The New Yorker Radio Hour - The actor Christine Baranski on “The Good Fight,” and Kurt Vile on Songwriting

Episode Date: April 16, 2019

Christine Baranski was a successful theatre actor who would never stoop to do television in the old days. But when she got the pilot script for “Cybill,” and had two daughters to put through school, she took the role of Marianne, the tough-talking best friend of Cybill Shepherd’s character. “Who goes to Hollywood at forty-two and becomes an overnight star?” Baranski asks the critic Emily Nussbaum. What made her such a sensation? “No one had seen that woman on American television” before, she notes, of her character, a badass with a Martini and an attitude. “Sex and the City” came later. Playing strong women seems to come naturally to Baranski; since 2009, she’s portrayed the capable, elegant Diane Lockhart, in “The Good Wife” and then “The Good Fight.” She talked with Nussbaum in a live conversation at the 2018 New Yorker Festival. Plus, Amanda Petrusich talks with the musician Kurt Vile, who performs his song “Pretty Pimpin” live. New Yorker Radio Hour listeners, we want to hear from you.  We have a few questions about the show and how you listen to it. The survey takes about twenty minutes, and your feedback will help us make our podcast better.  Take the survey here.

From One World Trade Center in Manhattan, this is The New Yorker Radio Hour, a co-production of the New Yorker and WNYC Studios. Welcome to The New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. Emily Nussbaum watches more TV than any 16 people I know. She's the New Yorker's television critic, and she won the Pulitzer Prize for her work in 2016. So when Emily Nussbaum gets excited about interviewing an actor, you know there's got to be a good reason. I'm delighted to welcome Christine Beranski, who's not only a quadruple and probably more threat performer and a radical fashion inspiration, but my personal guide through today's political hellscape. In her current guise as Diane Lockhart on the wonderful CBS drama,

The Good Fight, and on Ms. Boranski's been microdosing her way through the Trump Apocalypse. Becoming appropriately unhinged in a series of the most amazing necklaces on the planet. Thank you. Beranski was already a stage veteran, performing Shakespeare and winning Tony Awards on Broadway, when she suddenly shot to fame on television with the show Sibble. She played Marianne, a martini-swilling best friend character who got most of the best zingers in the show. She danced with Robin Williams in the bird cage and crooned with Merrill Streep and Mamma Mia, and she's been in top-rated sitcoms from Frazier to the Big Bang Theory.

Christine is a 15-time Emmy Award nominee. She's won two Tonys for the Real Thing and Rumors. And she has a house in Connecticut where she gets to go skinny dipping at night. So basically she's living the life. Welcome. Christine Baranski. Thank you. We were talking backstage and we immediately went into a political rabbit hole.

So rather than start with anything political, I'm going to start with a clip from Mamma Mia. Maybe we should all just sit around singing Abba song. This is the first Mamma Me, of course. The second one just appeared this summer, which I thought was a public service. And then you go from thinking, God, this is really kind of silly. And oh God. And then I realize the world really needs a couple of hours

to still believe life is joyous and people get along and there's sensuality and a belief in love. And there's just a goofy innocence about the movie that's really, as I said, it performs a function now. So I'm going to show another clip and we're going to jump right to the good fight.

And this trip is called Trump Derangement Syndrome. This is deranged. This is the Trump derangement syndrome. You're just as bad as you're accusing him of being. No, I'm just done with being the adult in the room. I am done with. with being the compliant and the sensible one. Standing stoically by while the other side picks my pockets,

while the other side gerrymanders Democrats out of existence. A three million person majority, and we lost the presidency. A Congress that keeps the Supreme Court justice from being seated because he was chosen by a Democratic president. That's not what happened. That is exactly what happened, Julius.

Okay, then, take to the streets, man the barricades. Because if that's what you really think, You're giving up on the law. You've gone well beyond. Actually, you don't know. I have a Smith in Wesson 64 in my desk, and I'm this close to taking to the streets. There's an uncanny synchronicity to this character. As I watch this, my eyes are welling up in tears as I watch this.

It's so of the moment. It's just brilliantly written, but it really puts intelligent, liberal-minded people who believe in the liberal-minded people believe in the liberal democratic tradition in society and in their country, puts them in a workplace and lets them bump into each other and mix ideas and make intellectual arguments that are complex and not strident, but that this woman, this Diane character for having fought the good fight all her life being a woman who probably followed Hillary into, you know, through Wellesley and championed her and had to, you know, knock on the glass ceiling many times

and finds herself at this present moment living in a country where we're backsliding in terms of women's rights. It's a marvelous role to play, and it's a marvelous show to be on because the writers just kind of take us into the belly of the beast and let us live in that world. And this past season really had, especially Diane, trying to, with her great rationality,

you know, for seven years you saw her on the good fight being the grown-up in the room, or the rational one, or the voice of reason, and to see that character not be able to cope, to see that woman, say, I can't process this. I'm going crazy. I can't turn the TV off, but I feel like I have to bear witness to this. witness to this. It's very, very interesting to watch. And I said to Michelle King, our headwriter,

last week, I said, you know, we're going to have to just go right into this again, given what's happening. And she said, yep, that's where we're going to be in season three is following the women. And the Good Fight was supposed to be a show about Hillary being president. Instead, it was a show about Trump being president, which obviously transformed the show. We shot that pilot the days before and the days after the election. And then of course we had to rewrite the pilot because the presumption was Diane was going to retire because there are no more glass ceilings to break and she got, she gets the house in the south of France and then she loses her money. But there was a speech at the very beginning where she's talking about, you know,

there are no more glass ceilings to break. And it was written as a line thinking that Hillary Clinton was going to be the president. And so that line was taken out, and we had to rewrite the episode. So now it seems like Diane got the house in the south of France because she didn't want to live in the United States. Every element of it just changes context. This seems like a good lead-in to a clip from Sybil. So let's go to a clip from Sybil.

Champagne for everyone at that table. Champagne at lunch? Oh, we haven't had that since yesterday. Sybil, I have fabulous news. My prodigal son is returning. Justin is coming home for Thanksgiving. That's wonderful. I knew he'd come back.

It's been three years, Sybil, without a word. You remember the night he left? I'd just come back from that Save Our Furs benefit. He told me he hated my entire pampered, materialistic existence. Then he asked for $2,000 and left for Peru. Maybe being away three years changed his mind, or maybe the money ran out. Sybil, I don't want to celebrate another 40th birthday without him. I want to prove to him that I'm not something he has to run away from.

And I'm going to start by showing him the best old-fashioned Thanksgiving we've ever had. Well, except for that one in Aruba with Ivana Trump and Richard Simmons. Hey, I've got an idea. Why don't you bring Justin to my house? Everyone's in town. So I'm going to make a good old-fashioned Memphis Thanksgiving. I'm going to use all four Southern food groups, sugar, salt, grease, and alcohol. It sounds tempting, but I can't. Oh, come on. The whole family's going to be there, and you're part of my family.

Did I mention there'll be alcohol? I'd love to, darling, but I want Justin all to myself this weekend. I'm even going to cook, all his favorite health foods. Oh, one question. Is it still correct to call it brown rice, or is it rice of color? Yeah, I watched all these old foods. watched all these old Sybil's, and I have to say it is a very surreal show to watch, because

it is a real time capsule of the period, like even like the... Look at the hair. Yeah. Oh my God. What was that like the first year that you were making Sybil because there really was this complete... And also actually I was wondering because you came as a

largely as a stage actress and television was in a very different stage... Oh, God, yeah. And there was still that conflict of, you know, if you did television you were giving up the theater. I mean, Now everybody's doing everything and actually everybody wants a job on television because there's so much great writing on television. But at that time, I was seriously conflicted. And I was in my early 40s by then and I had just, except for some films, I was really a theater actress and defined myself that way. Plus, they weren't shooting shows in New York. For the most part, all especially sitcoms were shot in LA and I had two children and I didn't want to raise them in LA. So I just kept turning down pilots and then they approached me about this and the character

was meant to be a kind of abfab, Joanna Lumley type. And I was doing the math on how much it would cost to educate my two daughters and it seemed like the theater was not going to provide that kind of income. So I began to seriously consider it. But it was a really tortured decision. And my manager who's here today, she'll tell you. I mean, she really had to talk me into it. And the night before I left, I almost called her in the middle of the night

to say, I just don't think I can do it. It's too big a step. And I decided not to move the children to L.A., but that we would try my commuting back and forth. But it was a huge, for some reason, a huge psychological jump for me to go to Hollywood and to do a... sitcom. That said, if ever there was a sitcom that was right for me to do at that moment in time, it was that role. And in that show, Chuck Laurie wrote the pilot. And I

did accept it on the basis of the pilot, which just, I thought this character there's, you know, she's just got those great, you know, whipsmart one-liners. And the one line that sold me on the whole project was when Sibbles just out of the blue says, you know something, you know what's amazing, Marianne? And my response is, they make vodka from wheat. There's something there about that writing that I think I can work with this. And I told Chuck that and he later confessed, it's not a Chuck Lory Line. It's his writing partner, Lee. Aronson was a recovered alcoholic. But anyway, yeah, that character, within 13 episodes, I won an Emmy for that. And to that I attribute, you know, I give it over to Chuck Lorry and the

writing of that character. No one had seen that woman on American television. They'd seen Ab-Fab. But she was the first out of the gate. Sex in the City came later. But the woman with the martini who was sort of a badass in her outfits and her attitude, that was the first of its kind. And boy, it changed my career. Those were really hard years. I hated living alone in a hotel. I missed my kids so desperately. But it's why I'm here. It's why I had a relationship all those years with CBS. There was a turning point in my career. And who goes to Hollywood at 42? And, you know, an overnight, you know, kind of star in that way that you become a star because of television. I mean, I was a well-known theater actress, but not a celebrity, not a star.

No. I wanted to talk about your long relationship with CBS. I'm wondering how people are responding to what's going on with Les Moonvez. I think Leslie Moonvez was loved and highly respected. It's infinitely sad what's happened. I will miss him. When Les took over the network, I was beginning my second season of Sibble, so I was at a photo shoot. And this man came up to me and he said, Christine, you don't remember me.

But I used to hand you your paycheck at Playwright's Horizons back in the early 80s. And Les was in the production office at Playwrights Horizons and handed me a paycheck for about, oh, I don't know, $125 a week. So we go back that far, and I said to him, well, you're paying me a lot more now, aren't you? Sybil. Long, happy relationship working with CBS. It is shocking, but that's where the culture is,

and it's a clarifying moment in our culture, and I think it's going to be messy before it gets better, but I will miss less. Yeah. I was wondering with you and your daughters who are a lawyer and it, like have you had, when you've had conversations about what's going on, do you find there to be a generational difference between you and your perspectives on some of these issues, or is that not not so true?

Only slightly. Well, yes, I did get into one conversation with my daughter about men's behavior and how I was raised. I was raised, you know, in a Catholic background in all girls Catholic high school. And it was just instilled in us as a young. women that men were that way that they couldn't control themselves after a certain point. I mean, I literally was told if you let a man touch you anywhere below the neck, he might turn into an uncontrollable wild animal and it's your responsibility if

you get pregnant. You have to control the, you have to control the narrative. And I told this to my daughter and she said, no, no is no at any point, at any point in the evening if you, you know, no matter what's going on. I said, that's interesting. That's just not the way I was raised. I would never go to a man's room late at night. I just assume that he might very well behave badly. And there's so that there's that difference, but it's how we were raised. But I'm proud of my daughters. I think they're very savvy about their feminism and they're not strident, but they're clear-headed about it and pragmatic. And one of my daughters did get a law degree, and she was really agonizing whether or not to go to law school.

It's such a huge commitment. And I said, look, you can rail against the world, but if you want to change things, you've got to know how the system works. And becoming a lawyer, as Diane did, you figure out how the system works, however flawed it is, and then you figure out how to change it. But, you know, blogging and, you know, railing against the machine with a lot of hyperbole, a lot of screaming isn't going to get us there. And I think at this moment in time for women, it's the most important time to be clear-headed, rational as well as passionate and angry. Channel the anger in an intelligent, clear, forward-moving way.

It's so hard to talk about this stuff because I always find myself feeling all those emotional feelings and wanting to escape from it all. You went to Oxford to study, right? I did. My other daughter, Lily, got a graduate degree at Wolfson College at Oxford in anthropology. And when I took her there to help her move in, I was just utterly captivated by Oxford.

And one of my deep regrets in my life is that I did not have a real college education and academic experience in that way. I went straight to Juilliard, which although it was a prestigious acting school, was trade school. I learned the craft of acting, and I'm happy I did, and that was my great passion.

But I've always longed to go back to school and use more of my brain and my intellect. So there's a summer course called the Oxford Experience, and next year I'm signed up for the Duke of Wellington. in one week, and then the meaning of life, the following week. So I'll do two weeks next to. The meaning of life just as a subject matter?

Why not? Not like the Monty Python film. No, no, just the meaning of life in one week at Oxford. You should have me back next year. I'll have all the answers. You can have a whole situation. So this is it. Thank you so much to everybody for coming.

And thank you to Christine Baranski. Christine Baranski speaking with the New Yorkers, Emily Nussbaum, in 2018. This is The New Yorker Radio Hour with more to come. This is the New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. Kurt Vile was a founder of the rock band, The War on Drugs. But he left the band shortly after its debut to make records all of his own. His albums with his backing band The Violators include Childish Prodigy, Smoke Ring for My Halo,

and last year's record bottled it in. He's sometimes been characterized as slacker rock, but he takes songwriting extremely seriously. Kurt Vile, that's his real name, by the way, has also appeared on the comedy show, Portlandia, and HBO's animated series, Animals. He played a singing squirrel. In the fall of 2018, he joined Amanda Petrusich on stage at the New Yorker Festival. You were a clue on Jeopardy last year. This is one of my favorite Kurt Vile facts. Well, it's kind of a weird clue.

The clue was the violators assist this pretty pimpin rocker in his foul work. Yeah. It was like, it was a real, he's the riddler. Like, how nobody could even understand, even if they knew the answer, they'd be like, wait, what? That was a complicated clue. Nonetheless, I would imagine being a jeopardy clue has to be some sort of milestone. That's got to be super weird.

Who was the first person who told you? You don't know her. You grew up one of ten children. Can you tell us a little bit about what it was like growing up in your family? Yeah, it was pretty annoying. No, it was pretty cool, but it was like no space, you know, for, like the boys' room had five boys in it. Because of that, I can sleep through anything, and I can just tune in and out whenever, you know, whenever people are talking, I can, like, be listening or not. And now you yourself have got two young daughters.

How would you characterize yourself as a parent? Father of the year. No, it's awesome having kids, and they're still pretty young, and they're really into music and reading. And, yeah, they're total brats in the best way. Did they like your songs? Yeah, like the one, my oldest, Awilda, she listens intensely to words. And the youngest, Elfine,

she'll go straight to a piano or guitar and just start playing. When did you start writing songs? Well, I started playing a string instrument, like a banjo when I was 14. I probably started writing songs right around them. But I made my first, like, cassette when I was 17. I would put out a tape or a CDR,

but I would call it my album as if it was like really, really, you know. But they didn't really become real albums until I was 28. Did you make your own cover art from the CDRs? I used to do that for mixed CDs. Well, so the banjo was your first instrument, and that's kind of what you learned to write on? Yeah, my dad wished I was like a bluegrass musician. So like a year before, maybe when I was 13,

he hung it over my head later. like, we were going to get you a guitar for Christmas, but you were really bad this year. So the next year, he's like, I could get you this banjo. And I wasn't sure, but then he worked for SEPTA, like drove trains, and a conductor. He basically was going to buy the banjo off this conductor, and the conductor played it over the phone,

the telephone, not the cell phone. And it sounded really cool through the telephone. So I was like, all right. But I kind of just treated it like a guitar, and just strum it. But yeah. Who are some of your favorite songwriters? So many.

Let's see. You know, there's like the classics, of course, like Bob Dylan and Neil Young, and then there's like Towns Van Zant. Well, you had the chance to open for Neil Young last year? John Prine. Yes, I opened for Neil Young recently. It was pretty funny. I was terrified.

There was like 80,000 people. Wow. And I just kind of like what I'm doing now, but with the guitar in my hand. my hand. I came out real cocky. I was like I was like joke singing like some kind of

Stevie Nicks thing and then I was like I got the crystal vision. Then I was like... Did you get a chance to meet Neil? I met him multiple times but only for a split second and the best time was a couple times before I got backstage. It was the first time I I saw him with Promise of the Reel. And

these kids, Willie Nelson's son, son. and other kids, they back them up really good. And I weasled my way backstage with my wife, Suzanne, and she egged me on to say hi. And so I did. And I was like, oh, Neil, I've seen you like 10 times. And it's always amazing.

But this is the best by far down by the river, which was like 30 minutes long. I was like, you are underground in outer space at the same time. It was unbelievable. And he was like, he was smiling all nice. And then when I said that, he was like, oh, yeah, we can go in outer space whenever we were.

want. And then I got a picture with him. That was cool. Every time I see him, it's where he just played a show. And even if we have friends in common, it doesn't matter because you're just like, I'm still a fanboy.

But this last time, as bandmates, I'm hugging all them. Like, in between, they're all passing around a jazz cigarette. I'm usually scared to do this. I used to love it as a kid, and then I can't it's harder to deal with it, but I'm trying. But anyway, I grabbed it from the drummer,

and me and my wife tried it out for the first time ever. Now, just kidding. But then, anyway, they came off the stage, and we're feeling really weird, and everybody's sort of just around him. And then he's just about to get away, as he usually does. And I was like, well, I should just give him the Sadie CD, which is my friends that we have, he knows who the Sadies are, and usually I'm just, it's just, it's just makes me.

more sense than being like, I'm Kurt Vile again. So I was like, I'll just give him this Sadie CD. So I literally jumped down and I was like, hey Neil, you get the new Sadie's. And then everybody was like, ha! And they all, and like his manager, Elliot Roberts, he's a legend, but he's old now. And he was like about to check me like a hockey player.

But then I got it to him though. There is a, I think, a dryness and a kind of of absurdist humor to a lot of your lyrics that I just find so sort of intoxicating and beguiling. Some of it recalls, I mean, you mentioned Dylan, you mentioned John Prine, I think to lyricists and writers who do this really well. A line like, girl, you gave me rabies, and I don't mean maybe. Yeah, well. I mean, how do you sort of think about lyrics in relation to rhythm or in relation to melody,

and kind of where does the lyric writing fall within your songwriting process? Well, and I don't mean maybe I plagiarized from like Bo Didley or something. Bo Didley or other people, you know, they always say, or other bloops people they say, and I don't mean maybe. And then, and then the girl you gave me rabies, that's a true story. So. How did you get rabies, Kurt? From a girl. I'm not, this.

No, I don't, yeah. I'm not buying this. Well. Is this like rabies the new mom? No, I'm lying. I'm lying. I'm lying. I figured.

Why don't we, hear some music? Okay. All right. I woke up this morning, didn't recognize the man in the mirror. Then I laughed and I said, oh, silly me, that's just me, then I proceeded to brush some strange's teeth, but they were my teeth, and I was weightless, quivering like some leaf come in the window of a redress. window of a restroom. I couldn't tell you what the hell it was supposed to mean because it was a Monday, not Tuesday, not Wednesday, Thursday, Friday then, Saturday came around and I said, Who that stupid clown block in my bathroom?

Sing, buddy with sporting all my clothes, I say pretty pimping, yeah. The musician Kurt Vile. He spoke with Amanda Petrusich who writes about music and culture, and much more for The New Yorker. I'm David Remnick, and that's it for this week. I hope to see you next time. The New Yorker Radio Hour is a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker. Our theme music was composed and performed by Merrill Garbus of Tune Yards, with additional music by Alexis Quadrata.

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