Chloe Sevigny’s foot-in-mouth disease

Imagine you're Chloe Sevigny. The last season of your show stunk on ice. You know it. The audience knows it. At what point is it OK to state the obvious and not be charged with biting the hand that feeds you?

Chloe waited until after the season was over before letting honesty get the better of her in an A.V. Club interview:

AVC: This past season of Big Love has taken a lot of flak for being so over-the-top.
CS: It was awful this season, as far as I’m concerned. I’m not allowed to say that! [Gasps.] It was very telenovela. I feel like it kind of got away from itself. The whole political campaign seemed to me very farfetched. I mean, I love the show, I love my character, I love the writing, but I felt like they were really pushing it this last season. And with nine episodes, I think they were just squishing too much in. HBO only gave us nine Sundays, because they have so much other original programming — especially with The Pacific — and they only have a certain amount of Sundays per year, so we only got nine Sundays. I think that they had more story than episodes. I think that’s what happened.

Too soon?

The season's over, but the show is still on. So yes.

Realizing her critical error, Chloe jumped on the phone to Entertainment Weekly and offered her backpedalling mea culpa in which she asserts that her comments were taken out of context, which in turn provoked a response from the A.V. Club writer, which provides audio from the original interview.

But what if Big Love was completely over? How long before Chloe could speak frankly about it then?

Apparently, ten years.

We know this because it was ten years ago that the box office dud Battlefield Earth opened to the sound of crickets everywhere, and only yesterday that writer J.D. Shapiro published his sort-of apology (in which he blames everyone else involved).

So, for a movie that was universally despised, the wait period is ten years. For Big Love, the wait might be longer.

On the other hand, if you look as good as Katherine Heigl, you might be able to shave a few years off.

In Chloe's case, though, she should probably wait the full term.