'The Big C': Tammy Blanchard talks TV's hottest 'throuple'

When a couple becomes a throuple, there’s 33 percent more fun — and 100 percent more drama. Before Tammy Blanchard wraps up a theme-appropriate three-episode arc on The Big C tonight, the two-time Tony nominee chatted with EW about the inspiration behind her lusty character Giselle, what will become of her onscreen ménage à trois, and the strange sensation of having John Benjamin Hickey’s fingers in her mouth.
Playing an adventurous sexpot like Giselle, who engages in a threeway sexual relationship with her husband Tim (Smash‘s Brian d’Arcy James) and The Big C‘s lovable weirdo brother Sean (Hickey), Blanchard drew on her recent run in Broadway’s How To Succeed in Business Without Really Trying, which closed on May 20. Blanchard said her character Hedy LaRue inspired a lot of Gisele’s sensuality because she was “this uneducated bimbo that everyone loves.”
After playing heavier roles including Judy Garland and the wife to Chris Pratt’s character in last year’s Moneyball, Blanchard welcomed the opportunity. ”Hedy has definitely opened up new doors for me. I think I’ll be seen in a different light from now on,” she said. “After so many years of doing strictly dramatic roles, to start doing stuff like this is so much fun.”
Her Big C role was also a welcome reunion with Hickey, who played “a mentor-uncle character” to Blanchard in 2001′s Me and My Shadows: Life With Judy Garland 10 years ago. Laughed Blanchard, “To come back 10 years later and have sex with him was incredible.”

Perhaps a little too incredible? “You always get weird when you have to kiss and do sex scenes. I was kissing John all over his face,” she said. “We were flowing so well together that sometimes things just happen like fingers in mouths and stuff like that. When you get to work with talented, warm people like that, magic happens.”
Unfortunately for Giselle and Tim, all good things must come to an end. “Sean’s just not the one. He just doesn’t fit with our kind of people,” admitted Blanchard. If tonight’s promo is any indication, jealousy will definitely factor into the end of the throuple. Still, teased Blanchard, “There’s a possibility that Giselle, my character, might be calling Sean up every now and again on the side.”
If nothing else, Blanchard is confident that her work as one-third of TV’s sexiest throuple has blazed a trail for future out-of-the-box relationships: “These three definitely have set the bar for more throuples on television.”