Title: Betty Gilpin Steps In As New Mary In 'Oh, Mary!'

[music]

Alison Stewart: This is All Of It on WNYC. I'm Alison Stewart. When Betty Gilpin was asked to take over for Cole Escola as the lead in Oh, Mary!, the tale of Mary Todd Lincoln, a wannabe cabaret star stuck as the First Lady to a cranky, closeted president, Gilpin was beyond thrilled and challenged, but Gilpin is not one to shy away from hard work. She spent nearly half a year in New Mexico in the cold shooting the series American Primeval. She spent three years playing a 1970s female wrestler in GLOW, and she's the mom to a 10-month-old and a 5-year-old, so she's clearly used to drama, but how would she be able to take on what Cole Escola brought to Broadway?

Well, if you checked Reddit, the answer is clear. One user said, "She is a lunatic in the best possible way." Another said, "I saw it with Cole and was worried Betty wouldn't be as much of a freak, but she was wonderful." Another said, "So funny and unhinged. It didn't disappoint." There are just two more weeks to see Betty Gilpin in Oh, Mary!, and she joins us now. Hi, Betty.

Betty Gilpin: Hi. How are you? I'm so happy to be here.

Alison Stewart: Thanks for being here. When did you first see Oh, Mary!?

Betty Gilpin: I first saw Oh, Mary! when it was downtown at the Lucille Lortel, and I was pregnant with my second daughter and in the throes of figuring out what school my older daughter was going to go to. I saw Oh, Mary! and thought, "Gosh, that's the best gift you can give your child, is to just make them like themselves enough and feel comfortable enough in their own skin that they put out whatever is buried within them into the world like this play."

As silly and ridiculous as Oh, Mary! is, you're watching Cole extract something from within themselves that most people can't do. It's a-- There was like a reverence that sort of came over the audience, even though we were all laughing at how ridiculous it was.

Alison Stewart: Where were you when you got the call asking to take over for Oh, Mary!?

Betty Gilpin: Well, strangely, I was in Budapest filming a miniseries about President James Garfield, a different president who was assassinated in the 1800s, and I was playing his First Lady, Lucretia Garfield. I was in an Oval Office set, an 1881 Oval Office set in my Lucretia Garfield bustle, and got the call to come be Mary Todd and looked up and made eye contact with a portrait of Lincoln with a rainbow over his head, whether it's a pride rainbow or not, we can't be sure. Yes, I just fell to the ground. I was so excited and terrified.

Alison Stewart: When you really sat down and thought about it, because obviously you wanted to do it, but you must have had questions. What questions did you ask yourself before taking over this role?

Betty Gilpin: Well, Cole's performance is so singular that at first I thought, "Well, would this be like stepping in to do someone's one-person show?" It feels like you're walking around a haunted house of someone's demented brain, and I thought, "Oh, does it work if it's somebody else up there, saying their words?" But I think it's sort of an amazing opportunity for the play to stand on its own.

Cole's performance was so incredible, but also their play is so incredible. They really wrote-- I keep saying it's the greatest part I'll ever play. As over the top as the play is, the bones of it are really kind of faultless and provides this roadmap of, a Blanche Dubois-level tour de force for anyone to come in and try to knock out of the park. While I was scared, certainly, I also thought, "Oh man, I think I can really do this, but I have to really swing for the fences or the second mezzanine, as it were, which, fortunately, there is a second mezzanine at the Lyceum, so it lends itself to an over-the-top performance.

Alison Stewart: I was going to ask you, because you're a writer as well.

Betty Gilpin: Yes.

Alison Stewart: A lot of people know that about you. What is special about the writing of Oh, Mary!?

Betty Gilpin: Well, Cole and I, while we are very different, we share a love of being or trying to be simultaneously smart and stupid at the same time and I think something so brilliant about the way that Cole writes and sees the world is that it's both ironic and arch and commentary and roast of things like theater and old Hollywood and ridiculous, delusional women, but also just when you think it's only commentary, only eye-rolling, they will hit you with sincerity out of nowhere and a sincere love for all of these things.

Having grown up mainly in my parents' dressing rooms of Off-Broadway and regional theaters throughout New York and the coast, I developed a love for theater and all the things that are ridiculous and wonderful about it, and so, I don't know, it's sort of like I grew up with all of these characters.

Alison Stewart: We're talking with Betty Gilpin. She's currently playing Mary Todd Lincoln in the hilariously unhinged play Oh, Mary! Sam Pinkleton, he was on our show, and he told me that the characters in this play, they really believe in what they're saying, that they aren't snarky at all.

Betty Gilpin: Right.

Alison Stewart: What do you see as Mary Todd Lincoln's reason for life? Why is she there? What does she care about?

Betty Gilpin: Well, I think that she-- When we meet her at the top of the show, Sam and I would discuss her being like a caged animal, that she's sort of-- she believes that she should be on a rooftop with a spotlight on her, surrounded by fun, drunk, adoring people, and instead, she is in a fluorescently sober, quiet story about men in politics. She's sort of railing at the bars of her cage, saying, "I'm in the wrong damn story. I'm supposed to be Judy Garland, not Nancy Pelosi's cat or whatever." She's really upset and trying to grab everybody by the collar and insist, "I'm magnificent. Give me my chance." Without spoiling anything, I think we see her fight for her chance.

Alison Stewart: Sam paid you a compliment in one of the articles I read, and he said, "She's weirder than Cole."

[laughter]

Alison Stewart: Do you find anything weird or odd about Mary?

Betty Gilpin: Yes, she's completely insane. Sometimes I'm about to go film a movie that takes place in an office in 2025. I'm like, "Oh God, have I broken my ability to filter and be subtle? Am I just going to be crossing my eyes and trying to tap dance, Charlie Chaplin on cocaine my way through a scene?" They'll be like, "Stop, stop." "Just say the words. Hold the mug and say the words like a human." Yes, it's been the most fun. It's this strange thing where, in theater school, particularly where I went, Fordham at Lincoln Center, we studied a lot of theater of the absurd.

We did Endgame by Samuel Beckett for an entire year. It was a lot of claw hands and hunchbacks and crossed eyes and only vowel sounds and writhing around on the ground in our pajamas and sobbing about our childhoods. Then we all graduated and auditioned for mumblecore, contemporary pixie dream girls. I think for that reason I really didn't work a lot besides theater because I didn't understand-- It's like, "Well, I should be screaming a vowel at the ceiling, not murmuring a consonant at the floor." At last, I am able to scream those vowels at the top of my lungs. It's a wonderful gift. Yes, I can't believe I only have two weeks left. I'm so sad. It's been so much fun. It's just been ridiculous.

Even though it is definitely not a child-friendly show, I would say the last five minutes are, without giving anything away, and I had my 4-year-old daughter Mary, whose name is Mary, sneak in through the back to just watch the last couple minutes on Sunday. I think it was actually, no hyperbole, the greatest day of my life. It was like I could see the back door creak open and a little light come through, and I thought, "Oh, she's coming in right now," and my throat caught, and it was as if Madonna or Obama was entering the room. I started shaking, so excited. [laughs]

Alison Stewart: What's changed about the way that you played Mary Todd Lincoln now versus the first couple of days?

Betty Gilpin: Well, because the show is so fast and there are so many turns, just when you think you've got the tone, it makes a hard left and a hard right and a backflip. Every Mary is going to be different, sort of the only non-negotiable, as Sam said to me on the first day, was speed. As an audience member, you're sort of watching someone, all the actors, like waist up sip a cup of tea while their legs tap dance at 1,000 speed. You're watching someone so comfortably, languidly swim through the most insane obstacle course. We only had six days of rehearsal, so I thought--

Alison Stewart: Only six?

Betty Gilpin: Yes. It's insane. It was insane. Chris Renfro who plays Mary's teacher, I was talking to them about-- we were joking about, "It's going to take us six weeks to ask each other if we have siblings or not" because we were so in fight or flight the whole time of like just trying to cram the lines and blocking into our heads that we were not chatting at all, but now, of course, we're all completely in love with each other. Yes, the first week I think I was just in a blind-- It was like I walked on stage and blacked out just in a panic, and now it feels like swimming and tap dancing in the most disturbing way. Oh man, I'm just going to miss it so much. It's just the most fun possible.

Alison Stewart: I wanted to ask you about the bratty curls, because they discussed the bratty curls on the wig for Mary Todd Lincoln. That's how they were described. Are they still bratty?

Betty Gilpin: They are the absolute brattiest. It's like Shirley Temple and Satan had a baby. It is the most ridiculous. I can feel them bouncing when I stomp around. So fun. Then my make-up, Darion Matthews does hair and make-up for the show, and we discussed, "Okay, Mary's make-up should be like a drunk former star found out a casting director was going to be at the Oval Office dinner tonight and then did her make-up in the dark." I look absolutely insane, [laughs] insane.

Alison Stewart: We're speaking with Betty Gilpin. She's currently playing Mary Todd Lincoln just for a couple more weeks in the hilariously unhinged play Oh, Mary! Apparently, because the Internet says, your dad appeared at the Lyceum Theatre briefly, where Oh, Mary! is playing now.

Betty Gilpin: Yes.

Alison Stewart: What advice did he give you?

Betty Gilpin: He was an understudy in a production in 1978, and he went on one time. When he and my mom came to see the show, he pointed out where the payphone used to be backstage, and his dressing room was up on the third floor where mine is. I don't know that he really had any advice. He just-- I don't know, they said all the right things. We were all sobbing together. They were very proud. I mean, they were just so excited. [laughs] Yes, we were really crying together.

Alison Stewart: Aw.

Betty Gilpin: Yes.

Alison Stewart: Well, it's your Broadway debut. That's big.

Betty Gilpin: Yes, it is. Yes. I think I was really shocked when this call came in. This is not really my reality. I get great opportunities, but a lead in a Broadway show is a little bit more for the movie stars, especially this day and age, so when this came across my desk, I was really shocked, but I knew it was because Cole believed that we shared this very specific brain DNA that is required to play Mary. While I could write you a dissertation on all the things I lack, I know that I have that, whatever that thing is that Cole needed. Yes, come see me be the weirdest possible person to the second mezzanine. [laughs]

Alison Stewart: Do you have a hankering to do more Broadway, to do more stage?

Betty Gilpin: Of course. I mean, it's what made me fall in love with it. When my daughter came backstage this past Sunday, and she realized there was a bowl of candy, I had a flashback to the bowl of Werther's butterscotch candy backstage in 1990 at the Long Wharf Theatre. I was like, "Oh, that is what made me want to become an actor." It started with Werther's in my mom's dressing room and then became-- Oh, and you can gossip backstage while eating the Werther's with the funnest people alive who are all in wig caps and fake lashes who are saying things like, "Well, this stays between the six of us."

Yes, then realizing, "Oh, the greatest fun to be had is on stage." Yes, my love of Werther's gossip and farce will never eclipse, sitting in a trailer and waiting to be called to set to pull at your contemporary sweater sleeves and mumble a consonant at the ground.

Alison Stewart: Well, here's hopes to more roles for you on Broadway. I said it out loud. [crosstalk] I've been speaking with Betty Gilpin. She's currently playing Mary Todd Lincoln in the hilariously unhinged play Oh, Mary! at the Lyceum for two more weeks. Thanks for taking the time, Betty.

Betty Gilpin: Thank you so, so much. Thank you.