Californication star Natascha McElhone soldiers on as mother, artist after her husband’s death

With all the buzz about David Duchovny’s misfortune (rehab for sex addiction, ultimatum from wife Tea Leoni, etc.), it would be easy to forget about the other drama swirling around the set of Californication.

Months after losing her surgeon husband, whose heart suddenly gave out in May, Natascha McElhone is bravely soldiering on with his legacy in mind. In four weeks she’ll deliver the couple’s third child. In a moving interview with The Times of London, she shares how she reacted to the news of his death, what her plans are for the short term, and why she thinks her husband would approve.

“I’ve never been one to believe in spirits, but I feel we’re all suffused with him in different ways and that will live on, in me, in the kids, in this new little one that’s just coming along,” she says. “The amazing thing is how you can keep going if you have to. ”

She’ll keep going by adding another film to her resume, too. McElhone is set to star in Heaven and Earth, a biopic about James Miranda Barry, who in 1812 while disguised as a man became the first woman to graduate medical school and practice medicine in Great Britain. Barry was the first UK surgeon to perform a successful c-section, saving the lives of the mother and her baby.

The production, led by Oscar-winning director Marleen Gorris, will start filming in England and South Africa in 2009. Friends say McElhone’s portrayal will be an homage to her husband, who performed reconstructive plastic surgery in London and co-founded the international medical charity Facing The World.

McElhone returns to Showtime in the second season of Californication Sept. 28. Watch the debut episode online now by entering the passcode “Lady Killers.”