By Abbie Bernstein
In ABC’s new half-hour comedy MALIBU COUNTRY, real-life country singing star – and actress – Reba McEntire plays Reba MacKenzie, a one-time country star who gave up her career for her still-star husband. When she discovers the louse has been cheating on her, Reba ditches his sorry behind and moves from Nashville to one of his homes in Malibu. She is accompanied by her two kids and her mother Lillie Mae, who takes the new environment more in stride that Reba does.
Lillie Mae is played by the legendary Lily Tomlin, who first became a pop culture sensation in the Sixties on LAUGH-IN. Since then, she’s won awards for her one-woman stage shows (co-written with partner Jane Wagner) and played farce, comedy and drama on both the large and small screens. Tomlin wrapped up a season of the legal thriller DAMAGES as a malevolent matriarch and seems happy to lighten up as a much more upbeat and open mom in MALIBU COUNTRY.
At a party for the press thrown by ABC, Tomlin talks about both her new gig and some of her old ones. One movie affectionately remembered by many who saw it was ALL OF ME, in which Tomlin plays a dying rich woman who winds up sharing a body with Steve Martin’s character. “Oh, gosh, let me see,” Tomlin says when asked about the Carl Reiner-helmed film. “ ALL OF ME, well, God, I love that movie so much, it’s actually one of my favorites, and Dick Libertini and Steve had ad-libbed that whole back and bull bit. Everybody referenced that, that was one of their favorite parts, was the ‘back and bull’ bit.”
Another movie that has lived on for both old and new audiences is THE INCREDIBLE SHRINKING WOMAN. Tomlin played the title role of a woman who literally dwindles in size. Tomlin is still asked about it. “Oh, I get kids all the time coming up to me, kids who are now thirty-five or something, and they were probably eleven at the time. They want me to sing ‘Little Bar of Soap’ for them. The theme that recurs all the time is,” she sings a bar, “‘Galaxy Glue …’” It’s attracted a new generation of fans. “Kids always come up to me, young adults.”
How did Tomlin wind up returning to broadcast TV in MALIBU COUNTRY? The answer is pretty simple. “They asked me and that was great,” Tomlin relates. “I love Reba, I’ve known her a long, long time – not well, but in a lot of different aspects of her artistry, and I had admiration for her. And so then they sent me a script, and I thought the show had a lot of potential, and I thought my character had a lot of potential. I said all of this, but to be audacious, to change and experience stuff and coming from that Nashville environment.”
How is working with McEntire? “Oh, she’s adorable,” Tomlin enthuses. “She is what you see.”
Tomlin wears a wig to play Lillie Mae. Not only doesn’t the actress mind, she says, “I had the wig built – I wanted to have white hair. I love white hair. Plus, I named her after my mother, and my mother had white hair.”
Does this mean Lillie Mae is a version of Tomlin’s real mother? “Not really,” Tomlin replies. “I mean, I know the Southern culture and I know my mother. Whatever part of my mother sits in me probably comes out, like her response to something or her take on something.”
Although Tomlin is from Detroit, Michigan, she spent summers in the South. “Always,” she affirms. “Near Paduca. That’s westernmost Kentucky.”
Many of the characters that Tomlin created are still referenced in pop culture, like Ernestine the telephone lady and young Edith Ann and the myriad souls who populate her one-woman shows. Is Lillie Mae the kind of character Tomlin might have created for herself to play?
“Yes,” Tomlin says with a laugh, “maybe at a time when I wanted to do a Gray Panther person, an activist. I think Lily Mae could become that. I don’t know – I think she’s going to become really experimental and political and I hope she causes a lot of mischief. A lot of it’s very outspoken, I hope.”
Lillie Mae is the latest in a string of mother characters Tomlin has played lately. “I just played Tina Fey’s mother in a movie called ADMISSION,” Tomlin notes. “We just finished it [in June].”
Is there any difference between playing women who are mothers and women who are not mothers? Tomlin laughs again. “It all depends, I guess. I don’t know – nothing’s different. They’re all human beings to some degree, although some are bigger and some are smaller and some are broader and some are more subtle.”
As far as playing her DAMAGES mother character Marilyn Tobin, Tomlin says, “Part of what’s joyful about DAMAGES is, you don’t know how bad your character is. And so for about eight or nine weeks, you don’t have any idea how far they would go, and you leave that possibility open. As an actor, I think your role becomes more layered, more ambiguous, because you so want to be bad, and you stand around saying things to each other like, ‘I wonder if Marilyn would kill Joe. I wonder if Joe would kill Lenny.’ And you don’t know what they’d do for power and money. And it’s exciting. It’s exciting to be an actor and wait ‘til the next episode to see where the writers take you. Because you don’t really see it until a day or two before you shoot. They’re writing right up to the last minute.”
In MALIBU COUNTRY, Tomlin probably won’t be having those conversations, as it seems unlikely that Lillie Mae will kill anyone. “Probably not,” Tomlin agrees with a straight face.
by Abbie Bernstein
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Abbie Bernstein is an entertainment journalist, fiction author and filmmaker.
