Into The Woods: A Conversation with Tracey, Meryl & Christine

 

I’m a mother of 4 little kids ages 8 and under. So meeting celebrities isn’t something that is even on my radar.  My days are filled with school work, dishes, laundry and cooking. All things that make my life whole but nevertheless are not exactly luxurious. So when I recently found out that I would have the opportunity to interview the Legendary Meryl Steep, Christine Baranksi & Tracy Ullman you can imagine the excitement that went through my body and soul.

These 3 women have been as much a part of my life for as long as I remember. As a young girl I remember their names being part of movie vocabulary even in an a predominantly Spanish Speaking home. I just knew who they were. As a teenager I really began enjoying their work through their various movies and shows. I still remember trying to sneak in a glimpse of the Tracey Ullman show. I remember religiously turning on Cybil to see what antics Cybil and Maryanne would get into. Most important, I remember the impact Meryl had on me when watching Post Cards from the Edge. So you see, these women have all had their part in my life,and although our paths didn’t cross until Friday their impact had been felt.

Going into this interview I know I had many sleepless nights wondering what I could possibly say to these legends. What question could I possibly ask them to know more about their thoughts on acting, motherhood and life.  It’s one thing to read an article in your favorite magazine written by a reporter looking for the latest news, than to sit there as a fellow mother and woman ready to take in the life lessons and experiences these 3 real life friends have been through. So when it came time to sit down in the gorgeous conference room at the Montage Beverly Hills I was ready to experience this amazing event that doesn’t happen everyday,especially to someone like me.

 

As I waited for the ladies to enter I couldn’t help but feel nervous yet excited.

But when they came in I felt a sudden urge of excitement go through my system. It took a few minutes to compose myself. Maybe it was pregnancy hormones but I swear I almost began to cry!

I wanted to think of this event more as a conversation because although we all had questions we were all sitting around them ready to engage and learn more about these fantastic women.

Of course the interview began with the one question we were all dying to find out: “Can you tell us how that friendship came to
be? And any funny stories you want to share with us?” 

 

Christine: Where do we begin? Well, Tracy and Meryl are old friends, so you can start there. That’s an old friendship.

Meryl: Well, I’m a way older friend than Tracy.

Tracey: Yes.

Meryl : I met her when she was 21. We did a movie called Plenty. I was 31. And I thought I’d just met my new best friend, who was my age, because I had no idea she had — I think you were 20, maybe, when we started it.

Tracey : I was a pop — I was a pop star.

Meryl : She was a pop star in England. Discovered by Paul McCartney and —

Tracey: He was my mate, yes. And then we worked — we worked  on Plenty.

Meryl: Kinda top 10 — couple top 10 things —

Tracey : I did. I did. I was a one-hit wonder here. And an MTV vee-jay. And yeah, we got on great. We ended up in  Tunisia, and we —

Meryl : Yeah, we lived through that.

Tracey : Yeah. We broke down in the desert, and, oh, we — we  flew back together, and the plane had been — the engine went, and we thought we were going to die.

Tracey : So we went through these dramatic moments.

Meryl : Over the Mediterranean.

Tracey : It was bad. It was bad.

Meryl: It was amazing. Mmm. But, um, we stayed together.

Tracey: We stayed to — yeah.

Meryl : In spite of it all. Had kids the same age.

Tracey : Kids the same age, yeah. Was nice. Mery And Christine and I —

Christine : We did — we were dynamos in Greece together, on Mama Mia. So then we — we had to do research by being friends, so  we just hung out all the time, doing “research,” so we had a lot of fun with all of that research, and then —

Meryl : But we’d known each other a hundred years.

Christine : We have. We have, because we’re theater babes, and  we’re Connecticut moms, and our kids are roughly the same age,and all three of us had long marriages, and like, shared, y’know, parallel — parallel experiences, and it’s a trick, being an actress, and wife, and mother, and having that longevity. That’s — that’s a real achievement, in my — in my opinion. That’s the greatest achievement, not just in career, but holding your life together, and look at Meryl, with four kids, and —

Meryl: It’s a tribute to our husbands.

Tracey : Yes. Fantastic fathers.

Christine : Yes. And our sense of equilibrium. But, yeah. Girlfriends. It’s great. So we did — we did — but then I met Tracy, and it was like, “Oh, wow…”

Tracey : Yeah. Dying to meet you.

Then I had the chance to ask my question!

Q:You all mentioned motherhood. What advice do you guys have for us young mothers with little kids, eight and under,  little kids. What do you do to survive the life? You know, what advice do you have for us mothers, I mean, because you ladies are moms. You’ve got older kids already….
Meryl : Well, I really feel — I mean, just speaking for the group, I feel like so much has changed. Raising little kids now is so different from when our children were little kids. I mean just that — and I think that’s part of why this film and its warnings and its, you know, overweening care of the mothers and — it speaks to this time when children are, it’s harder and harder to keep the world out. The worst parts of it out. To keep them in the little tower’s impossible. And all of the bad stuff comes in, and people  worried about this film, that it maybe is too dark for kids. Kids know so much now. And they’re aware of so much, and yet  they’re so resilient, and innately hopeful. So that’s — and that’s sort of what the film is.

Tracey : Would we have taken Mabel and Grace to see this? When they were like, six? They would have handled this.

Meryl : Are you kidding? You’d let them watch Cops. When they were seven. And Gracie came home and she said, “Oh.” And then she was imitating, you know, the people, and the crack addicts, getting pulled by their hair.

Tracey : They use to be downstairs at your house, watching those —

Meryl : No, never.

Tracey: — Oscar screeners with Liam Neeson and the wife getting murdered and —

Meryl : No. No. (Laughing)

Tracey : “Oh my God!” They would have liked it. They —

Meryl : They would’ve loved it. Oh —

Tracey : You’re right. She would have taken them–

Meryl : — would have taken the kids at, well, I would say, seven, eight — wouldn’t you?

Christine : Maybe. Maybe seven, eight. But kids are really like, visuals can really affect, and you can explain it away, but be careful what — what you give them visually. I mean, I remember being — seeing a — a documentary on an African tribe. There was this leopard man with long fingernails, and a mask, and I mean, it just had such an impression on me, and it just happened to be on the television set, so you never know what image will —

Tracey : But it goes back to these Grimm’s Fairy Tales, and we all portray them as they were written. You know. I do smack the kid ’round the head, and I was always loving him afterwards, but, you know, when you would cut your child’s foot off to marry a prince. Lock your daughter in  the tower. And there was
— the fairy — fairy tales were so frightening when I was a kid. You know, that Peter with the — you know. “Don’t play with matches. Your hair catches on fire.” And all of those illustrations. They were terrifying.

Meryl : Bluebeard. Remember Bluebeard? Ooh.

Tracey : Yeah. They were for children to be scared of. They did get sort of sanitized a bit, fairy tales, the last 20 years.

 

Q:Which fairy tales did  you love when you were children and wanted to share to your kids when they were little? Which ones stayed with you the most?

Meryl : Um, well, for me, I mean, I don’t know if that’s what I wanted to — what I — what stayed with me the most is what I wanted to share with my children necessarily, but I remember being really marked by Bluebeard, by this idea of a — a man who would take serial wives, one after another, and kill them in the castle. And I was terrified by that. It’s probably why I just stayed married.But, no. I think you — you know, I remember being dropped off at the library when I was eight, and just having the run of the place, and opening a book and seeing the pictures of the Kindertransport, in the — of the children’s, uh, a picture of
the children’s bodies, because one of the trucks had been — where they’d just suffocated. And I’d never forgotten that. And it made me ask my parents questions about the Second World War and the Nazis. And what that — what that was. And kids want to get ready for trouble. They — it’s why my son used to draw lots of monsters. Boys draw lots of scary things, because they want to get ready. You know, they want to get ready.

Christine : And they’re intrigued by it. I mean, look at our fascination with violence in our culture. It’s just a part of  it. I was always telling my kids, as read to them, that — that there was such a thing as the world of the imagination. I said, “You’re safe. If you’re in the world of the imagination, you can go anywhere, and you all come back from that, so you’re safe. We will read this book, and it’ll take you places, but don’t worry. You will — you will come back. There is that world.”
And movies are like that. Movies should — you go there, but, remember that you can come back. You don’t transfer. It — but it can be tricky when a child is too young. They don’t know how to do that. So, I think — one, you know, be careful, be careful, I would say. Just take care of them, their little — their little psyches.

Tracey : I think it’s scarier for boys, actually. The boys, just the — they have the whole weapon gene.   Have you noticed? I’ve never liked
guns or any of that toy g — but they would just get a stick, and they would just get, “Hey!” And they have that thing that they want to — yeah. So I think it’s harder for them, a bit, for the boys. It’s tough, and especially with all of the porn and stuff that’s available as soon as they’re like, you know.

Meryl : Little kids.

Tracey : I think Johnny punched in “big melons” for some bizarre reason when he was like 10 and went “Oh my God.” Like, “Johnny, what the hell?” And it was like, said, “I know, ’cause we’d watched Showgirls.”

Meryl : That’s what she lets ’em watch.

Tracey : No! Alan! He showed Johnny Showgirls one night, and he’s like, nine years old, and he’s going, “Oh my God.” It blew his mind.

Christine: We both raised our kids in Connecticut. But the reason we — I literally hauled our television set. This sounds so quaint. It’s impossible, now, I guess, but literally hauled the big television set out of our house, and we raised kids without a television set.

Meryl : Even though you’ve made your living in television?

Christine: I know, but they never saw Mom play that drunken character — When my daughter was maybe six or seven, and she just happened — and I was downstairs. I forget. I was downstairs, cooking dinner, so it wasn’t like I was 3,000 miles away on a movie set. I was downstairs cooking dinner, and she was upstairs, and the TV — she just took the clicker, and like, did that, and suddenly she was watching male strippers. On Sally Jesse Raphael, and she came downstairs, and she was very disturbed. She said, “Mommy. All these women were screaming. And there were these naked men.” And I was like, “What are you watching?” And this was an afternoon show. And I just said, “If I can’t control it when they’re just upstairs, and with a click of a button, they see something that’s so troubling,” took the damned thing out, now, as Meryl said, I don’t know how you protect kids now. From all of this. All of these toys. But I would really recommend encouraging quiet time when you just talk to your kids. And say, “Okay. We’re just going to get rid of all of this stuff. Let’s just be together, and experience, like, real time, and quiet.”

Tracey: I’m very disturbed when I see kids now — and I mean, ’cause it’s such a different generation with me — and when they’re out at dinner with their parents.

Christine : Yep.

Tracey : And everyone’s sitting around a table. And there’s a child in a high-chair, with a headset on, with an iPad going, being fed, like that, and then they take the headphone off,(and they begin to cry) and And put the headphones back on. I don’t know. I know, boy, I was exhausted when I was a young mom, and I would put on The Little Mermaid sometimes, and go, “Girls, please.I’ve just got to try to go to sleep on the sofa.” But I don’t like that thing. At the dinner table —

Christine: It’s like anesthesia. It really is.

Tracey : Yes. That really disturbs me.

Q : This is for all three of you. You’ve played a variety of drama, comedy, and Wicked. What is your favorite role to play?

Meryl : There — I — I don’t even know if we — I don’t know If I think about it that way. I think each,  particular person you play deserves their own voice, and deserves their own place in the world, and they’re all about 5’6″ and a half, and they’re all about, you know, my weight and age that I play. But that’s — that’s the — that’s the through-line, but I feel like there are so many different women. So many different stories. And they each deserve their voice, you know, and their articular neuroses and needs and passions. So, I don’t — I don’t make a distinction — I mean, there are — you know,  stupid stuff I’ve done that I — I won’t say what. But, you know, and more cartoony sort of things. Um —

Tracey : Your empathy for Margaret Thatcher was extraordinary for me. Because, when you first said you were going to be Margaret Thatcher, and I’d grown up, you know, in the Eighties. And everyone was like me, you — it’s like, a real difficult, it’s like, “Oh. Not her!” But you saw her in a way, as a woman, and how she faced the world, and in a way that you — it was amazing to me.

Meryl : Well, I was just interesting in an old lady. I like old ladies.

Tracey : Yes. And that vulnerability. And that’s what it became — it was amazing, her vulnerability, and how we have our time. And that, you know, my initial reaction was “Margaret Thatcher! Ughhh!” You know?

Meryl : Yeah, but, you know, you’ve played evil people, but they’re fun.

Christine : Yeah. No, they are fun, but I think more to the point is the project that you’re in if you feel like it’s contributing, especially being, um, actresses who have an opportunity in our work to maybe move the culture forward, and show women in a deeper, more complicated way. I love that I’m playing somebody on television who is well-educated, she runs a law firm, she actually has a r — y’know, a relationship. She’s not the butt of a joke. She’s not an old crone.
You know, there’s never a mention of menopause or — or any of these clichéd things that we have put on things after a certain age. I love that these are just non-issues, and she’s a woman who is in the world, dealing with a complicated moral topography in her personal and professional life. So being part of anything like that — and I think that this — this movie is transformative, and contributes good to the world, so I think that’s — that’s what would we look for —

Meryl : Increasingly, that’s what I think about. I mean, I’m — I have, I guess, for a long time, thought, each thing, is this  helping? Or this hurting? What’s this doing? Because everything makes a mark on the culture. Everything you do, everything you do, every actress has a choice, you know? Even if you’re supporting a lot of kids, by yourself, you still have a choice, what you’re putting out into the world, and I think it matters.

Christine : Yeah. Are you reinforcing clichés, and — or are you breaking boundaries with the work?

Q : Last night you had mentioned that one of the things that kind of helped you find your character was coming up with  designs. So, what else — for all three of you — what else helps you develop that character into your own, instead of being that exact character that was on Broadway or just to kind of create it as “you”?

Meryl : Well, for — for me, I feel like it — the part I played was so indelibly done on Broadway by Bernadette Peters. But it’s also been indelibly done by many, many kids, throughout the country, in their high schools, and in colleges. And it’s like any really good play, the part can morph to the shape of the person who is, you know, in there. And, so, I felt completely free, and also a failing memory helps me in this.  In this place, because I — I couldn’t have  remembered.
I would’ve stolen from Bernadette more, if I could remember the  thing. So I — I felt free, too, and he — he made us feel that way, Rob Marshall, and certainly Sondheim said “Do what youwant.” He also wrote me a — a song for this, and, um, that isn’t in the film, because it sort of halted the action, but it’ll be in the DVD extras. But when he — he sang this for me in a — in a — a private session, and I was so thrilled, and he gave me the sheet music at the end.
I said, “Could — do you mind — if I — could — could I keep the sheet music?” And he said, “Sure.” I said, “Well, I hate to ask this, but would you — would you sign it?” And I did! And he said, “Yeah. I’d be glad to,” and he wrote: Don’t fuck it up. Don’t put that in the mommy blog!

Tracey : It’s going in, it’s Tweeting.

Meryl : But that was, ah, sobering. (Laughing)

Q : So, back to the costumes and the makeup and hair and everything. How long was the makeup and hair process, and what was your favorite design?

Christine: You know, I was just thinking about this in getting ready today, about how the look of the step-family, and I will never forget, my first day on the set was a huge, huge scene at Dover Castle, with the arrival of Cinderella. And I had been going back and forth, doing Good Wife, so I didn’t have a whole lot of time for hair and, um, makeup tests and all. And this marvelous man, Peter King, he put on my blonde wig, and it was really big, because we originally conceived of them as a truly over-the-top, larger-than-life, trying-too-hard kind of family. And I showed up and Rob took one look at me, and went…”too
big.” And I had to go all of the way  — and then I thought as — as I look at the movie, and I see my various hairstyles in there, they’re a little bit, and then a little off, I think, but that’s exactly right. That’s exactly right.  These women, they are trying so hard. You know. You look in the mirror and go, “Mmm, no, that’s not enough, I need morehairspray. More, more, more.” And they don’t get it exactly right. And so it’s funny. Little accidents can be very helpful and very human, and exactly right for the character.

Tracey : I loved my approach. Peter King said to me on the first day, “I’m going to make you a gray wig.” And most people would be like, “I don’t want to go gray.” I was like, “Great.” Made me go gray, having this wig, and I put it up in this topknot, and I had this beautiful, simple, Colleen Atwood outfit, that reminded me of a sort of Dries van Noten peasant look, and I could roll around in the leaves, and there was just no vanity, and I — I just loved it. I could see, you know, it’s — I loved — because I’d done so many things where I’d wear these extravagant make-ups. And just to come in and just smudge my cheeks with mud and become a peasant girl, I found it just wonderful. And it’s feeling comfortable in who you are, and getting older, and not worrying about it. It’s just such a relief. And there is so much
pressure on how we all look, and it’s just exhausting. Dignity, girls! Aging with dignity.

Christine: The man who is sitting right over there has created that extraordinary look for Meryl.  Roy Helland.

Tracey: The Oscar-winning Roy Helland.

MS : Well, that was a joke, because Roy decided early on that we would have a joke on blue-haired ladies.You know.  Making  fun of old ladies, because they put the blue rinse, so you don’t have yellow in the white hair, and so he thought — he said, “Well, we’re gonna have blue hair!” And  it was so fabulous. And then I came out to LA and I see all of these young girls with blue hair, and I think: “I am on trend!”

As you can see the time spent was so much fun. I was a huge fan of these ladies coming in, and coming out of the interview I couldn’t believe how genuine, fun and amazing these women truly are.  Nothing could have prepared me for this experience. Their elegance reminded me of Old Hollywood, even Tracey who claims to be crass (as she said), showed a way about them that you don’t get to experience unless you are in front of them. Their body language and the way they carry themselves is of  class and elegance that we should all try to emulate.

This experience taught me so much. It taught me how incredibly resilient and smart these women are. The fact that they’ve all been able to raise families and have successful marriages, something you don’t see in Hollywood everyday ,was mind blowing. Most important they showed a human side, the mothering side, the side one only gets to see in company of friends. They treated us with such respect and comradery. This experience will be one I carry for years to come.

You can catch these amazing women along with a fantastic cast in Disney’s Into the Woods. Playing in theaters on Christmas Day!

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Disclosure: This post is part of my press trip to LA, CA with expenses provided by Disney. All Opinions are 100% mine.