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He plays marijuana entrepreneur Silas Botwin on “Weeds,” but Hunter Parrish is no dope.
In addition to his role on the Monday Showtime hit, now in its fifth season, the actor, 22, made his Broadway debut in the hit musical “Spring Awakening” a few months ago and has landed a series of movie roles opposite such A-list talent as Meryl Streep and Zac Efron.
“I try to be happy in the ups and the downs, but I’m definitely happy in the ‘up’ right now,” Parrish says. “I’m super excited about the future.”
It’s easy to see why. His “Weeds” character has been promoted to a front-burner story line this season as Silas takes over most of the title pot trade while his TV mom, Nancy (Mary-Louise Parker), tries to cope with her unexpected pregnancy by a handsome but dangerous Mexican drug lord.
“We almost never know coming in what’s going to happen, and this year I get to take a whole other turn with this business and start doing it in a different way than Mom does it,” Parrish says of his character, who tries to launch a “medical marijuana” business in tonight’s episode. “I don’t know what’s to come, but I think it would be cool if we could potentially be competition for each other. That’s total speculation on my part, though.”
He knows that when he took over the male lead in the Tony-winning “Spring Awakening” last summer, at least some people in the theater community were skeptical about a TV actor coming in to take over a daunting role in this unusually dark and emotionally complex production, but Parrish was determined to show that he had the right stuff for Broadway.
And the actor is pulling double duty again, jetting back and forth to film his “Weeds” scenes in Southern California as well as a still-untitled romantic comedy from writer-director Nancy Meyers in New York, in which he gets another formidable make-believe mom in Streep. Alec Baldwin and Steve Martin also star.
