Emmy-winning Northern Exposure star Valerie Mahaffey dies at 71

Emmy award-winning actress Valerie Mahaffey has passed away at the age of 71. As per Variety, Mahaffey’s husband, Joseph Kell, revealed that the actress succumbed to cancer on Friday, May 30, in Los Angeles.

Mahaffey was known for portraying memorable roles in series such as Desperate Housewives, Devious Maids, and Young Sheldon. She also played well-known roles in films like Sully and French Exit.

Looking back at Valerie Mahaffey’s acting career

Valerie Mahaffey began her acting career on Broadway, featuring in around 6 plays during the late 70s and early 80s. Most notably, Mahaffey featured in Dracula, as per ABC. The actress also played multiple roles in Caryl Churchill's play, Top Girls.

Simultaneously, Mahaffey appeared on the soap opera, The Doctors, between the years 1979 and 1980 as Ashley Bennett, according to The Hollywood Reporter. In 1980, Mahaffey was nominated for an Outstanding Supporting Actress award at the Daytime Emmys, but lost the award to Francesca James.

Mahaffey is also credited with appearing in series such as David Crane and Marta Kauffman’s The Powers That Be and a guest slot in Seinfeld. During the 90s, Mahaffey went on to appear in a recurring role as Eve on Northern Exposure, which led the actress to win an Emmy award in the category, Outstanding Supporting Actress in A Drama Series in 1992.

Mahaffey also appeared in the sentimental drama Seabiscuit in 2003. Her 2006 and 2007 appearances in Desperate Housewives are well-regarded.

Mahaffey’s post-2010s acting stints included Young Sheldon, Netflix’s Dead to Me, Big Sky Deadly Trails, and Echo 3.

Valerie Mahaffey on acting

Valerie Mahaffey had been candid about how she approached characters. While speaking to Entertainment Weekly in 2021 about her role as Helen in Big Sky, she referenced the process of playing a character inspired by a novel, and said,

“David Kelley offered me the part pretty late into the process. Nobody told me at first that it was based on some books, C.J. Box's books. Helen is in those books, and what happens to her. [But] once I was already creating my version of Helen, I thought, ‘Okay, there's a book, but at this point I kind of don't want to know. I want to do my version.’”

Mahaffey’s appearance in French Exit as Madame Reynard led to an Independent Spirit Award nomination, as per Variety. About her transition from sitcoms to the well-received independent film, Mahaffey told Awards Daily,

“I had reached a place in my life where something’s happened to me, and I’ve dropped artifice. I wanted to play her from a place of absolute honesty. I know how to be funny. I know sitcom timing. But I wanted Madame Reynard to be true.”

Mahaffey’s conversation also took a turn towards the actress’s opinion on her art. She said,

“I also had the human being part of me realize that there are people, as you go through life, that you find desperately annoying. Being an actor and playing a person that could conceivably be considered very annoying, you pity them.”

Continuing, she added,

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“But you will learn things from that perspective, and you regret that you missed people in your life so easily when they were just excited to be around you. It’s kind of a wonderful thing being an actor to realize things like that about human nature.”

Valerie Mahaffey’s last on-screen credit before her death was as Landon Mooney on The 8th Day, as per IMDb.

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