Linda Lavin (‘Elsbeth’) discusses her ‘provocative’ and ‘malicious’ character, legendary TV and Broadway roles [Exclusive Video Interview]
“I love to play characters who are ironically interesting and challenging in terms of the way they navigate through life,” shares Linda Lavin about how she chooses roles, including the one she recently portrayed on “Elsbeth.” Her guest appearance on the new CBS drama series was indeed challenging as she stepped into the shoes of the sharp-tongued Gloria, the president of a luxury New York City co-op who is murdered by a real estate agent with a vendetta (Jane Krakowski) and her fed-up tenants. The legendary actress appears in the second episode, “A Classic New York Character,” and calls Gloria “provocative” because of the “evil and dangerous and malicious” things she says. Watch our exclusive video interview above.
Lavin has made many guest appearances in her over 60 years on television, including on “The Good Wife,” which is the series on which Carrie Preston’s character Elsbeth was first introduced. The Tony Award winner says that the key to coming onto a show as a guest performer is to “be flexible, be in the moment, be willing to be part of the whole… trust people you don’t know, trust yourself.” She remembers all of the day players she interacted with while the lead on her own show, “Alice,” saying, “We had new people every week, and it was up to us and it behooved us to be welcoming and kind to new people.”
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WATCH our exclusive video interview with Carrie Preston, ‘Elsbeth’
One of Lavin’s standout scenes in the episode is opposite Greg Hildreth, who played Gloria’s son Lewis. Lewis learns that his mother is thinking of kicking him out of his apartment, a conflict that leads up to the moment Gloria leans on her balcony railing to yell at a barking dog and plunges three stories to her death; Krakowski’s character had secretively loosened the bolts of the railing to ensure her demise. The actress built an “immediate” rapport with her costar, sharing, “I work fast and so did he, and Greg is a Broadway guy, so we had a lot in common.” She loved being mean to his character, too, explaining, “He was so pathetic and so desirous of my attention and my love.”
Although Gloria’s death occurs early in the episode, the audience learns much more about her as the hour unfolds. In one of the final scenes, NYPD Captain C.W. Wagner (Wendell Pierce) reveals that they found the dead, mummified body of Gloria’s late husband – who had been presumed missing for 40 years – buried in her apartment wall. That secret informed how Lavin played every scene. “She’s so abhorrent to people,” remarks the actress, that “you have to look, as an actor, for what is it that she’s hiding?” Between Gloria and other characters in her career including her Tony-nominated role as Rita in “The Lyons,” the actress loves to play “ironic, brittle, sarcastic, shut-down” characters who always have a “barb answer.”
WATCH our exclusive video interview with Robert King, ‘Elsbeth’
Lavin earned many accolades for her performance as the title character on the sitcom “Alice,” for which she received two Golden Globes in 1979 and 1980 and an Emmy Award nomination in 1979. She says the recognition came at precisely the right time in her life, reflecting, “My life had fallen apart, my first marriage had fallen apart, and I was starting a new job.” She remembers winning that first Globe as “like a dream,” saying it was “extremely thrilling for me to be seen and to be heard as an actor, as a human being.”
Less than a decade later, Lavin would win a Tony Award for Neil Simon’s “Broadway Bound.” “I remember how much I thought about it. I was nervous about it,” reflects the actress on how she felt in the period between the nominations announcement and the awards ceremony, calling it “an obsession.” She had invited her 94-year-old father to attend and was “completely overpowered by it” when she won. She was presented the trophy by Jessica Tandy and Hume Cronyn, with whom she felt she had a connection because as a child, she saw them in a summer stock production of “The Fourposter” in Maine. She characterizes winning the Tony as “visceral” and “emotional” because she says it meant she found “my path, my calling, my talent, my passion for a life’s work.”
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