Laura Vandervoort

Executive producers Darlene Hunt and Jenny Bicks talk with THR about the conclusion of the Laura Linney series.read more

Ray Richmond contributes to Deadline’s TV coverage. Showtime and the producers of The Big C end Cathy Jamison’s personal cancer saga in hospice care tonight with its fourth and Hereafter season finale. Executive producer and showrunner Jenny Bicks naturally declined to divulge whether Cathy (Laura Linney) dies tonight, though she and fellow exec producer Darlene Hunt co-wrote. The mini-series’ four last episodes span a year in the life of the lead character, each separated by roughly three months. The finale follows Angelina Jolie’s shocking May 14 announcement that she had undergone a preventive double mastectomy, which spurred a slew of press calls to Showtime and the Big C team. Bicks, herself an early-stage breast cancer survivor, told Deadline. “It has really drawn attention to us in a way we couldn’t have anticipated,” she said. “I hope we’ve done something to help more people recognize that cancer isn’t any longer this thing you whisper about behind a closed door. And it isn’t necessarily a disease you necessarily have to die from.”The Big C started in 2010 as a half-hour Showtime dramedy starring Laura Linney as a woman with terminal melanoma. It evolved into this four-hour mini-series farewell as a means of wrapping up the storyline and giving more time to the creative team for each episode. Bicks explains: “We never really fit into a box. When you’re writing a half-hour, even for cable, you invariably need to rush certain elements. We had always ... Read More »