Charlie Powell
Lily Tomlin is on a roll. Netflix has already renewed the series Grace and Frankie, in which she and Jane Fonda set aside a longtime rivalry when their law-partner husbands (Sam Waterston and Martin Sheen) reveal they’re gay and have plans to marry. And she’s the lead in the Sundance festival hit Grandma, where she plays a lesbian poet coping with the death of her partner. It opens in August.
The beloved actor and comedian returns to the Overture Center Friday for an evening of classic monologues featuring her iconic characters in new settings and vintage video clips.
Stu Levitan talked to the 2014 Kennedy Center Honoree for his radio show Books & Beats on 92.1 The Mic.
How have your characters endured for two generations?
It’s keeping them current. I just believe they live — not in my house, but maybe next door. And they complain to me all the time about what I put them through.
How do you and [wife and longtime partner] Jane Wagner create characters collaboratively?
When Jane wrote The Search for Intelligent Life in the Universe, she just wrote characters to the paper. Then I was expected to physicalize them. She would always complain that she had to face the blank page, and I would say, “Hey, I have to face the full page!”
What are the origins of Trudy the Bag Lady?
We’d see a lot of these women on the street in LA. I would go upstairs to where Jane worked and improvise, creating [Trudy’s] voice and her physicality. I said I’ve got to do this character, because I just felt drawn to it. So finally, Jane, just to shut me up, wrote a more definitive monologue, and that was the basis for Trudy in Appearing Nitely. And then she invented the Trudy who was much more fully realized, who was the connective tissue for The Search.
How much have you and Jane Fonda changed in the 35 years since you made 9 to 5?
I don’t think we’ve changed much at all. Jane is still kind of an innocent, totally in earnest. She wants to make it, wants to get the gold star in ballet class. And it’s something I’ve loved about her from the beginning.
Do you feel any special responsibility for the way the gay characters are portrayed on Grace and Frankie?
If people are being debased in any way, it’s hard for me not to speak up. And there have been a couple of lines that I’ve argued about. There’s not much of it, and I haven’t always succeeded. That’s water under the bridge. But it’s not, really, because it’s taped and will go on in perpetuity.
How high were you in the peyote scene in the pilot episode?
Well, Jane and I did do a little trial peyote so we’d know roughly how people might behave. But it wasn’t much different from anything else we knew.
Talk about the experience of making three films with Robert Altman, starting with Nashville in 1975.
I secretly had wanted Barbara Harris’ part because it was quirky and funny and closes out the movie. But when I got to Nashville and saw how right everybody was, I said, well, I’m much more Linnea than I even think I am. That was one of Bob’s gifts — casting. And Bob was just so human and so available. That’s why the actors who worked with him all the time just loved him. When we were making Nashville people would get just loaded every night while the whole cast watched dailies [unedited footage]. I was heartbroken when he died.
Your website has a section on your movie memorabilia. Is all that true?
Yeah! I got Betty Grable’s bobby pin when I was 12. She was in Detroit with her husband, the bandleader Harry James. My girlfriend Suzie and I would go all over the city for autographs, just for the adventure of it. We’d find out what hotels they were at and sneak in. We got up to Janet Leigh and Tony Curtis’ suite one time, and we could see him around, doing stuff. Janet Leigh’s cigarette was Parliament, and I got Tony Curtis’ handkerchief. Later, I was on Laugh-In with Tony Curtis, and got a picture to send to Suzie. She still lives in Michigan.
Do you like it when fans quote old punch lines and catchphrases, or is that lame?
I’ve got fans who can reference lines I’ve forgotten. I like it. Unless it’s a line I’m embarrassed by.
Anything you know now that you wish you had known when starting out?
Be bold, always. But take responsibility for your boldness.
