Bill Paxton: Tolerance is a virtue

Bill Henrickson seems to have it all: A thriving business, a nice home, three wives, seven healthy kids. Or so it seems in the first season of HBO’s Big Love.

But soon, even the biggest bubble must burst. The utopia is shattered when his first wife Barb is exposed as a polygamist in a high-profile Mother of the Year rites. Things start going awry. Bill’s business interests suffer. So, too do his other wives. Bill has to sink or swim in the second season, which premieres tonight at 11 on HBO.

What is the beleaguered head of the family to do?

Bill Paxton, who plays his namesake on the hit series, says it wore him out, emotionally and physically. He finds himself in hot water and must do everything to get out of it.

It’s no different from the family patriarch who must crack his head in thinking what’s best for the family.

The situation is serious. But the story is said in such a breezy, casual way you don’t feel weighed down while watching it.

It’s just as well. Now that the economic crisis is upon us, the last thing we need is a heavy show that reminds us of bills to pay, rising prices to cope with. What we need is an entertaining show to distract us from day-to-day woes.

“We are in tough times,” Paxton admits. “The whole credit market is going to burst. Everybody’s got to figure it out.”

He sees a way out through his presidential bet, Sen. Barack Obama, whose election to the highest office in the US “would be a good thing for our country and the world.”

Meantime, Paxton is doing his bit in keeping the situation from worsening. Citing a lesson he got from his father, who got all stressed out because of a “terrible debt,” Paxton is walking the straight and narrow path leading to bigger assets and zero liabilities.

“I’m very conservative about money,” he declares. “I never owe anything to anybody.”

It’s his way of telling his wife and their children, James, 14 and Lydia, 10 that they need face the kind of problem their grandfather had.

As it is, there’s not a single cloud in the Paxtons’ horizon.

Dad cooks as many meals as his wife does, and helps in the kids’ homework.

Sure, his wife gets teased about her husband having three wives on Big Love, but she shrugs it off.

“She’s got a good sense of humor,” says Paxton.

He also has good words for his three Big Love wives. Jeanne Tripplehorn as first wife Barbara, Chloe Sevigny as second wife Nicki and Ginnifer Goodwin as third wife Margene treat each other like sisters, not rivals.

They share, as the title says, one big love. Paxton describes it as a “love story times three.”

Conservatives may frown at the Henrickson’s polygamous ways, but Paxton would like to think it’s not that simple. He wants to see the story as getting into the root of what’s good within us.

“The show was embraced by the world because it’s about tolerance and diversity. Somebody may have a different belief, but if we examine these beliefs we’ve got more (things) in common,” Paxton muses.

It’s this unity in diversity that makes our world interesting, and makes as human. It is also, says Paxton, what America is all about: A melting pot of races, a celebration of tolerance.

The irony is that it is this difference that draws us closer and makes us live in harmony, despite and in spite ourselves.

Big Love is there to remind us about it, lest we forget.