Whether you recognize her as polite little Gracie from CBS’s The Nanny, or as the underage vixen Mia from Showtime’s Californication, Madeline Zima’s getting noticed everywhere she goes these days. Neither of these roles would lead one to expect this 22-year-old actress to break out in a Blackalicious verse in the middle of lunch on Beverly Blvd. And yet, sitting across the table at a sidewalk café, she breaks out rhyming with impressive ease.

Zima possesses a spirit that perfectly matches her yellow peace-sign earrings and bizarre T-shirt with a guy in an FBI uniform poised with a gun on a hill, under which reads “LIVING LEGEND.” Simultaneously vibrant and fragile, the actress carries a more honest conversation than expected, stating that she doesn’t know how to “edit” herself. Good news for us; that makes for a much more interesting interview.

“I’m a little crazy,” Zima says with a heartbreaking smile. “Sometimes, I’m thinking I’m crazy. But I’m not, like, destructive crazy. Everyone’s crazy. Some hide it better than others. I just wear it on my sleeve. I don’t really care.”

It definitely takes an actress with a streak of wild inside to pull off Zima’s character on Showtime’s racy show. In the first episode of the first season of Californication, Mia meets David Duchovny’s character, Hank Moody, in a bookstore and seduces him. Cut to them having sex on his bed, and as he’s mid-orgasm, she punches him in the face. Cut to him meeting Mia again, in a different context – this time as his ex-girlfriend’s fiancé’s 16-year-old daughter.

“Right before I got on set [to do the sex scene] with David [Duchovny], I was freaking out,” she says, “but once I was on set I was at ease. Once I was there, everything was normal. I was actually the most comfortable one of the girls [on set] taking my clothes off. It’s weird, but the part when you put your clothing back on is what’s embarrassing, not the actual being naked. It’s the moment you pull your pants back up that you remember you’re supposed to be ashamed of this for some reason.”

Throughout the season, Mia’s character holds the secret of their forbidden sexual relations high over Hank’s head, while she remains deep in twisted teenage love with him. From climbing out of the pool in front of Hank in a bikini, to waking him up by sitting on his chest in her underwear, Mia is every middle-aged man’s absolute fantasy and nightmare.
“The most challenging part of playing Mia is overcoming my own mind,” Zima says. “I have to conquer my insecurities and tell myself I can play a sexy character. For years, people told me I wasn’t sexy and that I would never get this kind of role. That I’m not ‘that kind of character.’”

With her unique, enchanting looks, this seems hard to fathom. For quite some time, Zima was stuck with the lasting image of her proper English girl role in The Nanny. Though she’s been acting almost her entire life, the Gracie character mold was strong-set after years of playing such a mild-mannered part.
“I was always in the box of ‘child actor’ or ‘sitcom kid,’” says Zima. “There are so many great actors who were child actors, like Reese Witherspoon and Christian Bale. People only focus on the negative, they don’t focus on the success stories.”

Zima entered her teen years facing the dilemma of being far darker and more interesting than the sweet, innocent persona the world would continue to pin on her. The struggles she underwent during her adolescence unknowingly gave her the groundwork that enables her to play Mia.

Over the course of the first season of Californication, Zima proves that she can nail her role. She does an amazing job of coming across as a conniving young sociopath. Mia has a look so distant and spooky – the eyes of a truly troubled teenager – she leaves one to wonder who or what Zima’s channelling while on set, as she’s so sunny and relaxed in person.

“Mia’s so different from myself,” Zima muses. “I wondered if I’d know how to think that way. I watched a lot of other actors who can pull off being manipulative. I’m naturally quirky, so that just sort of filtered in. I have to make it real for myself, so I can always go back and call on previous experiences and boom! I’m there. I’m transported immediately, so it’s not that hard.”

The role took some initial adjusting for her to feel confident inside. The part was so different than anything she’d done before that the actress had daily battles with her own doubts of her ability to play such an edgy, sexy part.

“I was fine on set, but in my trailer I would sometimes cry, and I was convinced that [the crew] was going to see that I was a big faker,” she said. “But that was so funny because people actually were like, ‘I had to shake off your character because I forgot what you’re really like.’”

Californication is currently filming the second season on location in Venice Beach and is set to air at the end of the summer. Although the actress isn’t exactly sure what lies ahead for her character, she assures that people can expect Mia’s creepy-crawly obsession with Duchovny’s character to continue on.

“I’m sure that I won’t be so easy to get rid of because I’ll forever be attached to Hank a little bit,” says Zima. “You know, he’s my first love, and he knows and has accepted [my] crazy love.” Zima’s got plenty more edgy performances in store for the future, including a role as a “lesbian with a gimp leg” in Driving Lessons, starring Selma Blair, which just finished filming this April.

“Where do I draw the line? When it’s not fun anymore,” Zima says. “I could imagine many worse things than kissing Selma Blair. In Driving Lessons, she’s my teacher and I’m her student and we have a little thing going on. I don’t want to play one-note characters, ever. So where do I draw the line? There is no line.”

Californication Screen Shots