Lily Tomlin Breaks Down Her Career, from '9 to 5' to 'Grace and Frankie'

Well, I didn't think of myself as doing comedy.

I thought of it as doing just representing life,

like I witnessed in the old apartment house where I grew up.

There were 40 apartments,

and I would go to every apartment and hang out

and do whatever they were doing.

Talk the way they talked,

do whatever they did,

so that I could hang around.

[upbeat jazz music]

Hi, I'm Lily Tomlin,

and this is a timeline of my career.

[upbeat jazz music]

A gracious hello.

Have I reached the party to whom I am speaking?

Is this General Motors?

Hi, General. [audience laughing]

How's everything coming again? [audience laughs]

Tell me, how's Mrs. Motors? [audience laughs]

I was in New York doing a music scene on ABC,

and the offer came in to go on Laugh-In.

I didn't really want to be on Laugh-In.

I didn't want to do anything on television.

I wanted to be in the theater.

So I went and met with George,

and I loved him so much, he was so great.

And he seemed to understand what I was doing

or what I liked to do,

and he hired me.

Last Thursday, Miss Picket wet the bed.

And we thought she'd outgrowed that.

When I first pitched Edith Ann to the writers

and to the host staff,

they didn't really like her.

They thought she was too bratty.

And so I had to do her

out of a refrigerator box

the first couple of weeks.

And then she caught on.

I was touring with Dan and Dick from Laugh-In

and we were staying at a Del Webb.

And I went down in the lobby,

and there was a little girl there.

She was about four years old.

She had a big toy snake, and she said,

My snake needs to take a bath. [blows raspberry]

And anything that ended with a T-H, she blew a raspberry.

She'd say,

We have to go visit my Aunt Ruth. [blows raspberry]

I lifted that raspberry from that kid.

And that's the truth. [blows raspberry]

You could say I, you could say love you.

I love you?

Uh huh. Or you could just say I'm happy I met you.

Bob Altman and I had the same agent and one day,

Altman called me on the phone and he said,

I want you to do this part in Nashville.

And I said, why do you think I should play this part?

I said, I could play any part in this.

And I thought a lot of the other parts were much

more interesting, but when I got down there, I saw,

I watched all the other actors come in,

and I thought, I must be more like Linnea than I realized.

We were only in the movie maybe five or six minutes,

each actor, because there were so many of us.

My parents were southern, they were from Kentucky,

so I had a lot of trouble reconciling

that my character sang in a black church and all that stuff,

without any social pressure.

This is a long time ago.

This is 1975 or so.

I came to understand that they thought

because I had deaf children,

I identified with the disenfranchised.

That gave me a great insight into the role.

[Interviewer] What did that feel like when you

got the nomination?

Well, I was elated, you know,

it was my first movie.

I had so little screen time and I thought it was,

one of those, just a fluke, but I was grateful for it.

How can you smoke those fast?

Let me have a drag.

I'll tell you what I'm talking about.

I'm no girl, I'm a woman.

I am your employee.

And as such, I expect to be treated equally

with a little dignity and a little respect.

I was one of the three that was known to do comedy.

And I took exception.

I didn't think a lot of the lines were that funny.

I adored Colin because he'd written the screenplay

for Harold and Maude, and I thought that was divine.

Of course, the first day I wanted to get out of it.

I thought I was terrible.

I'm talking to birds that aren't there

and a spoon that's in the air and all that stuff.

Then the second day I saw the dailies

and I thought I was pretty good.

So I said, I'm back in.

Anyway, it was just craziness.

I smoked a marijuana cigarette at a party once.

I could never figure out what the big deal was.

Well I was a huge fan of hers.

I rocked a klute hairdo for a couple of years.

So I was very excited when she came to see my show

at the Ahmanson in December '79 or something.

And then the movie came out in December of '80.

We did not know the movie was gonna be such a sensation.

Violet, where are you going?

I'm gonna get drunk.

'Atta girl.

[screaming]

Whoa, whoa whoa!

[screaming]

Whoa!

And that was fun to do.

We played mismatched twins,

and they'd have to lock the camera down

and then do it with our doubles.

We'd have to go and change clothes and all that stuff.

They'd say, come on, hurry up. [smacks hands]

You gotta get back here faster.

I said, well, give us a cash incentive,

give us like 10 bucks.

Whichever one of us gets back the first, we get $10.

I said that would be enough to stimulate us

to hustle it a bit.

[Interviewer] Did they give you the $10?

No, they thought I was kidding around.

Oh, you've seen too many movies.

You get back, you just get back.

Oh yeah, that was great.

I got that bracelet, they put it in my costumes,

and I saw that bracelet and a friend of mine was there,

and I said, look this, and she said,

it's like a rattlesnake.

And a snake figured prominently into my character

because I was from the south.

And I was like, kind of, you know, did some snake handling

but they never really spoke of it [laughing].

But I carried a Bible and all that stuff so,

I'd shake that bracelet and I'd shh-shh, I know.

And you know, they didn't want me to do that.

The producers, I was so mad at them.

I said, one more take, just let me do it once.

There is no such thing as pod people, is there?

You're not my sister!

I am now creative consultant

to these aliens from outer space.

They're a kind of cosmic fact-finding committee.

Amongst other projects, they've been searching all over

for signs of intelligent life.

It's a lot trickier than it sounds.

My partner, Jane Wagner, wrote it.

That's how it came to me [laughing].

I was touring all the time doing shows, one-nighters,

and I didn't want to do them.

I said, if I could only stay in town a little longer

because I'd get a great review and I'd have it,

I'd be leaving that morning.

I'd be reading it in the airport.

Oh my God [mumbling] and I'd take off.

So I decided to go to Broadway and legitimize myself,

and that was a huge hit.

[bus horn beeping]

Seat belts, everyone!

Please let this be a normal field trip.

With the Frizz'? No way!

They called me from Scholastic.

And they offered me that job.

And I said, oh God, I'm not good at any kind of voiceover.

If I'm not in the moment doing something,

I don't think it works.

So I said, I'm gonna send you a tape

and see if you think it's okay,

'cause I didn't want to get a job that they're not happy

with it when they were offering me the job,

they would get stuck with me

in the sound recording room, you know?

And so that was fun, and I was very happy I did it

because it was just wonderful to do a woman science teacher

and to do science in general and a teaching tape like that,

which was highly esteemed by readers

and kids, and people used to drag their kids.

They'd say, Oh Miss Frizzle, wait a second.

And they'd bring the kid about like five or six years old,

and they'd look at me,

and I don't look anything like Miss Frizzle.

And then they'd get behind their parents' leg

and they'd hide them.

It's sulfuric acid.

Sulfuric acid?

Mm hmm, it's a deadly poison.

People in our family have had small children

at the time and they would sit

in the living room with me and they'd see,

Miss Frizzle would come on and they'd listen to it,

and they'd look at me and they'd look back and they'd say,

Now you say it.

[laughing]

It was hard getting notoriety

for my deeply felt role as Miss Frizzle.

Up, up, and away!

[Josh] I'm going in, okay?

[Deborah] Hey Josh, no.

I'm sorry?

It's the senior staff meeting.

I'm senior staff.

You don't have your briefing memo.

How do you know I don't have it?

I'm sorry. Do you have it?

No.

Catherine was a friend of mine,

I met her on Murphy Brown.

She came in as one of Murphy's secretaries kind of thing,

like the phone would be ringing and Murphy would say

Are you gonna answer that?

And she says Does it look like I'm gonna answer it?

And so she was real cheeky and wonderful.

And then she got killed on West Wing.

They didn't replace her for a whole year.

And then they replaced her with me,

and that was great fun.

Everyone who loved it, I mean, we just hated it

that Jed Bartlet was not our president.

I guess Bush was our president at the time,

George W., but you wanted Jed Bartlet to be your president.

And when we had to give the Oval Office

up to Jimmy Smits and his team,

I was crying like a fire hydrant.

And I had to go off the set and come back.

And I felt like it was so real

that I was turning over that office

to that girl that worked for Jimmy Smits,

and I just wanted to choke her.

[laughing]

It was great to be on that show, it was wonderful.

That's a fair point,

and next time I'm gonna remember the memo.

I'm confident you will

'cause you're gonna remember it this time too.

You want me to go back to my office and get it?

I do.

There's nothing too small.

You know when police find the slightest bit

of DNA and build a case on it?

If we might see you floss or masturbate,

that could be the key to your entire reality.

So I'm hiring you to spy on me?

That's right.

It was great. It was fun.

It was outrageous.

Of course, a lot of other stuff happened

on that set that was outrageous.

I mean I adore David O. Russell,

he's the director and the writer.

And he could really do no wrong as far as I was concerned,

although he did plenty that was bad.

And he misbehaved, I mean he would jump rope outside

on the set in his underwear and just a load of stuff.

He was always up to some business

and he and I got into a big fight at one point.

It went viral on the internet

but that was early in the internet.

I was doing an interview

with the Miami paper at one point,

and they said, well, what do you think of the video?

I said, I don't know what video do you mean?

[laughing]

And I that's how I found out about it

but it didn't bother me that much.

I mean, things happen on the set, you know,

and all my friends were saying,

You're not gonna work with him again, are you?

I said, In a heartbeat.

What is this, some kind of shake down?

I need water.

You cannot drive until

you get your license renewed, ma'am.

Oh, come on, we're like six blocks

from the guy we're stalking.

No, no, no. You shouldn't tell me that.

[window whirring]

Someone asked me what my favorite episode was

and I said the first and the last

because the first was just so formative

and I had a great moment at the end

of it when we're having the peyote ritual at the beach.

And I was crying kind of silently.

And Jane said to me, Why couldn't you,

why aren't you mad at your husband?

And I said, I'm not mad, I'm heartbroken.

So I just knew in that moment

that there was more to the series

than we had any idea,

and fast forward seven seasons

to this last episode, it's just so wonderful.

And that sequence was filmed so richly

and so tenderly and funny

and it was everything we had hoped for to end the series

and to have Dolly with us was great.

[jazz music]

You just play for the medium.

You know, even in the theater,

you don't play it that broadly

because you want the words to carry it.

And so the words are there

and they're that solid and beautiful for the character.

Most comedians, if you speak to them about it they say,

it's just another point on the continuum.

You play, we have comedy here,

you could play it as broadly as the material

and the style allows and drama here.

You know,

it's just how it is.