Hello all of you Green Room readers. Hey Green Room staff! This is Lawrence Monoson reporting out here in Hollywood. I am going out to dinner with an actor friend and I'm telling you about it, which I guess some people find interesting. Tonight I'm going to Ledeux Café and it's certainly one of the groove hot spots in LA.
I have so much to say about Ms. Broderick. She has been a dear, dear friend for at least a decade now, since we did a play at the Beverly Hills Play House where we got quite intimate, sharing with each other some of our body parts on stage.
Beth Broderick has been an actress for many years and has had many television series. At the moment she's the star of "Sabrina the Teenage Witch" playing Aunt Zelda. That's been on for five or six years. And before that she was on "The Five Mrs. Buchanans" and before that she was on "Hearts Afire". (I don't know Jay…you're going to have to get a list of credits.) But, she is certainly an extremely talented, sexy, working actress. I will also note that she was in "Bonfire of the Vanities" with Tom Hanks and did an amazing scene with Bruce Willis. One of the things about Beth that I always find amazing is that she continues to carve her own niche into the landscape of this town in the sense that there is not much typical about her. She's a wonderfully funny comedic actress who does bimbo parts with slapstick and was always really in my opinion at heart a great dramatic actress able to tap into and convey deep emotions. That's my favorite aspect of Beth's work. She is a woman who has reached her very early 40's. And as most of you know, being a woman, particularly a sexy woman in Hollywood in your 40's is no easy terrain to walk through. I just find Beth doing it and watching her discover and create interesting and new ways for herself. She is breaking down stereotypes and cliches about what it is to be a 40 year old woman in society, but particularly what it is to be a 40 year old woman in Hollywood. I think that's a powerful road that she is on in the sense of just not giving in to the status quo. She's also moving into directing more. She's a writer. She's written, I believe about five scripts and a couple of them are in pre-production. She recently directed an episode of "Sabrina the Teenage Witch" and is going to be doing more of those in the future. Anyway…she's a great gal, a beautiful woman, a wonderful actress and truly most of all…a dear, loving, supportive friend.
So, I am off to pick up my beautiful date for the evening and I'll be picking up with you soon.
LM: Hello! Beth and I are now at Ledeux. And as I said before, this is sort of one of the groovy spots in Los Angeles. When we first walked in, the first person we bumped in to was Tim Roth who I immediately thought was a friend of mine. But, after approaching him I then realized…he's not and that it was just somebody I thought I knew. And moments later Paul Reiser came in and luckily by that time I was knowing that Paul was not a friend so I didn't approach his table. So anyway, I'm sitting here with Beth and we're having a little lobster salad. We we're talking about Sabrina and you were saying you were in the sixth year?
BB: We're in the sixth year of production but it's been on the air for five years. And it went into syndication last year so it's on everyday, five days a week. Throughout the world it's on seven days a week. It's on every day, a zillion times a day in other countries of the world. In England there is a whole day of Sabrina.
LM: Are you serious?
BB: I'm serious. It goes all day. It's like eight hours.
LM: Are there Sabrina dolls?
BB: Mhm!
LM: Are there Zelda dolls?
BB: They never made a Zelda doll. There's never been a doll but there has been some really, really unfortunate jigsaw puzzles, games and interactive materials with my likeness.
LM: Do you share in those profits?
BB: Nope. I've never seen a dollar.
LM: Why?
BB: It's the same with sort of how the profit ethics that Hollywood applies in a lot of other areas. But, it would have to make a really huge amount of profit and not have hidden it for me to have ever seen a dime. I have never seen a dime out of merchandise.
LM: But, you are owed if they make a certain amount of profit?
BB: Correct, but they will never do so.
LM: Of course not.
BB: It will never happen.
LM: This is your last year with the show?
BB: Yeah.
LM: And how do you feel about that?
BB: It's been a really interesting experience being on Sabrina. This is my fifth "on-air" series.
LM: Can you tell us what the others were?
BB: I was on "The Five Mrs. Buchannans", "Hearts Afire" with John Ritter, "Mancuso FBI", which was very short lived.
LM: I don't even remember that.
BB: It was with Robert Loggia. It was very short lived. He was a film actor who found the television hours way to constricting.
LM: I worked with Robert Loggia.
BB: He was a nice man but he wasn't having it. But, also "Glory Days" with Brad Pitt.
LM: Right. And how long ago was "Glory Days"?
BB: 12 years? Maybe 12 years ago.
LM: And Brad was just a kid.
BB: Well, not literally.
LM: Not so much age wise but career wise.
BB: Career wise he was very much just a kid.
LM: Did you see the potential in him when you worked with him? I know that's a difficult question.
BB: He always had a star quality and he was very much a lone person…even then.
LM: But he really couldn't act back then. I don't know him at all but watching him over the years you can see…
BB: I think he's grown into an incredible actor.
LM: Absolutely.
BB: But no, I wouldn't say he was intensely trained at that point but he was very much his own person. He was very much a gentleman. He had very concrete ideas about who he was in the world and what was right and what was wrong, which is very unusual for a person that age…for a man that age. That led me to believe that he was going to be very successful. He had a confidence and not arrogance at all. He's still not arrogant. I see him now and then and I'm always thrilled to see him. He's so nice and he's just not an arrogant man.
LM: You've been on those five shows and obviously Sabrina's been the longest with six seasons.
BB: Yeah, the odd thing is with Sabrina I knew that it would be a hit but I really didn't understand the nature of the show until I was on it. I thought it would be a much more, sort of cross the board family show.
LM: As opposed to?
BB: It's very much a children's show. It's certainly perceived that way in the US, although in Europe it's not. In Europe it's an across the board family show. People of all ages watch it.
LM: When you say children do you mean "children" or adolescent girls that identify with Melissa?
BB: Well, everybody from pretty much seven and up. It's a very young demographic. Of course we also have a huge demographic in woman 35-55. We have that as well.
LM: Really. Which is a whole other topic of conversation. Now you need to explain why women 35-55 are watching Sabrina. What do you think?
BB: Why do I think? I think you mean is it the demographic who can't afford to go out on a Friday night?
LM: (Laughter) I see.
BB: (Laughter)
LM: I think you're a great dramatic actress. I really do and I always have. I think that it's a testament to you that you've also played these bimbo, comedic roles through a lot of your career. Which I think has been a blessing but it has also been a curse.
BB: It's definitely been both, although I really enjoy the mechanics and the music of comedy. I really enjoy doing it…I find it a challenge. I think people really bought into the idea of it. For many years I played bimbos on television. Really silly, silly characters. And, most people to this day are pretty well convinced that I'm a bimbo and that I'm really, really sweet and quite nice and that I don't have a brain in my head, which of course couldn't be farther from the truth.
LM: Clearly.
BB: So, that has limited my dramatic opportunities. But to be honest there are not a lot of women, certainly not a lot of glamorous women, getting a ton of opportunities in drama. I don't feel terribly underused, particularly by comparison.
LM: If you were offered a role where you had to shed all of the glamour, how would you feel about that?
BB: I'd be there in a minute…in a heartbeat. I've never really identified with myself as glamorous. I think of it as sort of this separate person that I bring out. Caroline Rhea always teases me. She's always like, "Everyone thinks you're glamorous but you're really just a nerd…you're just an intellectual bumbling nerd." And which is true…I'm a complete nerd. I'd much rather be home with three books than out at an industry party.
LM: You're a writer as well and you write screenplays but are you writing any parts for yourself?
BB: No, I never write parts for myself.
LM: Why?
BB: Because when I do write I usually write with an actor in mind.
LM: Well then, why not write with yourself in mind?
BB: I suppose because that's an element of narcissism that I don't really have. I get inspired by people and the mystery of them and I want to unveil them. Perhaps I'm just too familiar with myself and at the same time too foreign.
LM: What do you mean?
BB: Examining other people's motivations, other people's language and other people's way of interacting is much more fascinating to me than spending a lot of time worrying about my own. I've said, "What other people think of me is none of my business." I'm fairly unobserved about my own persona. I spend a lot of time watching and very little time wondering who is watching me.
LM: So you have no desire to write a role for yourself where you would be able to reveal all of these aspects of your talent?
BB: Certainly not in film or television. If I did that it would be purely on a theatrical basis. It's really for the theater.
LM: I told them that we met doing a play.
BB: Yeah, which we all won awards for and I never picked mine up.
LM: Me neither. (Laughter) So, how did you become an actress? Was it a burning desire for you or did you fall into it?
BB: It was a very burning desire when I was young. I started in Community Theater when I was 9. I graduated from high school when I was barely 16. I graduated from The American Academy of Dramatic Arts when I was 18. So it was a very burning desire then. And then I moved to New York City.
LM: And tell everybody where you were coming from.
BB: I'm from California, although my family is from Kentucky. I was raised mostly in California.
LM: How old were you when you moved to NY?
BB: I was 19. I had $500, two suitcases and one phone number.
LM: Wow. Who's number was it?
BB: It was a friend of a friend and I phoned him from the airport and said, "I'm a friend of your friend Lenny and I'm just wondering if you can tell me where Manhattan is?"
LM: (Laughter)
BB: He screams, "What, are you crazy? Are you kidding me? Come to my house…forget about it." So I went to his house and he let me stay there for a week until I found a job in a Greek diner as a waitress and found a roommate situation.
LM: So did you start studying? What were those years like?
BB: I began to study and I really pursued it for a while and then a lot people started (well it wasn't called the AIDS epidemic at the time) showing up with strange symptoms which at the time was called Gay Man's Cancer. I became very concerned about it not being merely a health issue but a civil rights issue because there was a lot of activity going on about quarantining gay men or about containing this mysterious disease by containing gay men. I got involved. I was one of the very first women to get involved.
LM: Why? I mean why for a 19 or 20 year-old girl was this something that spoke to you so strongly? This all when you had just come to New York to pursue your career?
BB: I've always been very…I mean I was in North Dakota protesting Uranium mining during the summers in-between college.
LM: So you've always been an activist?
BB: Yeah. My friend Jennifer and I founded the first teenage chapter of the National Organization for Women when I was 13. (Laughter)
LM: That's great.
BB: When I was in, I think the 5th grade I refused to say the Pledge of Allegiance until we withdrew from Vietnam. They sent me home.
LM: Wow.
BB: They called my mother and told her that I would not say the Pledge of Allegiance unless we withdraw from Vietnam and my mother quite calmly replied, "Then I suggest you withdraw from Vietnam."
