After initially hiding the diagnosis, she eventually confesses to Jen, who helps her through chemotherapy.
But it doesn’t work or so Judy says.
That’s the thing with her: You never really knew if she was telling the truth.
Linda Cardellini on season 3 of ‘Dead to Me’.Saeed Adyani / Netflix
They end up driving to Mexico, where Judy decides to stay.
Or actually cured, to have a clean break and start over?
ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: How far in advance did Liz tell you about Judy’s journey?
Christina Applegate and Linda Cardellini on season 3 of ‘Dead to Me’.Saeed Adyani/Netflix
Or did you find out as you were getting scripts?
And I was like, “Oh no, what is it?”
How do we do that?"
Linda Cardellini and Christina Applegate on season 3 of ‘Dead to Me’.NETFLIX
And it’s heavy.
She didn’t tell me everything all at once…
And to do that within a comedy…
Yeah!
We all are faced with it.
Nobody gets out of it without feeling it, and nobody gets out of this lifetime alive.
And then it also hits a really serious note.
These characters kept the audience on our toes for many reasons they’re unpredictable in so many ways.
Did you feel that unpredictability in playing her?
Yes, in fact, I thought that was one of the greatest challenges.
It’s very challenging to play unpredictable because you could’t really play that.
[Laughs] You just have to be in the moment and make choices that are wrong.
Judy makes a lot of bad choices and she does them with the best intention.
She’s always trying to serve somebody else.
I like to know a lot, and then I like to come around it the other way.
That’s sort of how I approached it.
I knew how they wrote it.
I don’t know when I’ll get another character as delicious as that.
It’s not really about being free-spirited, it’s about how this person makes choices.
The whole project was really quite a fun journey in that way.
She just doesn’t miss.
She’s so good and she’s so funny.
And no matter what she’s going through, she delivers these incredible things.
Watching somebody you care about deeply go through anything that’s difficult is terrible.
You just want to be able to help or take somebody’s pain away.
Her performance is so phenomenal.
She’s always phenomenal.
She’s got such an exquisite, rare talent, and I think there’s just no stopping that.
Oh, there’s a lot.
It was wonderful to have people who cared about each other when they were going through hard times.
So that friendship you definitely take away, for sure.
That was really a wonderful gift to be given.
I’m really grateful for the fans.
and I thought, “Oh my God, she probably thinks I’m dead.”
But it has been a really incredible experience and I think that those two characters were so well drawn.
I don’t know.
And I hate to say because I don’t want to ruin somebody else’s interpretation.
It is left ambiguous on purpose, and I don’t want to ruin what Liz had in store.
There are times when I really truly believe that she is gone.
So it was really fun to see the impression that Judy leaves with those cranes.
