It’s Patricia Arquette, Private Eye.

The award winning actress plays an on-again, off-again addict in search of purpose after the death of her mother in the new Apple TV+ series High Desert, out Wednesday. That search leads her to a private investigator’s office, where her knack for figuring stuff out comes in handy. But in real life, is Arquette a good sleuth? 

“Not really,” she tells ABC Audio. “My friends are always like, ‘Come on, you couldn’t see this or that?'”

“I’m kind of actually gullible and maybe willfully gullible,” she continues. “I like to look on the bright side, and I don’t want to be some neurotic person who’s constantly putting things together. It’s like, ‘Hey, man, if you’re doing something that’s your problem.'”

High Desert is classified as a comedy, but it has some serious stuff at the center. It’s hard to really pinpoint the genre, but to Arquette that’s not so important.

“I don’t think they matter, but I do think it’s a nice time for us to all laugh a little bit,” she explains. “The world’s super heavy. We’ve all been through a lot. There’s a lot of love in this show. People are looking for connections and a safe place.”

Speaking of comedy, Bernadette Peters, who plays Arquette’s mom in the series, shares that the best advice she every got about comedy came from a legendary comedian.

“Well, as George Burns said to me, ‘Don’t try to be funny, kid, because Gracie was a great tragedian actress,'” recalled Peters. “Because I was lucky enough to do a Gracie sketch with him and comedy is serious. Comedy is just so real. That’s what makes it funny.” 

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