Lily Tomlin
With over 45 years of making audiences laugh as well as showing her superb acting skills in both comedy and drama, Lily Tomlin, who turned 70 last year, is still going strong touring around the country, developing a Desperate Housewives spin-off and currently featured in a very different kind of role opposite Glenn Close in FX’s Damages. As she begins a return to Las Vegas this week (March 11-17), I gave Lily a call to talk about everything under the sun including the key to her long work and personal partnership with Jane Wagner and why she thinks so many performers still feel the need to stay in the closet.
Jim Halterman: The show that you’re doing right now in Vegas and around the country is “Not Playing With A Full Deck,” right?
Lily Tomlin: Yes, but “Not Playing With A Full Deck” is more for Vegas although it’s not radically different what I do around the country but I’m able to use more film and stuff like that.
JH: Does your show typically evolve or does it stay the same?
LT: We try to keep up a bit. More recently, Ernestine is working at a health share insurance corp denying healthcare to everyone.
Campbell Scott and Tomlin as son and mother in DAMAGES
JH: Has the experience of performing for a live audience changed for you over the years?
LT: If anything, it’s more fun and more easy-going for me. I’m not quite as intense as I might have been when I was young with everything having to be just so. I’m less that way.
JH: How is the Vegas audience? I know you hadn’t conquered it until last year.
LT: They’ve been quite good, actually. Overall, they’re not as raucous as a hardcore fan audience but they’re good. I do a lot of improv with the audience when they have to ask questions and sometimes people are shy. A lot of time people don’t want to call attention to themselves, which I can understand.
Tomlin as Marilyn Tobin in DAMAGES
JH: Because you came from a working class background, do you think that made you work harder to break into the business?
LT: It probably made me more sensitive to what people would write me or say to me in terms of not just blowing them off or I felt that I had to answer everybody that wrote. That’s probably partly working class and partly feminist and not to be elitist in any way so I always was pretty sincere about people contacting me and not putting two or three people between me and the outside. It was so natural for me anyway. I’ve been around so long it’s just a part of being alive.
JH: You and Jane have been together so long personally and professionally. What is the key to that longevity?
LT: Commitment. Patience. The desire to maintain the relationship and not wanting to lose it. Don’t take anything too seriously. Behavior and stuff…we all get on each other’s nerves at some point. After a while, you see certain kinds of idiosyncrasies or things aren’t exactly the way you want them you’re going to have to see it as endearing. Like if you pull a jar out of the refrigerator and you grab hold of the cap and the jar flies over your shoulder because it’s not screwed on. That makes me smile anymore. Maybe I had been impatient or upset about it at some point decades ago but now…how could it not be endearing no matter what is said or done over the years or how many times you’d had to clean up a big mess and someone still can’t screw a lid on a jar?! It’s now just funny and sweet.
JH: Why do you think so many people in the entertainment business are still in the closet?
LT: It could be any number of things. I can sort of relate to a dozen different things. They might not want to think of themselves as just a gay artist. They want to think of themselves in some universal way and, unfortunately, that’s the way the culture is. We get divided up and pigeonholed. That will undoubtedly change in time but that isn’t that way now necessarily. I don’t know. Maybe a fear of rejection. Any number of things. Depends on who they are. If they’re glamour girls or leading men then I suppose that’s an added problem because they think no one will cast them. That’s what’s so remarkable about Neil Patrick Harris on How I Met Your Mother. He plays a romantic lead…
JH: …and a big womanizer on the show!
LT: …and he’s totally out and that’s great. I think it’s kind of remarkable. It probably has to do with a younger audience. They are just much cooler, much more accepting, it’s not important to them. They see sexuality as not a threatening thing or a divisive thing. I hope that’s what it is.
Tomlin with Kathryn Joosten on DESPERATE HOUSEWIVES
JH: You’re doing a great job on Damages. How did the role come about?
LT: During season one, I was a huge fan and I ran into one of the producers and I said, not with the intent consciously of getting a part although I have called producers before to tell them I wanted to be on their show. When I learned I was going to test for it, I was all over it. God, I love the show. It’s so great and so exciting and what’s going to happen and can’t we get more episodes every year. I was glad they called me for this third season.
JH: How easy or difficult was it to step into Marilyn’s shoes. She’s pretty dour from what we’ve seen so far.
LT: Not hard at all. People always ask people like me and Marty (Martin Short) about playing comedy and playing drama and Marty holds the same ideal I do. I don’t see any real difference between the two. It’s a matter of degree or style but it still has to come from an honest place. To be Ed Grimley you have to make Ed Grimly seem possible. [As for Martha] I don’t have any problem with that kind of woman but we don’t know how bad anybody is until the very end.
JH: There was some ribbing in the press (Entertainment Weekly’s Bullseye) about the wig that you use in the show. What do you think about that?
LT: It’s a wig I had in my wig room and I think there were just having fun with it. I got a kick out of it and, of course, the hairdresser was delighted to have her wig work pointed out. That’s a wig that I already owned and they didn’t have a red head on the show and I thought it was a good hairdo for Marilyn. I did two or three different looks and they were happiest with that look. I was hoping they’d pick that because there are blondes and brunettes all over the show and I look good in red hair.
JH: Where are we with the Desperate Housewives spin-off?
LT: We’re definitely working on it full-board. We just had dinner the other night to talk about we were going to do.
JH: Who do you think is funny who is out there on the scene?
LT: Well, I like different people for all different kinds of reasons. I like, of course, Wanda Sykes. I like a lot of stuff that Sarah [Silverman] does. I think she’s very brainy. She does stuff, I don’t know exactly why she does some stuff but some other stuff can be really inspired. Name some other people for me…
JH: How about Chelsea Handler?
LT: I’ve seen that show but to me that’s not…I’ve never seen her do standup. I like her but I haven’t had a lot of exposure. I like Kathy Griffin.
JH: You’ve done her show, right?
LT: Yeah, I was on Kathy’s show and I like Tracy [Ullman}. I’ve always liked Tracy. There must be some newer people. I always see guys on Comedy Central. What about the girls? Are they any more new girls?
JH: Do you ever watch any of your old footage?
LT: Not too much. I’m not averse to watching it and I’ll see it once in awhile. Someone will send me something. Or I’ll go on YouTube for something and I might see something of mine on there. I don’t have a lot of time to just search through it and some of it I know is on there and it’s badly shot and I don’t like it. What can you do? It’s out there.
Damages airs Monday nights at 10 et/pt on FX and for information on Lily in concert, go to her website, www.lilytomlin.com.
Jim Halterman is a freelance writer who spends his days interviewing the top tier of talent and creative forces in the entertainment world and then, because he's that kind of guy, he brings it all to YOU! And, because we all like free stuff, check back on Fridays for the best giveaways!! (Photo: With SMASH star Megan Hilty at TCA Winter Press Tour, Pasadena, CA, January, 2012)
{ 6 comments… read them below or add one }
I love her on Damages, wig and all!
Thanks for interviewing the great Lily Tomlin. I really wish you had asked her about the erotic chemistry between Patty and Ellen that seems to be vaguely present in the current season of DAMAGES. I’d like to know if the ambiguous flirtation between those two characters was a conscious choice made by the show’s producers and/or Glenn Close and Rose Byrne or a complete figment of my imagination.
Bravo Lily and Jim for a charming interview including a thoughtful consideration of the complexity in coming-out issues for gay artists.
I hope you’ll interview Jane Wagner, too. It seems many people don’t get (or know enough about) her extradinary contribution to Lily’s artistry.
I agree, MMG!! Thanks for the comment!!
Very interesting. I didn’t pick up on any flirtation between them but did see them as two tough women…and more of a foreshadowing that Marilyn (Lily) is probably hiding more than she’s letting on. Time will tell. Thanks for the comment!! JIM
I agree—I’d love to chat with Jane sometime but I get the feeling she doesn’t like the spotlight much but it’s worth asking, right? Stay tuned…in the meantime, I’m doing a Martin Short press call tomorrow to talk about tonight’s DAMAGES episode. Should be good. Is everyone loving the current season??