Edie Falco bids farewell to Nurse Jackie

Edie Falco is done with Nurse Jackie.

After nearly back-to back runs on two cable dramas – the landmark “Sopranos” and the edgy “Nurse Jackie,” the Emmy-winning actress has returned to her life, being a parent to her two children, Anderson, now 10, and Macy, 7.

As a result, their home life in the West Village is very stable with Falco taking them to school and attends parent-teacher meetings.

“I’m there, getting back in touch with the other parents,” says Falco, in her favorite neighborhood cafe. “My kids are getting older. People say it goes fast. It’s really going fast. He’s into sports. She’s into American Girl dolls. She’s like, ‘So-and-so at school’s being mean to me.’ I had to have the ‘Girls Are Mean’ talk with her. Boys beat each other up and girls say, ‘You’re not my friend anymore.’ Both of my kids are experiencing some form of that.”

In person, Falco seems remarkably calm and even serene, wearing hardly any makeup, her brown-and-blond hair pulled back in a ponytail. The series wrapped production in December 2014 and aside from some promotional duties connected to the April 12 premiere on Showtime, like an unexpected appearance at the New York Stock Exchange to ring the opening bell, she has been laying low, going to the gym and taking meditation classes at the Kadampa Meditation Center in Chelsea.

The actress, now 51, is a practicing Buddhist.

“They have a little hour-and-a-half meditation and lecture. I can pop in and I leave there glowing,” says Falco who says that she has been studying the religion for 20-something years.

Meditation of any sort would come in handy for the role of Jackie Peyton who, when we last saw her, was being arrested for drug trafficking on a highway bound for JFK. In the show’s final season, she fights to get her job back, having already lost her marriage and alienated her two daughters.

Falco does not offer much imput into the crafting of episodes except to be reassured that they “accurately reflect my understanding of the life of an addict, and the [resulting] collateral damage.” (Falco is a reformed alcoholic.)

Given the harrowing nature of her role, it one of the peculiarities of the Emmy awards game that Falco is regularly nominated in the comedy category, winning once after the show’s first season. Falco says she has nothing to do with the process.

I’ve never been one of those highly ambitious actors out there reading books and [saying] I’m going to get the rights to it. Let somebody else do that. I couldn’t care less.

“I don’t submit myself for anything. I’m not allowed,” she says. “They tell me where I have to be and I go. That’s the extent of my involvement. I don’t know. I wonder if I’m meant to be in this business because I got it all wrong.”

For all her accomplishments, she might be the least actress-y actress you’ve ever met.

“I’ve never been one of those highly ambitious actors out there reading books and [saying] I’m going to get the rights to it. Let somebody else do that,” she says. “I couldn’t care less.”

She has been reading scripts, but nothing has grabbed her.

“I remember after ‘The Sopranos,’ I felt the same way, thinking, ‘There’s nothing good anymore. I got the last good thing.’ And that went on for a while,” she says. “And then ‘Nurse Jackie’ came along. I’m kind of in that place. It might be that I don’t feel like looking yet.”

She’s excited to talk about two of this year’s guest stars on “Nurse Jackie,” Jeremy Shamos, who plays a Norwegian real estate developer Johanes Karlsen (“He’s the main bad guy”) and Tony Shalhoub, who plays Dr. Bernard Prince, the new head of the ER.

“I wish they’d been with us the whole time,” she says.

Leaving the show was obviously tough, after having worked with a small cast for seven seasons, but the role did have its haunting moments like when Jackie walked into traffic or dipped into her daughter’s friend’s hidden stash of Oxycontin.

“It was so disgusting and troubling,” she says. “And true to form.”

Having already conquered HBO and Showtime, Falco seems prime for another cable series, maybe even a streaming one on Netflix. She has an unabashed love for the medium.

“I love everything about it,” she says. “I love to work and it’s as stable a gig as you can get in my business. If something great came along I would do it tomorrow. I hope it doesn’t come along tomorrow because frankly I would like a little time off.”

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