The Watch - Fear TV: ‘Dark’ and ‘Channel Zero,’ Plus Laurie Metcalf on ‘Lady Bird’ and ‘Roseanne’ (Ep 209)

Episode Date: December 8, 2017

The Ringer’s Chris Ryan and Andy Greenwald discuss Disney’s potential purchase of 21st Century Fox (1:50), Netflix’s ‘Dark’ (4:25), Syfy’s ‘Channel Zero: No-End House’ (9:55). Later they sit down with acclaimed actress Laurie Metcalf to discuss ‘Lady Bird’ and the '90s sitcom ‘Roseanne’ (18:50). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

I need sports to have to clear the room. Stand up and walk now. Hello, and welcome to The Watch. My name is Chris Ryan. I'm an editor at the wrigger.com and joining me in the studio, feeling the Rick Flair drip. It's Andy Greenwald. Thank you for that.

That's a nice one. You're the offset to my Cuevo. I appreciate that. Are you? In the sense that I am the... Boy, this is a problematic conversation. Less appreciate it. No, we can keep going.

Andy, it's Thursday. It's the re-up. This is the zinging and zagging people love from our podcast. They go straight from a U-2 conversation to ranking the members of Migos. Number one, offset. Number two, Cuevo. Number three, I don't know the other members of Migos. Today we are going to be talking to likely Academy Award nominee for best supporting

actress, Lori Metcalf. She is about to put the third link in her egot chain, like Thanos with the infinity gems. If you're out there and you guys can plot me the path for Lori Metcalfe getting the Grammy, let me know. L.M.K. Because I'm having a hard time putting it together. No disrespect to Lori McHaff. She visited us from the set of Roseanne. She came down. That was so cool. From where she was shooting the Roseanne reboot on Netflix. What a wonderful lady.

What it just like a class act and also just like you were in the presence of a real artist. We really enjoyed talking to her. So we're going to talk to her today. Obviously, I think Lady Bird is probably our consensus movie of the year. She is remarkable in Lady Bird. And if you haven't seen it yet, Go see it. Go, go, don't do anything, forget Star Wars. Really? You want to tell people to forget Star Wars? No, I can't help people forget Star Wars. Speaking of Star Wars, let's talk about the Star Wars parent company really quickly. Okay.

Because the Disney, the Walt Disney Corporation, is in talks, reportedly in talks to buy some of, basically, by 21st Century Fox. They're going to buy the movie studio, the movie properties, and the television properties of Fox. Yeah. And it's worth mentioning. that doesn't sound like they're going to buy Fox News. But this is a big deal. This is a big deal not only in terms of a wider industry story about consolidation and mergers. And, you know, obviously there is the very contentious AT&T Time Warner merger that still is yet to play out.

And there's lawsuits flying on that one. This one is in talks, though. And obviously for our, within our, for our purview, the biggest thing would be the new assets under Disney. control. I just want to say that if your reaction to this news of major media consolidation is plus or minus squee Wolverine gets to be in the Avengers now, delete your account. And by your account, I mean your life. All right. Because let's go Chomsky. That's what I'm saying. Like, look, I love a good team up as much as the next chap. But I don't see how this is good. you know, and I do think that the

way that we now can... You don't see how this is good for the industry or for the X-Men. For the world. Okay, yeah. You were concerned. Like, Logan died in X-Men continuity. I mean, I'm not doing chopo trapeas. So, like, if you want to talk about, like,

whether people are going to get laid off, is that what we're talking about? That's what this podcast is about. Layoffs. This is a labor-based podcast. Layoff is my third favorite Migos member. I honestly, think that, like, one of the things that's strange about the, well, now Disney can fix X-Men

is, I don't even know if you can, I think that there needs to be a break for that whole franchise. Yes. They need to do like a hard reset for all of it. But, but, you know, for as much as Fox has, for a lot of its ownership of the X-Men, not been the most able stewards of it, in the last two or three years, they've become much more creative because out of necessity. And they're just basically saying, well, we can't compete. So we're going to make Logan. We're going to make Legion. We're going to make New Mutants. And we're going to make Deadpool. And we're just going to throw stuff against the wall. And hopefully it's fun. And hopefully people enjoy it. And we're not going to

worry about the big picture stuff. And that's actually been kind of rewarding. We wanted to get to Lori Metcalfe. But before we do, there's two new, not new shows, but there are two shows that you and I have been watching separately. Dabbling? Dabbling. And, you know, is this going to become a thing where we just surprise each other all the time? Well, you go first because I know that I want to hear about dark that's on Netflix. because you were checking that out. A lot of people were asking us to watch it. I was just waiting through my Menchies the other day. I think they have a pretty strong street team.

This is me. Yeah. Well, but, you know, surprise, surprise. The show's in German. Did you know that? I didn't. So the street team is, I can't actually understand what they're saying. There are a lot of like compound words and things that all the nouns are capitalized.

This is a really interesting show, and I basically wanted to bring it up, not because we're going to spoil it anyway, but I think that people who listen to our podcast and watch other shows we recommend might enjoy it. And there's some time to check it out over the holidays, and maybe we'll come back and get back into it a little bit in January. This is Netflix's first German language original show. They are obviously expanding rapaciously around the globe and developing original properties in every country.

But you have to think that part of their strategy is to make things in the native language of each country that potentially could cross over. And Dark is so easily, pitched. Do you remember, maybe our listeners do too,

there was a French show, the translation was the returned a couple years ago. Great Maguire soundtrack for that show? Great soundtrack from Maguire. It is the return

meet Stranger Things. It is, if Stranger Things was not a medium budget PG-13, 1984 adventure, but a light R

art house film from like 1988 or 1989. It is set in a town in the not the wilderness, but sort of a country town. The black forest? You know, I couldn't really catch the...

It really pops off there. I couldn't really catch the color of the forest, but it is heavily wooded. It's the name of the forest, not the color, yeah. Again, I've never, maybe I don't know as worldly as you. Imagine if you just walked up to a forest, you were like, this is black a.F. This is dark. Is that your Fodor's entry for Germany? You're in the wrong field, my man.

And there's a nuclear power plant, and some stuff has happened in the past, and it seems to be happening again. and, of course, there's a bunch of kids. It's about time travel, which is always an easy sell. But so far it's done in a very brooding but compelling way so far that I've seen. It's a little bit unsettling in really good ways. And it's really interesting, more than anything else, to see how certain tropes are easily exportable. I mean, there's no question that Stranger Things probably does well for Netflix globally.

But actually kind of inspiring because if it's Germany's Stranger Things, okay, so tell me more about your demons Germany. What is interesting about this to you? And right up off the bat there is something that I appreciate so much in comparison to Stranger Things Season 2, which is that the kids at the center of this, at the beginning of it,

at least one of them, has experienced massive loss. And that pitches the whole show a little bit differently, because the beginning of Stranger Things, and maybe this speaks to the American character or the nostalgia of 1984, they're just kids. And it's really about being forced to grow up, slash adolescence, and it exists in a kind of, I think we talked about this and we talked about stranger things, like a national innocence that was maybe breaking a little bit as the Cold War

came to an end in our culture, if not in our lives. I appreciate that in this show, these kids have already... They've already gone through it. Some stuff's already, like life isn't easy. Like life isn't just playing dig-dug in a way that I appreciate. Not that life's particularly hard. It looks quite nice in wind in Germany when there aren't demons emerging from time travel caves. but it's cool, and I appreciate people shouting it out because I wasn't aware. One note, it's super dubbed, and you can change it to the original German and put subtitles on it.

One further note about that. I had it on the German, I switched it to the German, and then I was like, there's a voiceover in the German. Let's switch it back, and there's not voiceover in the English. And I was like, what are they hiding? Germany, what are you hiding for me? So I ran it back again. So you watched this one episode three times in this one scene.

three different languages. This one scene in the beginning, and I was like, run it back. Again, no voiceover in English. So I put it back. Okay, the German voiceover guy's there. And I'll be honestly, my German's a little rusty.

But clearly at one point, the guy's saying, this man is unpolishtaffen or whatever. He's like, he's the policeman. I'm like, why is he explaining it to me? And then I realize that there is an option for, I assume, visually impaired people

where a German man tells you what you're seeing. How did your settings get to that point in the first place? It's an option. Was that how you watched Ozark? So they're like, this man is a money launderer. The corpse has fallen at his feet. He looks distraught.

Really? Can you imagine that gig? Yeah, that would be pretty, I mean, look, I'm available. But like, what would your life be if instead of the Ron Howard arrest of the week? Can you imagine though if you and I got to do it for Ozark and be like, yo, this guy just got tossed off a balcony and now Marty bought a strip club? That's what our life is like. That's what this podcast is. I'm saying instead of the, I feel like many of us in 2017 walk around with a.

Ron Howard, a rest of development narrator in our heads going, like, guess what, he didn't? Yeah. But what if that voice was... Actually, I think it's more like Corbac McCarthy Blood Meridian voice. Fair. Just like, see the child. What if it was Werner Herzog, like it was on my first viewing of dark? It sounds like part of the charm of this was the degree to which it wound up in your life

in an unexpected, you know, and that we weren't bludgeoned over the head with get ready, promo, like spoiler-related tweets, everything. No idea, yeah. Um, that's sort of the excitement I have for Channel Zero. So Channel Zero is a horror anthology that is on sci-fi. Uh, it's, in its, it's, it just finished, I think, its second season. And each season is like its own, its own story. So this season...

So each, it's not Black Mirror. Each episode isn't its own story. Each season is, like, each season is its own story. So it's like American Horror Story. Yes. Not closer to that. Um, and it seems to draw largely from... almost kind of like an urban legend sort of thing.

So this season is called No End House, and it's based on a creepy pasta. Do you know what creepy pastas are? Is that what you call gluten-free spaghetti? That's right. That's the pasta they sell at Bill's House. It's this online story database where people post like scary stories and pictures like Slender Man.

And I don't know if you remember the story that Victor Luckerson wrote earlier in the year about the Zelda thing. it was like the Majora, something or other. I can't remember the name of... Legend of Zelda? Yeah, but it was like a part of the world of Zelda that somebody like just got obsessed with.

Are you pitching me Nintendo fanfic right now on this podcast? No, but it's not Nintendo fanfic. It's like ghost stories, basically. Okay. So you know I'm not going to be looking at this. There was a creepypasta story called Noah in-house. They adapted it. They changed it. The setup that I will say is...

And it's written by Nick Antasca, who wrote for Hannibal. And the setup is basically, a bunch of teenagers are home from college for their first summer. Few of them are. They're all hanging out. Like when we met. Right.

And they're all hanging out in the suburbs. And they don't really have anything to do. So far, this really is our life. Keep going. And they hear about a pop-up escape room installation. And they go to it. They get a very creepy advertising for it. It's veered away from our experience.

Yes. And they show up in the suburbs. And they show up at this place in the suburbs. And it's a house painted black. And there are people like stumbling out of it. looking very distressed. Did they just watch the pilot of Ozark? Just like on a loop?

They just heard Rick Flair drip for the first time. And they're really, like, they're sick. They're like shaken up. Yeah. And there's a sign outside the house that says the no end house, unknown artist, caulk wood, metal you. Those are the things the material is made. Oh, oh, as if you're in a museum and it's the material, a mixed media.

And I will say that the first episode of this show, it's called This Isn't Real is the scariest thing I've seen since White Bear. The Black Mirror episode of White Bear. So I don't want to say much more other than the fact that Great Horror is somewhat dependent on secrecy. I remember when I saw The Ring, I didn't know a lot about it. You know, like it was just sort of people would be like, you've got to see this from the movie. And I think some of the best horror experiences I've ever had, like Texas Chainsaw Massacre, I didn't really know what happened in it. and I watched it on like VHS at 2 in the morning

in a new apartment that I moved into in Boston and all the furniture was basically like upside down and scattered. I don't even know if we had like lamps yet. Yeah. And it was terrifying. And this had some of the same vibe because I was, I was just, it was like 1130 and I was like, oh, a couple people have mentioned this.

I think I'll check it out. And it scared the shit out of me. Like legitimately had bad dreams afterwards. Oh, no. I do not scare easily. No, you like this stuff. So Channel Zero, no end house. I think it started in September.

So I think it's wrapped up, it's run. It's a good recommendation. Did I ever tell you about the time that in my capacity as Spins, like, D-grade movie reviewer in 2009 or whatever it was, I went to see a screening of the first Blair Witch Project in, like, one of those Madison Avenue screening rooms? Did you think that it was a documentary? Everyone thought it was a documentary. And I wasn't going to like it. Like, I liked it, but I wasn't like, I would not have sought out that experience. Of course.

And everyone else in there looked like they were auditioning to play the. Emily Blunt Roll and the devil wears product six years too early. And they were literally sobbing around. Just like mascara everywhere. Just mascara everywhere. And then everyone jumped on their razor scooters and tearfully, you know, foot peddled their way home through Manhattan. That's good stuff.

All right. So, uh, dark and channel zero, no end house. A little bit more. Also, think about the people when you think about the mergers. Yeah, that's the most important thing, right? People over corporations. Yeah. That's, that's the message of this podcast.

One other thing. Oh, yeah. a bit of house cleaning. We are coming up on the next entry in the Double Down Book Club Queenpin by Megan Abbott. A slim volume. A slim volume. A slim volume.

This is an easy and fun read. It is going to be a week from today. We're going to talk about it with Megan joining us next Thursday. We'll also be talking about MindHunter. I will finally get to talk about the end of MindHunter. Yeah, so finish Mind Hunter and read a book. That's your homework from us. Yeah.

In more immediate news, on Monday, it's our now, I think we can say our annual year in TV Gab Fest with FOP, friend of the pod, Sam SML. Yeah, so we'll do our top 10 lists on Monday. Sam will do his. What is Sam going to be most angry at us for this year? Not talking about television. Oh, no, he's already mad at that.

I mean, on our lists. I think probably my list will piss him off. I will say that in my last communication with him confirming his appearance on the podcast, his one-line text was, that's fine. I can't believe Chris likes Ozark that much. Well, wait until he hears me talk about billions. All right, let's get to our Lori Metcalf interview after a word from our sponsor. We'll be back on Monday with Sam S-mail to go over the year in TV. Today's episode of The Watch is brought to you by ZipRecruiter.

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One more time, ZipRecruiter.com slash watch. Try it for free. Today's episode of The Watch is brought to you by Zell. Zell is a new way to send money to your friends and family from your banking app. Cash is easy to lose and checks take a while to clear. But with Zell, once you're enrolled, the money moves right between banks. accounts and typically arrives in minutes. Pay your share of the cost of Dad's gift, request half the cost of the Christmas tree you bought with your roommate, or pay that personal trainer you hired after Thanksgiving with ease, all thanks to Zell.

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actresses of her generation. You may know her from Roseanne. You may know her from Big Bang Theory, any number of small screen appearances. She's widely regarded as one of the great theater actors working. Yep. But we're here mostly to talk to her about her role in one of our favorite movies of the year. I hope people have had a chance to see Lady Bird by now. It's the rare movie that not only is exceptional when you see it, I love it more in the time

that has passed since I saw it. Yeah, it's a grower. I can't wait to see it again. We were a little intimidated, I think, to talk to Lori just because she is, first of all, we grew up watching her. You know, you watching her on Roseanne, me going to the Steppenwolf Theater just as a young boy every weekend, just to bow at the altar of the masters. It's kind of a little true west, yeah.

But no, but she was terrific to talk to. We had a lot of fun, and we were really excited that she could come and join us. And so if you haven't seen Lady Bird go see it, this is not the kind of movie you can spoil. Wolverine does not join the Avengers at the end. of it. Bummer. I know. That's the only thing that could have made it better. All right. Let's get to our interview with Lori Metcalf. Have you seen Lady Bird in theaters? I did. I broke my five-year rule, which was I usually don't see anything that I'm in on film or TV for at least

five years so that I don't just watch everything that I did wrong and, you know, beat myself up. So that means you're coming up on 2012 stuff now. So we're about to watch the Goodwin games. Yeah, yeah, right. But I did because I wanted to see it with a live audience. And I wanted to see the response that it would have. And I wanted to see the whole rest of the movie that I had no idea what happened, all the teenage stuff, you know, that the family was not a part of. You got to see Timothy Shalamee, man. I know, I know.

I just had to stay in the house and, you know, argue with my daughter. Obviously, it's a character and you're playing the part, but is there an element of maternal, does a maternal instinct take over when you're watching this character making out with the wrong boy in the movie? I mean, do you have these sort of emotional journey form the character's perspective? Yes. Well, I have to say that I don't think my maternal instinct came out in that scene. My flashback on myself, you know, in a situation like that. First love, you know, which I guess is why a lot of people are responding to the movie. it's you don't have to be a 17 year old girl in Sacramento. No. Because we all were 17 at one point.

There's something so timeless about the archetypes she's chosen for the high school parts. But also, we've been experiencing something really fun here where a lot of the colleagues at the website and the podcast's, the production are younger. And so a lot of them love the movie because they say, oh, we were in high school in 2002, 2003. I've got two young kids, so I'm watching it. And I've shifted now. I think they're not going to college, but I'm definitely more on Marion's team than I expected to be when I watch the movie.

This movie probably has among the highest approval rating of a piece of pop culture that I've come across since, like, Hamilton, in terms of the almost uniform, the almost uniform, like, love people who have been showing it. Did you feel that in the audience when you were watching it? I did. Yeah. I did. And it was a surprise to me because it's just so personal when you're making it. And it's your job. Yeah.

And you don't know how anything that you do that you put out there is going to be received. So it's just such a rush when something is received is so beloved by audiences. To have played a little part in that is great. The last 10 minutes of that movie, it definitely caused a everybody in the theater collectively exhales after the last shot. When I saw it in a screening, it was pretty amazing. The blackout? Yeah. Yeah.

Oh, I was crying too much to notice that. Yeah. I'll be honest. You know, actors often talk about their response to it. They're looking for a great piece of writing. And that's the first thing that obviously is going to connect them to a role. What was it about Greta's script? Because I know that she doesn't allow for a lot, or at least she says she doesn't allow for a lot of improvisation. No, there was none.

Yeah. What was it about the script itself that jumped out of you? Well, the fact that it was that tight, that it didn't need anything to be done. And there was no scrambling on the day. You know, oh, we've never solved this. You know, what would I say? What do we just say? So it was all, and because it's all on the page, you can clearly see, you know, how much thought has been put into it.

When I talked to Greta, I could just tell that she had, she was going to be able to lead me through it in a way that I didn't even see yet. Yeah. Because of how the script was crafted. You know, a lot of mother-daughter headbutting going on a lot. But these little moments of heart and where mother and daughter are on the same page, they're supporting each other. And a little goes a long way, you know, opening presents on a Christmas morning, and everybody's finally getting along for three seconds. So a little bit of that makes you able to have a lot more of the tense and frustrating scenes where they're each pushing buttons. Yeah, there's such generosity in the script towards all the characters.

That's right. They're all three-dimensional. The drama teacher isn't just a drama teacher. Sure. And not only that, he gets that scene with your character, which I think, you know, if you'd run the script through a Save the Cat filter or something, that scene is cut because you don't quote-unquote need it. But it gives such depth to your character, to both of them, and to the sense that this is a living world with concerns other than it's sometimes myopic main characters. That's right. Yeah, the details that are in the script, I think that's part of its universal appeal is its specificity. and even the music cues, which I think we've had a lot of fun talking about, you know, between the two of us, but they actually wind up becoming thematic touchstones throughout the movie that need to come back. They're not just like, oh, isn't it cool if we put this song from that era on at the time? You know, one of the things I think that we were wondering is just sort of what's Greta like on set as a director?

She was fantastic. As Tracy Lutz says, you would never know that it was Greta's first solo director. job. She is very open to collaborating. She is, it's a playful set. It has a sense of lightness. She's very trusting that everybody that she has put in there has hired to do their jobs will do their jobs, know how to do their jobs, and we'll do them well. So I felt at the end of every working day that I left thinking, oh, I think Greta thought I did a really good job today. You know? Yeah.

It was a great feeling, and it would give you the energy to want to show up at 6 a.m. the next day and do another good job for Greta. It was all, it was team Greta. Yeah. Because she poured herself into it, into the script and the direction so much that everybody, cast and crew wanted to support her. any way that we could. We've learned a lot, as she's been doing press for the movie as well, about her preparation

and how she gave Timothy a reading list for his character and what might be best for him. We've seen the letters she wrote to Dave Matthews and to Justin Timberlake to secure their music. The relationship between the lead character and your character is crucial. What sort of preparation did she suggest for you or what sort of rehearsal process or notes did she give to you? We were able to get a little bit of rehearsal in. which is kind of rare. So, Sertia and I would meet sometimes with Greta, or Greta would meet with us one-on-one.

And we would just plow through the script. Any questions? You know, what do you feel about this or that? And no major changes would come about. But I just started to learn, you know, how she saw this mother. And then she was very interested. Talk about details. I mean, she was interested in, obviously, you know,

exactly what clothes that we, were going to be wearing and wanted our input. But I would always defer to her for the final say because she just understood it in a way that I didn't write off the bat. Was there a Mary in detail that you added that wasn't in the script? It came up sort of organically that I had a scene with one of the hospital workers I'm leaving and I had bought him a little, his newborn daughter, a little dress. Just a tiny little thing. I think it was just just a sort of left open like what would be in this package and I knew that we

shopped at the thrift store a lot and I remember shopping for baby clothes it's fun to look through that so we kind of hit upon the fact that because Marion's character needs to the odd you know she she can't

just be the monster sure and so we hit upon the fact that she would be really into kids yeah and so that was just a little thing touch that was added in. It's such a funny little moment of generosity of her character too because then she has to go home and kind of be the heavy against Lady Bird.

Yeah. But you mentioned shopping. There's a scene that I wanted to talk about specifically. It's a scene when you take Christine, you apologize, Marian takes Christine. Well, I call her Christine. Lady Bird. Let's say, Lori and Sirshire have a scene together. How about that?

In Greta's film, where you go dress shopping. Yeah. And when she emerges from the dressing room where she, this dress, there is a rainbow of emotions that Marian has, that passes over her face, that you have to play in that moment. Maybe this is a question that veers more towards the technical side, but I'm curious just as an actor, how you prepare for that all of the things going on all at once. And if it's a different method from being on the stage, because you could do second, you could do multiple takes, I guess, if you chose to do so. But there are, there are also so many

variables at play and just, you also want to be alive in the moment. I'm always fascinated by those moments, but particularly one like that where it's just a masterclass because you see it all and you don't have all the lines to express all of the emotions. Yeah, it's teed up really well. You know, here comes the daughter out of the dressing room presenting herself to her very opinionated mother. Serving herself up. It's teed up, you know, like for the audience, you know, what is mom going to do? She's going to say the wrong thing. It's going to be such a letdown. So, yeah, I guess I was just really, really, really trying to be in the moment every time she came out the door. You know, and I personally had an opinion about that dress, you know, so that worked well for me.

Okay. I could use that. Very good. And then in the theater, you know, everything. So I guess in that, playing in that scene, I tried to stay very, very loose. In the theater, you've done three weeks of rehearsal, and that scene would be, in, to, me very crafted. Right.

It would be much, not rigid, but it would have been already set. The touchstones of where you would be traveling, basically, and an emotional, not a roller coaster, but an emotional journey in that moment. Yeah. And so in the film, it's a little looser. I also did have to ask about your relationship with Tracy Letts's character. I think this has been, this is probably a recurring theme in your press. No one can believe that you would never work together before. I was shocked.

I was going to be prepared with a laundry list of all your greatest Steppenwolf hits together. But apparently there were none. How is that possible? I know. In all those years, we have never had a chance to be on stage together. But you guys orbited Chicago? Like, did you? Yes, and we've been friends for a long, long time.

Yeah. But, and would come to see each other's work. So I knew I've seen Tracy enough on stage and in film and TV that I know. And we have the Steppenwolf history, even though we. We haven't shared a rehearsal room together. We have a little bit of a shorthand that way. And I knew that we shared a great sense of humor and that I've always loved his acting style, which is kind of minimalistic, you know, and he's the rock in the scene that your eye keeps going to.

Like, you know, what's this character think? Because he's not saying anything. And so I knew that I would feel comfortable in the scenes that we shared together. And we did. We just, it was, again, it's on the page, their relationship. But we just had an ease with each other that is lucky and kind of rare. He's a guy who obviously has had an enormous amount of acting success in the last couple of years. But I almost feel like he had to wait until he was this age to play the evil senator.

You know what I mean? Like he had to grow into the look of. Oh, yeah. Of course you're the CIA director who's actually a traitor or something like that. And then when he met Greta in the movie Weiner Dog that they did together, she thought, assumed that he would be, I don't know, a little more menacing. Yeah. And when she found out that he wasn't, that's what clicked in her mind that he should play the dad. I love what he's able to do in the movie because he has the confidence and the experience to do very little as you're speaking to.

I mean, that it takes, I would imagine. That's the sort of thing that it takes an actor maybe a long time to learn that you don't have to do a lot to be there. It does. It's the simplest thing you'd think that you'd stumble on early on, but you're, you know, to not work at it is a valuable lesson. For you, for somebody who does so much different stuff in all these different mediums, is it strange to concentrate so much on this work to go back to what you were saying in the beginning, a work that you did a year ago? And you've been very busy since then on stage and television and film. And do you feel comfortable going back and talking about something like this? Like, not entirely.

Not entirely. Should we end the interview now? It's, I love the work, and I've been so fortunate to be able to bounce between TV and film and theater. But I've always had a phobia about the camera. And so I'm always a little intimidated by it. So I feel much freer on the stage, and so I keep gravitating back there. So I've really only done a handful of films. Yeah.

And I feel like I don't have that much experience with them. So this was a great set to be on because it was so supportive. It's also hard when you're supporting a character to pop in and out. Sure. You really don't feel like you get much traction like you can in the run of a show of a play. Yeah. So it's just a style of a way of working that I'm just not used to yet, you know, the working out of sequence. On one day here, take three weeks off, come back for three days.

It's just mentally I'm just still learning. The Steinbeck scene in the beginning of Lady Bird, you got shot rather late into the shoot, right? Which I thought was actually really interesting tidbit because you seem so familiar with you. other in that scene. It actually feels like you've been stuck in a car together for a few days. And so that came at the end of the, at the end of the shoot. So did you, did you feel like that was something that really went a long way towards establishing that, that tone, even if it is out of sequence like that? I think it was helpful that that was towards the end of the show. And Sersh and I had had a lot of fights, you know, in the, in the, I keep calling it a show.

I noticed. That's good. in the movie up till then. And that's one of my favorite scenes because there's a little bit of everything in there. There's the emotion, then there's the humor, and then the anger, and then the buttons are being pushed,

and then the eruption. And then a surprise. And so we got to do it three or four times, and I didn't have to really drive, just had to do the fake driving or being pulled in a car. Your driving is under quite a microscope in this movie. That's a good point.

I have to ask you a little bit about your TV work because, you know, I think I could speak for both of us. We didn't grow up in Chicago. We're both from Philly. So we did not attend Stephen Wolf Theater when we were young. We were introduced to you on Roseanne and grew up with that show and with your incredible performance on it. You've done great work in TV since, and I want to make sure we have a moment to even mention getting on, which is such a terrific, terrific show. I love that. But specifically, coming from an esteemed and, you know, in success. successful career on the stage going to be on Rosanne. TV was different then. I mean, now people aspire to be on TV in a different way because there's so much depth of shows like getting on. And the writing is great.

And the writing is good. And so many actors and directors are working there. To go to a sitcom, Roseanne was a special sitcom, but to go to a sitcom, the year that you did, can you talk a little bit about just the atmosphere? I was kind of scared to do it because I'd only done theater, maybe one movie. and so I came to L.A. to maybe get a movie. The theater wasn't even on my radar. And the people who cast desperately seeking Susan were casting Roseanne. So they asked me in. They didn't even have the sister character written yet. So I read some lines from Roseanne. And then they were interested and I eventually ended up being offered the part. And I said to the casting directors, oh, I don't know. I don't. I don't want to be Urkel. You know, I don't want to be stuck. Yeah.

What happens if I get into something? I didn't know if it was going to be a successful show or not. It was too hard to tell. There was nothing really on the page yet. But both are scary probably on some level, right? Yes. Yeah. If it's successful, you're there.

Yes, right. And they said, Lori, you have to do this. Don't walk away from it. And so I did it. And it's been, it was a wonderful nine-year experience. I think people see, you know, oh, you're in a television show. That must be great. But that era of network television going up to, I mean, it's obviously people still do these.

I mean, the Big Bang Theory. They shoot 22 episodes, 23 episodes a year or whatever. But, you know, I remember when they ended the Good Wife on CBS recently. And Juliana Margulies was just like, I just can't do this many shows. Like, I can't be on the set this much because she's in almost every shot of that show. And that's a single camera. And that's a single camera show. Yeah.

Yeah. No, the multi-camera sitcom is the cushiest job in show business. And a little theatrical as well, right, because you have the audience. Well, you do have the live audience, yeah. But it's theatrical because the warm-up guy has got them pumped up into a fever pitch where they're going to, they're primed to laugh at anything. No matter what. And they actually throw off the timing. Oh, because they're just ready to laugh.

Yeah, yeah. But why else did you say cushy? I interrupted you. Oh, because of the schedule. Oh, really? Yeah, I raised two of my kids doing the Rosent during those. Because it's just 9 to 5 or? It's not even 9.

No. It gets way better than that. Come in on Monday. You do the table read. You might rehearse a couple hours. Go home. Okay. Tuesday.

And then they send you rewrites, you know. Well, now it's by email, but some PA used to have to drive around to everybody's house and drop them at the front door. And Tuesday is a nice. easy day also with maybe a rehearsal day with maybe a three-clock run-through for the writers. Okay. And the run-through takes 45 minutes. So that's that day. And then Wednesday is a nice, easy rehearsal day with a 230 run-through for the network people.

Okay. And then you're done that day. And then Thursday is you do a little pre-shooting maybe to get a couple of scenes out of the way, maybe some scenes that are too technical that you don't want to have to do in front of the audience. So you do hair and makeup and shoot a couple of scenes. and then Friday is the long day. This is where it gets really grueling. Wow.

But you come in like sometimes, I don't know, 11, 12, really refresh the scenes. We are in the wrong business. Yeah, we should have been warm-up guys for Roseanne. You refresh the scenes. I thought you were going to say we should have been esteemed theater actors in Chicago and then gotten tired, but I have a longer con. Wow.

You go back over the scenes, then you go into hair and makeup, And then at like 515, all the actors and the director huddle in the hair and makeup room, which is kind of fun. And you speed through the lines of the whole show. It's a little glib through warm up. And as you're doing that, the studio audience is being brought in. And you start the show at six, and we're basically done by nine. Wow. That's pretty good.

That's not bad. You only do, at the most, three shows in a row before taking a hiatus week. A well-earned. And you have the whole set. summer off. Wow. This is great. Good for you and for everyone else. All of this is also prelude to say that you're doing it again. So the show ended his first run in 95, six, something in there, nine years, you said. And then suddenly it's happening again. What was this like for you? Was there ever any hesitation that you would rejoin? Sarah Gilbert started calling people

saying, would you like to do a reunion show or what if we could get a small order of shows? And everybody said yes right off the bat. And so since the pilot, it's actually been 29 years. Wow. Since our first pilot, which is horrifying. Hard to imagine. But we rehearsed today. We had a rehearsal for number.

Is it like falling back into it? It is. Do you guys have the same structure now still, schedule-wise? Yeah. Just less episodes, yeah. Less episodes. How is John Goodman reacting to playing a zombie? because I feel like he's an actor from the stage as well.

He likes a challenge. He's probably playing a zombie a couple of times. Possibly. It gets handled in episode one. It's addressed. Yeah. It is addressed. No spoilers, please.

No. Also, I do feel that the real Roseanne heads would be okay if it wasn't. Like, I'm not going to let my enjoyment of a return engagement of the show be held up by continuity errors. I'm okay with it. I think everybody would have been fine if we would have said, okay, let's just shave off season eight and nine. Exactly. And we'll pick it up after. the end of season.

They do it with the comic movies all the time. Do you think we're going to get in trouble for spoiling the end of year nine of Roseanne? Because one thing I've learned is that the younger generation, ladybird generation or younger, let's say, watch these older sitcoms on Netflix like serialized drama. Like people, high school kids watch friends as if it is a 205 installment. Yes. Great Russian novel, you know, which was not how it was intended necessarily.

but that's how Rosanna's being digested. Somebody who worked would just watch the office like, oh, I'm midway through the office. And I was like, really? I can tell you how it goes. I mean, they go to work every day, yeah. Yeah. Do you get into going back to rewatch any stuff from back around them? It's been more than five years.

Yeah, it has. It has. I can watch the Roseanne episodes. And sadly, I don't remember how any of them end. It's because you had too much time off. You weren't, you know, mentally you weren't committed there. Yeah. Can we get Clooney back?

Because Clooney was Booker early on. He'll always be Booker to me. I know he went on to other things. Did they recast Booker in the show? No. No, there's no Booker. Okay. No, this factory, we're getting deeper as in now.

The factory stuff went away after a certain year. The factory stuff went away because the factory stuff never seemed to work. And we were all convinced that where the factory was placed on the sound stage was over an ancient Indian burial ground. Is that true? No. But we're saying that that's the reason why. Nothing on that part of the set ever worked. That's good.

There was also the loose meat restaurant. Oh, I didn't remember the name, but that's, yeah. We sold loose meat sandwiches for quite a while. That never worked. Never took off. You'd think the show was itself curse, but no, it was quite successful despite the one square inside of it. We'll let you go. Thank you so much for stopping by Lauren McCaff.

If anybody hasn't seen Lady Bird, obviously make it a number one priority. Yes, but also watch the loose meat ever. episodes of Roseanne. I feel like in order. In order, or else you won't be able to watch the new one. You can't follow it. You'll be lost. Thank you so much.

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