Lily Tomlin

CityLife stage writer David McKee interviewed comedian Lily Tomlin in advance of her first-ever Vegas stand, at the MGM Grand. The original Q&A was apparently only a sliver of the conversation the two had over the phone last month. Here’s the rest of that exchange.

CityLife: Part of the secret of Lily Tomlin’s longevity in the spotlight is that she continues to get ‘em while they’re young …
Lily Tomlin: I’ve got fans, probably kids that grew up with me on Sesame Street. I also did the voice of Ms. Frizzle [from The Magic School Bus]. Little kids, they have no interest in me whatsoever and I say, ‘I’m Ms. Frizzle,’ then they’re jumping up and down. There’s a school, the Amateur School of Leadership for Girls, in Austin. A year or so ago, I was there to see the girls and do a little Q&A thing. They’re girls up to like 11 or 12, so they don’t have a lot of knowledge of me. Then someone in the crowd blew my cover that I was Ms. Frizzle and, my God, I just couldn’t do anything wrong.

CL: Why is live performance still important to you, given that you could probably make a living off of TV and movies?
LT: Because live performance is more live – you are more live and I have the ability to do it with tremendous energy and desire. Jane [Wagner], my partner, often says, ‘I think you love to perform live because that’s the only two hours of the day that you’re in the present.’ I get to try new stuff and it’s also very validating. In a sense, I want to validate the audience, their humanity and I want them to validate mine.

CL: What sort of advantage is to have Jane Wagner right there providing material?
LT: She’s an absolute, total, gifted writer, and most writers don’t want to work so I have to beg her to write stuff. She says she has to face the empty page and I say, ‘Well, I have to face the full one.’ But I’m much more eager to do it. She’s much more reclusive and private, and I’m just used to being out there. Since I was a small girl, I put on shows and went places with my Dad that most kids don’t get to go, like bookie joints, bars and the racetrack and stuff.

CL: Speaking of bookie joints, as someone who grew up around that milieu, what do you make of the giant casinos of today?
LT: They’re probably not as much fun, in terms of being an underworld. Now it’s like the family. In my time, going with my Dad, they were kind of low places. [chuckles] My mother has horrified that my dad would take me. Dad would always say, ‘She likes it,’ and I did.
If you listen to the old Edith Ann album – it’s like a radio show; it’s all sound effects and everything – Edith is going through her neighborhood and she’s introducing a new person, played by me. I’m having a conversation with Edith and she’s introducing me to everything around her house. You know how an old bar, in the daytime, would have the door standing open? So you’d hear all that bar stuff, like some woman with a big whiskey laugh: ‘Ah, ha ha!’ You hear people playing pool and the jukebox. Edith starts to run into the bar to see if Ed, who’s the bartender, has seen her dog. The woman says, ‘Don’t go in there, Edith! That’s a bar,’ and Edith says, ‘It’s OK, lady, they know me here.’ [laughs] That’s really how it was.

CL: One of your greatest collaborators was Richard Pryor. Do you see anybody today who is comparably challenging to the audience?
LT: To me, the thing about Richard was I don’t see a lot of people that had the vulnerability that Richard had. It was his own vulnerability and the humanity of it that made him not on top of everything, that made him a part of the audience that people could really identify, immerse themselves in. Everybody else is a little more hard-edged. They’re defensive, protected, dominant. Richard was just … Richard, there’s nobody else like him.
There are a lot of talented people and they do interesting, rich stuff: [Dave] Chappelle, Chris Rock, they’re all really good and have marvelous perceptions most of the time. But they don’t have that real identity with being absolutely a vulnerable human that made Richard speak to and move so many people.

CL: In terms of your film work, many people associate you most with Robert Altman.
LT: I felt I was very close to Altman and his wife Kathryn. And you are. When you’re part of that Altman family, it was a very special relationship and Bob was like this great, benign patriarch who’s also sort of your errant uncle. He’d come in and shake the house up.
That’s another one who had tremendous humanity, and he was completely open and exposed. He was never authoritative in the sense of it being phony. His authority was just innate and came out of his sureness as a person, and yet he was never overbearing. That’s why actors had so much fun with him. You’d say to him, ‘What should we get out of this scene,’ and he’d say, ‘I don’t know. Why don’t you surprise me?’ Anything would go yet he was absolutely certain when he got what he wanted.
It was a great thing to be in the movies with him and then doing that last movie, Prairie Home Companion, with Meryl [Streep] and Garrison [Keillor]. He shot that movie in about three weeks, from high-def, and was just floatin’ along. He was getting chemo every day but you never doubted for a minute who was ruling the set. If people said, ‘Is Bob different now,’ I’d say, ‘He just doesn’t ride the crane anymore.’

CL: What was it like to sing duets with Meryl Streep?
LT: It was a bit daunting but I took lessons for about three months. I was singing the harmony anyway and I was supposed to be lesser-talented of the two sisters, so it was all right. [laughs] In fact, I called Bob at one point and said, ‘I don’t know if Rhonda is really going to sing well.’ He said, ‘If she can’t sing well, she can’t sing well.’
Nothing was a problem for him. We did no fixing. We sang live and that was it. If you didn’t get it, you didn’t get it.

CL: In The Late Show (produced by Altman), how was it to be sharing the screen with a legend like Art Carney?
LT: I adored him anyway from Ed Norton to anybody else he’d ever done. He was very spirited on the set. I always sensed he was very lonely off the set, but why should I make those assumptions? I had so much fun with him and with Bill Macy, and I always think, ‘We’re just there to do the work and make the characters live or make a good movie.’ You know you’re with a good actor and that makes you feel good. You think you can only look better. I didn’t feel intimidated other than wanting to make my own part true and alive. I knew I could leave Art’s part to himself and he would take care of it [chuckles].

CL: Are three other films that particularly stand out?
LT: I’ll tell you frankly, they’re all kind of special, niche-y or something. Of course, Nine to Five because of Jane [Fonda] and Dolly [Parton], and it was such a huge hit. And Big Business, because I got to do that with Bette [Midler]. One of my favorite movies, aside from Altman, is All of Me with Steve [Martin]. I loved that movie and I loved working with David O. Russell in spite of all the fracas. To me, it meant nothing. It was a stressful set because the movie [I [Heart] Huckabees] was cockeyed and wacky, and a lot of stuff was going on.
I’m not surprised when things happen on a set. To me it was like a fight in a family. You get over it in 10 minutes and you go on being family. So that piece of film that was on YouTube was around for four years. I never gave it another thought until I was doing another interview and the interviewer said, ‘What do you think about the film on YouTube?’ David is brilliant, original and I have a great affection for him in spite of his wildness.

CL: You also sounded quite fond when you alluded to Steve Martin …
LT: First of all, I love the movie. [Director] Carl Reiner was great to work with. The movie was delightful. It was lyrical, sweet, wonderful and Steve is a terrific guy to work with. He’s very smart. He’s not ‘on,’ so he’s not always performing or wanting someone’s attention. Between takes, you’re just a person sitting around, talking. I’d always been fond of him because I’d known him for a long time. I thought he was funny and inventive, and he’s a nice man.

CL: How did you turn up on The X-Files?
LT: I went up to see [series creator] Chris Carter to tell him how much I loved the show and I wanted to be on it. He said, ‘Oh Lily, you know’ – this was like the first season – ‘we very seldom hire recognizable people because it stretches our credibility.’ I thought, ‘Well … I’ll never get a part. He doesn’t like me that much.’ Honestly, like four years later or whatever it was, I’m riding in my car and he calls me on the cell phone and says, ‘I just got an idea and I’m writing it right now.’ So it never hurts to go there and knock on the door and tell them what a fan you are.