Julia Louis-Dreyfus - 'Tangles' [LIVE]

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0:23Hi, everyone, and thank you for joining us for a very special episode of the Hollywood Reporters Awards Chatter podcast, on which every week for more than a decade, I've had the privilege of interviewing, spending an hour picking the brain of a distinguished member of the entertainment industry about their life and career. This has been going on now, as I say, for over a decade and has resulted in some pretty special conversations. This episode, I say for those tuning in, is being recorded during the Cannes Film Festival in front of an audience of festival goers at Meta House just off the croissette.

0:56And I'm so thrilled and grateful that my guest for it is one of the truly great actresses of our time or any other. She is, of course, best known for her comedic talents, an inductee into the Television Academy Hall of Fame in 2014, and a recipient of the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor in 2018, as well as the National Medal of Arts in 2021. She shares with Cloris Leachman the record for most Emmy wins for acting, eight, spread between the unforgettable TV comedy series Seinfeld, The New Adventures of Old Christine, and Veep, with another three on top of that for producing. But she's here in Cannes for the world premiere of a deeply moving dramedy, namely Tangles, Leah Nelson's animated feature directorial debut adapted from Sarah Levitt's 2010 graphic memoir of the same name, on which she, our guest, was a producer and for which she provided the voice of a wife and mother who's diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease.

1:50Today, we will get into all of the above and more. And so without further ado, would you please join me in welcoming back to Awards Chatter for the first time since 2017, the great Julia Louis-Dreyfus.

2:19All right. Are we done? Is that it? Where are we? In an eyeglasses store? Actually, I'm really asking the question. It's the Meta House, the Meta Lounge. Okay. And thank you so much for making the time to be here. You're welcome. It's my pleasure to be here. And I guess to begin with, I looked, I could find only one previous time that you'd been at Cannes. Was that correct? It was not the festival. I think it was a... Oh, it was the Lions thing. I think so. Yeah. What's your memories of experiences in Cannes? Well, let's see. that time, I think I did an interview with Richard Plepler, who was running HBO at the time, and Christiane Amanpour.

3:05And my memory is I was just trying not to make a fool of myself. I'm not kidding, because I thought, oh, she's so smart. I got to be careful, because I'm not. Well, that is not true. We're going to get into evidence of that in a moment. But But just to sort of set the scene, can you share where you were born and raised and what your folks did for a living? Yes. That might be for me if anybody answers it. I was born in New York City, New York, in Manhattan. And I was raised there and in Washington, D.C., where I moved in 1970. Yeah. And your parents, what feel? Well, I have multiple parents. My dad was a businessman, was in the commodities business, essentially.

3:57And my mother was a teacher. She didn't really work a lot. She's worked as she's gotten older. She got an MFA and is now a poet. She's still alive. My father passed away in 2016. And my stepfather is a doctor. And he was the dean of the medical school. And he was a thoracic surgeon and ultimately the president of the AMA. Yes. I didn't hear anybody. And my stepmother was a teacher as well. Yeah, so none of those folks, and I don't believe any others really, were in any way involved with acting or the arts necessarily. Oh, that's where you were going. Well, no, no, no, no, no, no. But I do want to, I do want to, no, no, no.

4:35I mean, so where did that seed come from, do you think? It sounds like you, from the earliest age, were thinking about it. I was from the earliest age. I have no idea where it came from. I just like to perform. I would even perform during nap time in nursery school. So I remember very vividly standing on top of my blanket and dancing and hoping people were going to be watching. And they were, by the way. And that sort of thing, I know you've talked about, continued through high school assembly and things. But when you went off to Northwestern, was that with the plan of focusing on drama acting?

5:20Or what was the idea at that point? Yes, that was the plan. And I was drawn to Northwestern because they offered not just that. There are multiple schools at Northwestern University. So it was an opportunity to get a liberal arts education at the same time as studying theater and acting. But ironically, all I focused on was the theater and the acting. And then ultimately left after three years because I got a job to be on Saturday Night Live. So I was like, I'm out of here. Good reason. Yeah. So there was what you've called a watershed moment, though, in your freshman year. I would love if you would share what happened.

5:58But also if prior to that you had what you felt was a comedic bent or if that only sort of became apparent while this thing that I'm going to ask you to talk about freshman year as a result of that. So this was a comedic thing that started in freshman year, right? Yeah, there was a show at Northwestern that was called The Meow Show, and it was born out of the student body. It was not a part of the curriculum, unlike something that they had. I mean, this is, I don't know how interesting this is really, but there was a show at Northwestern called The WAMU Show, which was very much a part of the curriculum of the school.

6:34and it was a big production musical comedy thing that was done annually. And the Meow Show was sort of born as an answer to that, to kind of make fun, and it was an ironic sort of nasty spin, kind of. And so when I got to Northwestern, they had auditions, and I auditioned for it, and I got into it, and it was a really big deal to get cast as a freshman, And I felt like this was the beginning of something very important. And in fact, it was because I met people, other students, who were sort of revolutionaries in a way and helped me to sort of find my voice and start to believe in myself and maybe in a more serious kind of way, serious in a funny kind of way.

7:27But at the same time, I did a lot of dramatic work at Northwestern. and I did, you know, Three Penny Opera and all the rest of it. So, yeah. And then what was it, you mentioned, obviously, that the reason you left Northwestern was getting SNL, but SNL in Chicago was known for scouting Second City. That's right. But how did they find you? I did Second City, but in fact, I was doing, I was not in Second City, I was doing a show with the Practical Theater Company, which was a theater company started by former Meow members, including my then boyfriend, now husband, but still boyfriend in kind of way.

8:05We were doing a show that was a huge hit in Chicago, actually. Sold out houses every night. And the producers from SNL were told to check this show out. And they did. And it was like one of those things that really feels like a fantasy, doesn't feel like it would happen in real life, where they came backstage after the show and they said, we want you to all come to New York and be on Saturday Night Live. So we didn't even audition. We just were offered this opportunity. Unbelievable. Yeah, it was pretty jaw-dropping. So it was literally a matter of, yeah, I mean, pretty cool. Yes, by all means, clap.

8:49That's the jump push, right? Please clap. No, so you pack your bags, you head to New York. Yeah. And you arrive at 30 Rock at a time that it was a transitionary period for the show. I just want to remind folks, this is during that brief stretch when Lorne Michaels was gone. That's right. There had been Gene Dumanian. Now it was Dick Eversol, right? Correct. And here's who you were working with on what was sometimes probably unfairly dismissed as like not as good.

9:21Just say it. Eddie Murphy, Martin Short, Christopher Guest, Billy Crystal, Joe Fisco, Julia Louis-Dreyfus. I think that kind of needs to be revisited the way that's thought of. But I know at the same time, even though there was a lot of talent there, it was a very frustrating period for you, right? What was at the root of that? I want to start by saying something very positive, which is that during this period of time, it was really hard. but it was a completely valuable experience because it was so hard. I learned how to perform a show live in front of millions of people. There's only one way to learn how to do that, and I got to do it in real time.

10:09I mean, understand, I was 21 years old. I had only been on stage at Northwestern University and in Chicago. You know, I didn't have a lot of professional experience under my belt. I think you were the youngest ever female cast member, right? Yes. And I was used to, at a very young age, naively used to working together to make the best show possible. And we're all in it and ensemble work in its very best sense. This was not the case at SNL. The system is set up so it's incredibly competitive. You come to work on Monday. You do not have a show for Saturday. and you have to quickly, with cast and writers, put a show together in a very brief period of time.

10:52So you're always, as an actor, scrambling to be seen, to be heard, to be cast in sketches and so on. This was all news to me. And it was also very male-centric, I'm not going to lie. And so, oh, wait, and also there were a ton of drugs going on. And I was so naive that I did not realize this. I just know that, like, we'd have the table read, and one sketch would be 17 pages long, which is too long for a sketch, just so you know. And the writers who wrote it were going, ah, ah, ah, ah, like that. And I'm like, wow, they have a lot of energy. Whoa. So, I mean, it was all very, it was topsy-turvy.

11:39time. But anyway, I think I've just described it correctly. Well, so it's interesting because I don't know if all of the folks I mentioned would recall feeling similarly, but I believe that one person who would, you overlapped in the third year of your three years there and this person in their one of one years there. I guess you commiserated a lot with a writer on the show? Oh, yeah. Larry David. Yes. Yes, of course. Yes. Larry was there my third year, and he was miserable, as I was. And so we spent a lot of time happily being miserable together. Which turns out to be a pretty important thing.

12:23Yes, connection, yeah. So at the end of the third season for you, you, I don't know if it was your decision or their decision, but it was over at your estimate. Well, yeah, because Dick Ebersole left, and Bob Tischler and everybody who were running the show, Lauren came back. And it was sort of understood that they were going to completely clean house. So anyway, yeah, I was out. And didn't stick around in New York too much longer. Maybe for about a year, trying to find work unsuccessfully. And so the idea was, if you go to L.A., that's where... At the time, that's where it seemed all of show business was.

12:59And that was back when they had something called pilot season. when, yeah, and so you'd go, and it was like a three-month period, I want to say January, February, March, where you would go and read for pilots on TV shows, God bless you, and, you know, you'd hopefully get a part, and then I did, yeah. Well, just to keep the chronology for folks, you leave SNL in 85. Yeah. The next four years were obviously nothing that ran that long, but there were things that set the scene for you to be kind of welcome back to NBC when Seinfeld happened. What was connecting the dots, if you could, between SNL and Seinfeld?

13:42Okay, so let's see. I got cast in a pilot that was a spinoff of Family Ties, The Art of Being Nick. That show didn't get picked up. But the production company that made it liked my performance in it. And then they put me, and this was Gary Goldberg of Family Ties and Spin City, fame. And then he cast me in this show that he was doing called Day by Day. And I did that for two years. And that was a very happy experience, actually. And then that show ended. It got canceled. And these four scripts came my way. They were called the Seinfeld Chronicles at the time. And I saw, oh, Larry had written them.

14:23And so I read them. And I went in to meet Jerry. And Larry really wanted me to do it. But it was a four series order. I mean, it was a really strange... Four episodes. Four episodes. Yeah, pardon me. No, and I just want to also underscore how close it came to not being the show that we know, because I believe Elaine was not a part of the pilot. Elaine was not in the pilot, and NBC didn't want to do the show, but wonderful at all after the pilot. And then a guy named Rick Ludwin, who ran special programming at NBC, decided somehow to keep the show afloat and put the late night programming budget into these four episodes.

15:09God love Rick Ludwin. He's passed away, but he was an incredibly wonderful guy. And so we really have him to thank. Was there not in the pilot, there just wasn't really a female presence? Oh, no, NBC said, add a girl. Yeah. Add a girl.

15:27Well, thank God. So, and when you were getting these four scripts, at that point, the train's already left the station, so they've got to move fast, right? It wasn't like a whole casting process. It was because Larry advocated for you, or what was the... Yeah, they had a couple of contenders, but they were having a little trouble casting it. And so Larry said, will you consider this? And I read it, and I will say that it stood out to me, these four scripts, because you have to remember that this is, what year is this? 1990, 89, 90. And so the comedies on television had a familiar rhythm to them.

16:06And I'm not saying anything negative. It just was the case. This show did not. This show was sort of almost anti-joke in a way. And I recognized the difference on the page. And I thought, wow, this is wild. It's like my friends have gotten into the system and fooled everyone is what it felt like, you know. Was it clear even from those first few scripts that Elaine was a character unlike really any other female character up to that point? Just in only a few of the many ways we could mention. She's sort of one of the guys. There's not an emphasis on making her especially, quote unquote, likeable the way that was emphasized for many people.

16:45She has a sexual appetite over her. Like, there's all these things that were just, I think now... Right, and she's not a love interest. She's not there as the girlfriend. Yes. The premise is that they had dated but got past it, and now she's just one of the crowd, right? Right. Actually, there was a funny thing I came across where somebody was talking about, you know, the will-they-won't-they element of, even with Veep, like, do you make her president? Or does that do the moonlighting thing of satisfy what the people have been kind of wondering? And they were like, Seinfeld, just skip that. It was in the past by the time it started.

17:19The will they, won't they? Right. So that itself was also pretty revolutionary. Although I will say that there was one episode called The Deal. There was a big, fat argument on set about that. Because Jerry and Elaine sleep together in that episode. And then they make sort of a deal about it. And there was tension between creatives. Actually, it was Castle Rock and Larry about whether or not to really turn this into a will they, won't they. Larry was livid. He did not want anything to do with that idea of the romance, the cute, the sexy. That was in his deal. Interesting. Yeah. Another thing that I think people may not necessarily remember clearly is that it was not a hit out of the gate at all, right?

18:09No, it was not. How early on were you convinced that this was a show that was great and working? And when did other people finally catch up to that? Well, I knew the show was great after we shot the first four. You did? Okay. And I thought, they're too stupid to pick it up. They have no idea what they're doing at the network, and this show is not going to get recognized. It's too good. And I think it really became a hit in season three, and then we sort of were off and running. Yeah. And ends up nine seasons, 177 episodes. And when that period came to an end in 98, which did you ever catch the Larry King interview with Jerry about, did they cancel you or did you cancel?

18:51I know. It's not good. We actually, we use that in a class I teach called The Art of the Interview, which not to say I've got it perfect, but you got to do a little prep.

19:05So enjoyed that. Well, Jerry, I kept going because he was like, Jerry was pissed. Yeah. He was like, some, some shows are past their sell by date. And Jerry's like, some interviewers are past but anyway, when the, when the show ended, what was your mindset? Is it let's take a little time or is there pressure to follow that? How do you follow it? Just what was your mindset? My mindset was two things. One is I was pretty grief stricken. It's when you've given your life and your brain and your heart to a project for a long period of time, to say goodbye to it, even if the timing is right to say goodbye, which it was, there's a deep sadness and loss that I felt.

19:47I've actually felt it with any long-term project that I've happily worked on. But I was also a young mother at the time. I had a five-year-old and a 10-month-old or something. Yeah, it was a real big juggling act, making the show and having these babies at the same time as any working outside the house mother knows. And so I was eager to just get home. Yeah. Yeah. Makes sense. Yeah. And so it was four years before you were back on a series which was watching Ellie on NBC. That one was two seasons, pretty cutting edge at the time, single cam. Now that's, I mean, you guys and others helped to, with Veep and other shows, you know, helped to popularize, but that was pretty new.

20:35Yeah, and it was in real time, too. In real time, no laugh track, all that. Yeah. Did that feel like a scary jump to bite off? Yeah, well, it was scary in the sense that there was a lot of pushback. And we also did less episodes. I think we negotiated to do 15 episodes the first season. And I remember people were like, 15 episodes? I was, what? That's unheard of. You know, doing a single camera show, particularly if you're the star, is a demanding schedule. Again, I had young kids, so that's what we did. We did it for two seasons. And I remember Jeff Zuckerberg was the president of NBC at the time.

21:15And he was like, we're never going to do another single camera show on NBC. Yeah, he sent that to us. So it was a short-lived show, but I stand by it. I really actually think if you were to watch it, you would see it. It has some, it's a show I'm very, very proud of. It was just ahead of its time. That was 2002, 2003. Steve Carell was in that show, by the way. Yeah, it was one of his first jobs. Well, and then 2006 to 2010, you are back with The New Adventures of Old Christine. Yes. Which ran for five seasons, 88 episodes, which I know we're going to discuss in a moment. But female-centric show on a, well, at the time was a pretty male-centric network.

21:54I think it still is. And maybe, yeah. But I guess I wonder the way that that experience on the heels of you'd had Seinfeld and then you had these two shorter runs also on Broadcast Network. The way that, especially with the way things went with New Adventures of Old Christine, which, by the way, one of your Emmys was for. I think you've said the way it was treated by the network was not impressive to you. And also that it might. Like shit, I think. Yeah. I mean, part of that is the episodes, right? Generally, if you have a show that's done well for a network, and you're close to 100, which allows for syndication, they screwed us.

22:34They screwed you. So did that experience, maybe on top of watching Ellie, did that in some ways turn you off from the idea of broadcast? Also at a time when cable and then eventually streaming are coming in, where you can do more livable numbers of episodes. You can say and show anything you want. All of that. Did your attitude toward broadcast change around then? Sure, it definitely did. At that time, I feel, and of course there are exceptions, but I feel like the broadcast mentality was, shall we say, conservative and maybe a tad square. I recognized, I really wanted to do a show on cable, and particularly at HBO, which at that time was just the absolute, it was a place artists wanted to go to.

23:23You would be respected and anything that was unusual would have a chance to flourish on that platform. That was my experience. That was the case. It was. So how did you first hear about the concept that became Veep? we should say this is Armando Iannucci, who had, at that point, I think, In the Loop had happened, political kind of insane comedy. He'd had the thick of it, I believe, as well, series. But was he somebody who was on your radar? Or what was the first inkling that there might be a project that you'd want to be a part of? Well, I was familiar with In the Loop, which was nominated for an Academy Award, and thought it was quite remarkable.

24:08I didn't actually know the thick of it at the time, British TV series, hugely popular. But my agent actually said, Armando Inucci is developing a show about a female vice president, an unhappy female vice president. And I thought, oh, I need to do that. Because it, number one, hadn't been done. The idea of vice president is so delicious because you've made it, but you haven't made it. And that felt good for the taking. It felt like low hanging fruit that no one had noticed. And so I met with Armando and we got along super well. We hung out for, you know, we were getting together for a little tea, a brief tea at a hotel, I remember.

24:56And it turned into a three and a half hour meeting. and it was so fantastic. And yeah, that's how it began. And so Selina Meyer is introduced to the world in 2012, beginning of this unbelievable seven season, 65 episode run. And I wonder if you mentioned that you grew up partly in DC, you'd also obviously by this point seen what Hollywood is like. And I think there were some parallels that emerged, right? For sure. Yeah. I I mean, it's Hollywood and show business. You're selling a brand. The brand is yourself. You're trying to stay relevant as time goes on. For example, I'm here with you right now trying to stay relevant.

25:39And so, and in politics, exactly the same is true. and so that I could relate to as a woman who's getting older in the business or getting older in the world of Washington DC it all seemed to make a lot of sense I'd also done a lot of political work so I had and continue to do so but you know sort of behind the scenes and meeting politicians and so on. And I grew up in Washington, D.C. I spent part of my childhood there. So the inner workings, as they say, inside the beltway and the culture there, that I understood in my bones. One thing I wonder is when you look back at Seinfeld and the subsequent shows you did before Veep, how much, if at all, was improv permitted as opposed to sticking to the letter of the script?