The Awardist : Holland Taylor on finally finding the perfect role in Hollywood
SAEED ADYANI/NETFLIX
Holland Taylor says "a great role plays itself" — but she's being far too modest. The 77-year-old actress, who earned her eighth Emmy nomination last month for her performance as studio exec Ellen Kincaid in Ryan Murphy's Netflix series Hollywood — has been making TV roles great for more than 50 years. This week on EW's The Awardist podcast, Taylor tells executive editor Sarah Rodman what intrigued her about playing Ellen, a woman who has a full life and successful career and is not fixated on finding a man. "I knew this was going to be a wonderful, independent character, and [Ryan] said she'd have a lot of moxie, and that was very intriguing."
The actress goes on to say that Murphy is "very interested in a woman's story, just what it is to be a human being, what her inner life is, regardless of whether she's in a relationship or not. And that's sort of a rarity, in a sense," says the actress. "There's many a novel and there's many a movie about a man's struggle with himself, becoming who he is. There are very few about women, because women's stories are in relationship to the father, the husband, the brother, the son. It's always in relationship to what they were for a man."
Preach it, sister!
Taylor also reminisces about Bosom Buddies ("They could run that thing in prime time [now], I'll tell you!") and her hilarious Emmys acceptance speech in 1999 when she won for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Drama for The Practice.
To hear more from Taylor — including the one thing about Hollywood that she says "pisses me off" — check out the full episode below. (The interview begins at 12:44.) And keep your ears peeled for a brief cameo from her dog, Winnie.
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