Photo by ABC/Bob D’Amico
Last year Sandra Bullock won the Academy Award for playing a southern mother who adopted an inner city youth. Her role in The Blind Side
was
inspired by the true-life story of Leigh Anne Tuohy and Michael Oher. And this
season the interior designer from Memphis is not only continuing to champion
the cause of adoption in the U.S., but she’s a member of the Extreme Makeover: Home Edition team. In
a recent exclusive interview she talked with us about being on the show and
whether or not the families pick up on her The
Blind Side connection.
Tuohy and her family originally
appeared on Extreme Makeover: Home
Edition last season, which led to the show’s producers asking her join the
cast. She noted, “I was able to do
six or seven episodes this year. Obviously we have a crazy schedule still and
I’m hoping to do more next year. But it absolutely was just a perfect fit for
our platform and our message.”
The opportunity combines two of
Tuohy’s greatest skills – her 30 years of experience as a designer and her
immeasurably generous heart. But that giving spirit leads to her greatest
challenge on the makeover series. She acknowledged, “To know that we do have
the capacity to change a life and help so many and I just want to keep the
snowball rolling and make it bigger and bigger. And we are on a time limit and
you’re dealing with real deal stuff here. You sand a hardwood floor and it
takes 24 hours, but I’m jumping ahead always. So that’s always a challenge to
me.”
But Tuohy is impressed at how the
series impacts the entire community, not just the family that is the focus of
an episode. She explained, “The volunteers leave there inspired to go make a
difference. So it just has such an outreaching effect.”
That constant ability to impact
change is what drives Leigh Anne to push forward. She revealed, “I think
sometimes that you get jaded because of what you do every day and I’m not jaded
yet. And every day to me is always I wake up on the set going, ‘I can’t wait to
see how we change a life today.’ And it’s just always energizing to me every
single day.”
And despite being the inspiration
for an Oscar-winning role, she does her work on Extreme Makeover: Home Edition in relative anonymity – at least for
a while. She confessed, “That’s one thing Extreme
doesn’t do. They don’t go in and toot our horns. And they don’t tell people who
I am. So consequently the first couple of days, people always think I’m either
[co-stars] Tracy [Hutson] or Paige [Hemmis], which is a great compliment to me.”
But she admitted that this soon
changes. “Then they kind of have a [point], ‘Well, she doesn’t answer to those
names. Well who is that?’ And it’s usually about day four that they’ve figured
out that I’m Leigh Anne Tuohy from The
Blind Side. And then it’s like a whole different deal. Then there are signs
up that say, ‘You’re our hero.’ And it’s so funny. I’m always like, ‘Why don’t
we just go in and when you’re doing introductions say, ‘This is our newest cast
member Leigh Anne Tuohy of The Blind Side.’
But that’s not how we do it, and that’s is fine. But it’s just so funny when
all of a sudden the light bulb goes off.”
It’s not surprising that people
ultimately recognize Leigh Anne. As she remarked, Extreme Makeover is right up The
Blind Side fans’ alleys. “So many people, obviously, have seen the movie
and we really think that people just relate to it. It’s America. It’s the
grassroots of the country, that relate to The
Blind Side. That’s the same people that really love and relate to Extreme Makeover: Home Edition.”
And people who loved Bullock as
Tuohy will be happy to realize that what they saw in The Blind Side is pretty much what they’ll get from her on Extreme Makeover. Tuohy concluded that
in terms of the movie version, “There’s not much different from me. They hung
around us for two years making that movie. Sandy studied everything from the
kind of underwear I wore to she wore my same fingernail polish. I know people
find that hard to believe but it was eerily authentic. My kids left the theater
and went, ‘Oh dear God, there’s two of them running around.’ So there’s not a
whole lot of difference.”
But the Tuohy’s aren’t resting on
their Blind Side laurels. Leigh Anne
made it clear that her family is always moving forward. “Obviously our lives
have continued to evolve in the last two years because we are seeing that
adoption is up and we’re trying to change foster care laws. And there’s just a
lot of things that we’re doing. Our entire family has evolved in this whole
process. I think we’ve been very good stewards of this message and want to
continue to be that because we really believe that there’s Michael Oher’s in
every city of this country.”
Catch Leigh Anne Tuohy and the rest
of the Extreme Makeover: Home Edition on
Sunday nights at 8 p.m. EST/7 p.m. Central on ABC.
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