{alltv} 'Big Love': Jeanne Tripplehorn says Barb will never leave Bill, hasn't seen 'Sister Wives'

It's the dilemma facing every "Big Love" lover. Are we rooting for these women to stay a family and stand by their man or should they come to their senses and abandon their polygamous lives?

The Season 4 finale seemed to make their intended path fairly clear, with Bill Henrickson (Bill Paxton) publicly outing his family after his election to the Utah State Senate and all three of his wives taking the podium with him.

The conclusion was a given for all the characters but one. Barb (Jeanne Tripplehorn), Bill's first wife, has been the least sure of their lifestyle since the beginning, and for much of Season 4 it seemed on the verge of leaving it all behind. But as the actress told Zap2it when we caught up with her at the GLSEN Respect Awards, that's just not in the cards.

"'Big Love,' that's the title," Tripplehorn says. 'And Barb loves Bill. That's the bottom line, and she'll do anything for him."

So instead of this outing catapulting the Henricksons into even more drama, Tripplehorn explains that the new episodes will be similar to the series' earlier days, before the characters scattered across the board with separate storylines.

"I can't say what happens," she concedes, "but we definitely circle the wagons, and we stay together. There will be a lot more focus on the family, their lives and how they deal with coming out."

And the Henricksons aren't the only ones coming out. TLC's new reality series, "Sister Wives", puts a polygamous Mormon family in the public eye, and though Tripplehorn hasn't watched it, she does think it speaks to her own series.

"Somebody told me that it's very similar to the Henricksons," says Tipplehorn. "And if it is like our show, then I think it's a real testament to Mark [Olsen] and Will [Scheffer], our creators. They do this incredible research and they are all about it being real and based in fact. A lot of times we've experienced over the last five years, with art and reality, that the line is really blurred."

At least with art, the consequences aren't so dire. "I think it was last week I read that they're having felony bigamy charges brought up against them, so no," says Tripplehorn, laughing, "It's probably not the smartest thing to out yourself like that."