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Turners Beverly Sutphin is the perfect housewife, aside from, you know, all the carnage and whatnot.
Along the way, Glenn Close, Meryl Streep, and Roseanne Barr were among the actressesconsideredfor Beverly.
I mean, we just howled every day.
I started reading on, and it was fine until thelit hairspray with the kid.
I still hate that, actually.
It was the only thing I didnt like when we got to doing it.
Anyway, I threw it down again, and again I went back.
I dont do that.
And he said, No, no, no.
Are you going to be home this afternoon?
I gave him my address, and four hours later John was ringing my doorbell.
He had storyboards and explained to me exactly how he would shoot it.
I thought,Okay, this is kind of what I was hoping for.
I liked that sense of celebrity-excuses-all crap.
I said, All right, Im going to do this with you.
Well, thats when the screaming started.
My agents and all the other people around were like, No, you cant do that.
You cant work with John Waters.
Hes a B-movie director, and you dont do B-movies.
Itll ruin your career.
Which of course set my back up.
That attracted you to it more, because people were cautioning you against it?Oh, yes.
What was I, some kind of institution that had to be put in a glass case?
The crap with that shit.
So I said, Yeah, well, watch me.
Is it true thatMichael Douglascautioned you against it as well?Oh, I dont remember specifically anymore.
But it didnt make any difference.
The secret of working with Kathleen Turner is show no fear.
All he has to do to stop me is say, No, thats not what I want.
I think he just loves personalities.
Were going to bond together to make whatever he wants to happen happen.
You just join the team.
Its very simple, Matthew.
Its really that simple.
It was provocative and edgy.
That was absolutely on purpose.
I dont do just one thing.
The problem is people dont put the work together.
Theyll say something like, God, I loved you inRomancing.And Ill say, Did you likeThe Accidental Tourist?
Theyll say, Thats right!
You didAccidental Tourist!How aboutPrizzis Honor?
Oh right, that was you!
How did you think about and approach Beverlys split personality?
Part of what makes the movie so funny is the way she snaps.
Its almost like youre playing two different characters.Its all true she actually means both sides.
They gave me that painting afterward.
I couldnt bear it!
I couldnt stand to have it in my house.
Anyway, I finally sold it on eBay.
I wonder who has it now.I have no idea.
Its not Jekyll and Hyde or anything like that.
Theyre both intentional, and theyre both true.
When shes nice-housewife Beverly, she has a certain Julie Andrews quality to her.I bet Julie wouldnt appreciate that.
Julie Andrews was actually one of the actresses John considered for the role, which I think is interesting.
Did you guys talk about her?No, but wouldnt that have been funny?
The movie is meant to star Kathleen Turner, but yes, it would have.
Were there any other reference points you used?
Maybe classic American 50s sitcom moms?
Leave it to Beaver?Honey, Ididnt grow up in the United States.
I never watched TV.
I didnt have any of those cliches in my head.
I never saw all those family shows, likeBradyorLeave It to Beaver.
Its interesting how much that side of Beverly taps into the sitcom archetype then.Thats the writing.
Believe me, he grew up on it.
Beverly also often sings Barry Manilow while cleaning the house.No, no, no!
That was just Johns little nastiness on me.
He absolutely knew it.
In fact, he asked me what I hated.
I said, Well, I dont know, like Barry Manilow?
So he had to make me sing it, you see.
So that wasnt written into the script?
That was him coming to you and saying What would really drive you wild?
What would you hate?
Let me do that.
Lets talk about some of the murders Beverly gets to commit in the film.
The most intriguing involves the one and only Patty Hearst.
We do rehearsal, and I fight with her.
Im slamming her back and forth with the receiver.
She took each hit like she was completely trained.
I went over to John and I said, God, has she had stage-fighting training?
Because shes really, really good.
He went, Yeah, you’ve got the option to call it that.
She was trained because she lived through it.
Did you not know what her backstory was?I just never thought of it.
But God, I felt lousy.
I think in the first script it was a knife or something, but this is much better.
I didnt know you could fire hairspray like that right into somebodys face.
I kept trying to get out of it.
I kept trying to say, Do we really have to do this one?
Can you do it another way?
Can he be stampeded by the mob?
John wanted it, so there you go.
Was it because it was too real?Yeah, I think so.
All the others were pretty out there.
I dont know, it just bothered me.
That is just so funny.
I think I came up with that.
I had to findsomethingto do behind the desk, so I used my legs.
I was not thinking of Ms. Stone, no.
Did you improvise during the shoot?Not much.
John was pretty dead-on with the dialogue.
We had a little trampoline in bed, so thats why we bounced like that.
It was so funny.
I was much closer to Ruth Ginsburg.
She always came to see my work.
How did that friendship form?I did some shows down at the Arena Stage in Washington.
She attended every show.
And the artistic director of the arena although she is sadlysoon to leave is a woman named Molly Smith.
She has built the most extraordinary theater there over the years.
Anyway, Ruth Ginsburg officiated Mollys wedding to her longtime love, Suzanne Blue.
So we were in the theater, and the wedding guests were watching from the audience.
When Ruth Bader Ginsburg came out onstage, everyone in the audience stood.
Later at the reception, I said, How did you like the standing ovation?
She went, Well, its very nice.
It made me laugh.
I didLa fille du regimentat the Metropolitan Opera its a speaking role, Im not insane.
And we did a production in Washington, D.C., for one night, and Antonin Scaliaalsocame.
Oh, they went together?Yes.
Talk about a weird friendship!
Does that friendship give you any hope that maybe we can come together?I wish, honey.
So what do you remember about the reactions toSerial Mom?
The executives didnt get it, right?Okay, were sitting in a screening in L.A.
This is a young company.
The bosses had left their previous production companies to form this company.
So this wasone of their first.
Im sitting in the back row, and the audience is going kind of wild.
One of the guys turned to me and said, Oh, its a comedy?
I thought,Fuck.
They were thinking they were going to publicize it like a crime thing.
Why they never bothered to read the script is a very good question.
As soon as he said that, my heart sank.
We had more theaters in Germany than the entire United States.
Had these people never heard of John Waters?
Did they not know what to expect from him?I guess not.
Why they approved the whole thing, I have no idea.
I was looking through photos of the New York premiere.
What do you remember about that night, if anything?Gosh.
Just being happy, really.
Everybody in the cast was so thrilled.
There wasnt any budget to waste on it.
You just shove your feet in and make them work for another day.
Did you guys hang around theSerial Momhouse?No, we didnt have much downtime at least I didnt.
I ate a lot of crabs.
I was actually at this crab restaurant one night for dinner, and Shirley MacLaine was also shooting there.
It was about the ex-presidents wife and the bodyguard.
Guarding Tess?Yes, I guess so.
We were eating hardshell crabs together, which were both fanatics about.
I swear to God, she must have eaten ten to my three.
I was in awe!
Wow, Shirley MacLaine can house some crabs.
Thats impressive.It really was.
