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"   Laura Dern &amp;amp;amp; Luke Wilson at the premiere of Enlightened. Photo: Getty Images  In the first five minutes of HBO&amp;#039;s new series Enlightened , Laura Dern\u2014a star best known for her collaborative work with David Lynch\u2014sits in a bathroom stall, bawling her eyes out while listening to co-workers bash her character, Amy Jellicoe, for sleeping with a higher-up\u2014and then being demoted. What comes next gives &amp;quot;going postal&amp;quot; an Oscar worthy revival: Dern&amp;#039;s office meltdown is both comedic and dramatic, confirming that Enlightened&amp;#039;s executive producer, writer, and director, Mike White, can do what everyone else in TV does, just better. The new series doesn&amp;#039;t stop at superior status quo. &amp;quot;People ask me to describe the show and I try to figure out a good way,&amp;quot; says actor Luke Wilson, who manages to be both alluring and repelling as Dern&amp;#039;s drug-abusing ex-husband Levi. &amp;quot;In a good way, you can&amp;#039;t really describe it. It&amp;#039;s a comedy. It&amp;#039;s a drama.&amp;quot; White, who wrote Jennifer Aniston&amp;#039;s indie hit, The Good Girl and Jack Black&amp;#039;s ode to the jam, School of Rock, explains: &amp;quot;I wanted to write a comedy, initially, but as you start writing, you feel the pathos of the situation. You realize `Oh, this is heavy. It isn&amp;#039;t just funny.&amp;#039; When you really think about a person&amp;#039;s life and all of the emotional ups and downs and you try to be more sincere about it, it ends up leading to something that&amp;#039;s more deep.&amp;quot; The director&amp;#039;s reputation is what landed him the development deal with HBO in the first place\u2014and what attracted stars like Jack Black, Molly Shannon, and Jason Schwartzman to Enlightened&amp;#039;s premiere in Hollywood last week. It&amp;#039;s probably also how the new series snagged Wilson, a respected movie actor who&amp;#039;s yet to dabble in TV. &amp;quot;I was a big fan of Mike&amp;#039;s from Chuck and Buck. That really blew me away,&amp;quot; said Wilson. &amp;quot;And then, the idea that somebody who could do that, could also do School of Rock. It just made me wonder \u2014which has never really happened\u2014`Who is this guy?&amp;#039;&amp;quot; For Wilson, the role of Levi also offers a distinct career departure, &amp;quot;You can get pigeonholed in Hollywood and people think of you in a certain way. I spent so many years with people saying, `Hey, you&amp;#039;re like America&amp;#039;s boyfriend!&amp;#039; I feel like Mike and Laura gave me a really good chance to play a cool part.&amp;quot; White, who also plays a character in the series, admits to having his own Enlightened-esque meltdown. &amp;quot;Oh yeah, I have. And I&amp;#039;ve had to suffer the consequences of that as well. Hopefully, the show will inspire people to find some balance, which is what happened to me. Sometimes, the worst thing that can happen to you is actually a gift.&amp;quot; Enlightened premieres on HBO tonight at 9:30pm. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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