Christine Baranski
Following so closely on the results of the midterm elections, a play about gay marriage seems very timely.
It was amazing. We were in rehearsal when the Mark Foley scandal broke, and since I have a history of doing several readings of this play, I remember my thought process changing from, "Wow, this play is topical" and then going, "No, it's not topical anymore," and then going, "Oh, it's topical again." Then, gay marriage was the lead item in the New York Times two days in a row, and there was the hypocritical male evangelical, and suddenly the play is very prescient. Honestly, now that the Democrats have won and there's this breath of fresh air in American politics, the play has an even more cathartic effect on audiences because it's filled with stuff that we've been dealing with politically, but with a sense of humor and compassion.
There's also lots of talk about your character's husband working on an anti-gay marriage amendment.
How did you get involved with Regrets Only?
You and Paul Rudnick go way back, right?
Had you worked with anyone else in the production before?
How about within the cast?
Did you need to do a lot of prep work for this role?
As a fashion muse, your character looks pretty glammed up every night.
Even though you've done several musicals, none have been on Broadway. Are you interested in one day singing on the Great White Way?
How about a favorite composer?
Is it true that co-starring on the sitcom Cybill led to your career expansion into musicals?
Faced with so many different acting genres, how do you choose your projects?
How much of a difference did it make?
How has your big- and small-screen work informed your theater work?
How so?
Will you stay put with theater for a while?
See Christine Baranski in Regrets Only at the Manhattan Theatre Club.
Oh, god, when the audience finally realizes what's going on in Act II and my hair's a disaster—it's been burnt and colored a horrific shade of red by this woman who's clearly not qualified to be an Upper East Side hairdresser—and Hank, the fashion designer, comes in and says all the gays are on strike? It's just a wonderful revelation. There are also some lines that have to do with the president and the Constitution that pack a punch. It's a curiously political satire.
Yes. One of the reasons this play is such a pleasure to perform and one of the reasons I wanted to do it is because it has real undertones of seriousness. Paul [Rudnick] puts a friendship at stake, and questions the nature of the friendship and the idea of marriage. I think women in the audience respond just as deeply as gay people in the audience. It's not just about gay marriage, it's about marriage itself. Clearly, my character has a flawed marriage, and one of the things that motivates her to do what she does in the second act is based on her feelings about her own marriage. There are times when gay people watching want to stand up and cheer, and then there are times when women want to stand up and cheer.
I did the first reading in 2005 with John Lithgow and the second in March with Nathan Lane; I missed the third reading because I was in Washington doing Mame. But I was always keeping track of the play. In fact, Paul came down to DC to see Mame, and when it was clear that the musical was not going to have an immediate future in New York, I asked to see it one more time. The play has always haunted me because I thought the relationship between the two friends was very real, genuine, and touching. So many women have best friends who are gay men and I can't say that I've ever seen that on stage as the centerpiece of a play.
I've actually done, if you can believe it, three movies where he's the screenwriter. I think Jeffrey was first, then Addams Family Values and then Marci X about three years ago. We've know each other for 10 years. I've never done a stage play of Paul's, but I've loved him not only for writing really funny, brilliant, satirical lines with outrageous characters in outrageous situations, but also for balancing humor with a core that is serious and questioning. I'm having so much fun.
I did Sweeney Todd with [director] Chris Ashley in Washington at the Sondheim Celebration.
I had worked with no one going in, but of course George Grizzard is one of our great American actors. My god, I remember seeing him on Broadway with George C. Scott and Maureen Stapleton in The Country Girl when I was a student at Juilliard. He's also a neighbor of mine in Connecticut. And two years ago, I took this marvelous theatrical autobiography called Public Places by Sian Phillips with me on vacation and just loved it. It was the study of an actress and how she managed to be the wife of this complicated, gifted man [Peter O'Toole] and raise children. I was fascinated because Lawrence of Arabia is one of my favorite movies and O'Toole is one of my all-time favorite actors. When I read in the Times that she had signed on to play my mother, I almost passed out. We actually look very much alike. We also share a dressing room, and she's just one of those great English actresses with a million stories.
No, because Tibby's… well, I wouldn't call her a fashionista, but she's society woman who cares deeply about being well turned out. [In the play] she's portrayed as Hank's muse and best friend, and he's made her into this glamorous society fixture. It's a world I'm pretty conversant with. I read the Bill Blass autobiography because I think the character of Hank is very much based on Bill, and I read that wonderful new book The Beautiful Fall about Yves Saint Laurent and Karl Lagerfeld. And I just wandered around the Upper East Side and dreaming about the kind of life she leads and how seriously insulated and privileged she is, and how that factors into what this play is about.
It's wonderful. I've always wanted to work with William Ivey Long, one of our great designers. We had lots and lots of discussions about Tibby's first dress. In fact, we're putting in new gowns for the final scene; we're now wearing long dresses. When you're doing a play about a fashion designer, what you wear and how you look in creating that world is a big component.
Oh, I'm always open to doing it. Mame was a fantastic experience. It's not like I never think of myself as a musical comedy performer. In fact, I've just signed on to do the concert version of Follies, and then in June, I'm doing the concert version of Sweeney Todd, which is like a reprise of the full production we did a few years ago at the Sondheim Festival. I keep my voice and my body in shape just in case something comes along. I love doing musicals; I'm just not someone who goes from one musical to another.
I'm one of the luckiest actresses in that over the course of a few years, I've been able to do full productions of both Sweeney Todd and Mame, which are diametrically opposed in terms of style. Those are two great musicals and I did them with full orchestra, costumes and sets, courtesy of the Kennedy Center. In today's age, it's cost-prohibitive to do those musicals in New York with a full orchestra and full production values. The Kennedy Center, meanwhile, is non-profit but has deep corporate pockets.
Curiously, I've done a lot of Sondheim. I played April in Company for Playwrights Horizons like a billion years ago and then the original workshop productions of both Sunday in the Park with George and Assassins. I also did a concert version of Sweeney Todd in L.A., then at the Kennedy Center. Now I'm going to do Follies, so I've got quite a few under my belt.
It's very funny how things work out. When I was doing Cybill, I used to have a lot of time on my hands because a television schedule is not that demanding—lots of half days and weekends off. Someone put me onto a singing teacher, and because I had the time and the money, I drove over to her house in Laurel Canyon three or four times a week, and she really helped me in terms of negotiating the break in my voice. And musicals have a lot of great roles for women; you don't have to be an ingénue. Certainly there's Mame and Mrs. Lovett, and there's other stuff in Follies. I still want to be Joanne in Company some day, because I have to sing "The Ladies Who Lunch"!
You look at what's out there and you make decisions. [At the start of my career] I was almost exclusively a theater actress, and I did not want to go to L.A. to do a sitcom and have to move my family. Then, in the early '90s, my last show at the Manhattan Theatre Club was The Loman Family Picnic. It was a beautiful production and it got great reviews, but nobody seemed to be going to the theater to see serious plays. The early '90s on Broadway were a very depressing time; it was just big British musicals. It wasn't a particularly good landscape for thinking that you could continue making a living. Cybill came along, and they really courted me, but I was reluctant to do it. I came very close to turning it down at the last minute because I was afraid of giving up my thing as a theater actress. But in fact, doing Cybill was one of the best things I ever did for my career, because it opened so many doors and brought me a level of national recognition.
Honestly, it helps your theater career when you become a national celebrity. I mean, I've won several Tony Awards, but it wasn't until I did television that I was asked to present a Tony—and it was because I was on a CBS show. And then I got movie roles and another two television series [2000's Welcome to New York and 2003's Happy Family], which brought me not only recognition, but also the financial capital that allowed me to come back to the theater now. I'm what, working for $700 a week? It's kind of like a charitable contribution. But it all works.
I don't think an actor ever sits down and says, "Now I'm ready to do Shakespeare," and then waits nine months for Shakespeare to come along. You see what's out in the marketplace. A year ago, [Theatre for a New Audience artistic director] Jeffrey Horowitz happened to talk to me when I was honoring one of my speech teachers, and he said, "I'd love to have you do Shakespeare." I said, "I'd always loved to do Antony and Cleopatra." Now, that's a reality, although I'm not slated to do it for another year. I can't wait, because it's something I've always wanted to do. It's in my future because I put it out there. If you have a vision of where you want to go as an actor, things tend to align themselves.
One really does engage the other; I've learned so much about theater acting by doing camera work. It's made me a better actress.
Oh, gosh, just in general. Learning to work in front of a camera, you can be much simpler, and you have to have a level of truth. Learning to be simpler as an actress has helped me to be more still on stage, to rely more on my mental process to communicate, and not just feel it has to be illustrated or physical-ized—that acting can be more about looking at the other actor and communicating in a simple way.
I always knew that after a decade of working in Hollywood, of opening that door by doing television and film, I would want to come back to the theater, and here I am. I'll do musical work, and I'll do Shakespeare, but I also have no doubt I'll be back in Hollywood in the future. For me, in the last decade for so, it's been all about mixing the three mediums, and that's been great.