying through the air like angels.

Your favorite scene: The scene where [Brenda’s mother, Margaret] is advocating vaginal rejuvenation surgery. That was pretty hard to get through without laughing.

What are you going to do now? I just had a baby girl six weeks ago, so I’m focused on that at the moment. I have a feature film early next year called “Up.” I’m also adapting a novel to direct next year called “B Model.”

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Freddy Rodriguez

Federico Diaz

What will you miss most about your character? I’ve never seen anyone play a mortician on TV, so I enjoyed being a pioneer. I like finding out what’s going to happen before the rest of the world does.

What will your funeral be like? I think it will be the traditional kind where they pickle me and put me out on display and have my family come and see me and celebrate and cry and grieve.

Your most surreal moment on the show: A lot of scenes I had were with dead bodies in the embalming room. I got used to it after a while, but every so often a certain body would gross me out. There would be one with the head split open and the brains hanging out or something crazy like that.

Your favorite scene: The scene during the second season when I caught my cousin having sex in my living room. I loved seeing the reactions of people I knew. They couldn’t believe it.

What are you going to do now? I just wrapped a remake of “The Poseidon Adventure” with Wolfgang Petersen, and I’m doing M. Night Shyamalan’s “Lady in the Water.”