Role Recall: Lily Tomlin on PJ Parties With Fonda and Parton, Those 'Huckabees' Fights, and More
Lily Tomlin doesn’t spend many nine-to-fives on movie sets these days. Though she’s turned up recently in TV shows like Damages, Eastbound & Down, and Web Therapy, the veteran comedian-actress’s new release, Grandma, marks only her second film in six years (she also appeared in the 2013 Tina Fey-Paul Rudd comedy Admission).
Grandma, however, is reminding everyone what a sheer force the 75-year-old can be on the big screen. The critical consensus is that the comedic drama in which Tomlin stars as a Elle Reid, a broke and heartbroken faded literary star who begrudgingly helps her granddaughter (Julia Garner) scrape up enough money for an abortion represents Tomlin’s best cinematic work since her film debut in Nashville 40 years ago. She’s also being called an early favorite to be on the ballot come Oscar time.
It’s the latest feather-in-the-cap for the Detroit native, who first started busting guts on the groundbreaking sketch comedy show Rowan and Martin’s Laugh In (1968-1973). During our latest Role Recall interview (watch above), Tomlin told stories from the sets of her most memorable movies, including how she learned sign language for Nashville, bonded with co-stars Jane Fonda and Dolly Parton in Nine to Five, and engaged in that infamously heated fight with director David O. Russell on the set of I Heart Huckabees.
Nashville (1975)
After rising to stardom on Laugh In, Tomlin made her movie debut in Robert Altman’s ensemble about musicians, politicians, and everyday people colliding in the days leading up to a Replacement Party convention. Not only was it first Tomlin’s entry into drama, she has also had to sing gospel, speak in a southern accent, and learn sign language (the trait she found most difficult). Tomlin was rewarded with her first and only Academy Award nomination for the role, but lost to Shampoo star Lee Grant.
Nine to Five (1980)
Thirty years before Horrible Bosses, there was this beloved comedy starring Tomlin, Jane Fonda and Dolly Parton as overworked, underpaid office workers who get revenge on their “sexist egotistical lying hypocritical bigot” boss (Dabney Coleman). Tomlin said she formed a tight bond with Fonda (who also produced) and Parton (who was making her film debut, and arrived on set with the whole script memorized) forged over pajama parties: “It was just like any other PJ party,” Tomlin explained. “All we did was gossip and talk. And they’re very outspoken, both of them. They’re very candid about their personal lives.” So in other words, she’s got the dirt.
The Incredible Shrinking Woman (1981)
This satirical spin on 1957’s The Incredible Shrinking Man marked Tomlin’s first movie collaboration with longtime writing and domestic partner Jane Wagner, whom she married in 2013 after 42 years together. Playing a housewife who shrinks down to six inches tall, she worked opposite various giant props, but it wasn’t always fun and games. “They made a bedspread that was about as big as a football field,” she said. “And then on the lab table, I’m like 30 feet in the air, and there’s no barriers… I had to run around frantically and there’s smoke and it made the floors slippery. I could’ve just careened right off, but I was one of the producers so it would’ve been my fault.”
All of Me (1984)
The actress got up close and personal with fellow comedy great Steve Martin in this body-swapping comedy about a dying millionaire whose soul enters the shared space of her lawyer’s body. To keep up with the theatrics of the elastic-man Martin, Tomlin said she would sing a spin on the Danny Kaye-crooned song “Wonderful Copenhagen” from 1952’s Hans Christian Anderson: “When we’d do a mirror shot, where you’re supposed to see me in the mirror, I would start it off by singing, ‘Beautiful, beautiful Copenhagen.’”
Related: Role Recall: Russell Crowe Reminisces About ‘L.A. Confidential,’ ‘Gladiator’ and More
I Heart Huckabees (2004)
Tomlin knows she can’t discuss David O. Russell’s offbeat comedy (in which she was paired with Dustin Hoffman as “existential detectives”) without acknowledging the now-infamous leaked videos showing her and the director screaming at each other during the filming of two different scenes. All is well between the two these days, Tomlin said: “We weren’t mad at each other I mean, we were made at each other for moments. And we were just kind of mercurial, anyway. Especially David.”
Grandma (2015)
Tomlin’s latest film, written and directed by Paul Weitz (American Pie, About a Boy), was a low-budget affair that had her bringing more than just acting chops to the production: “I drove my own car in the movie, an old '55 Dodge, I wore my own clothes in the movie.” Her character, generally disgruntled and fresh from a breakup with a younger girlfriend (Judy Greer), is prone to outbursts, which required Tomlin to get a salty on numerous occasions. “I don’t like to curse and use body parts, like asshole and things,” she said. “Because everyone has them, and there’s no reason to disparage [them].”
Grandma is now playing in select theaters. Watch the trailer:
