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[0:00] Allison Janney: Hi, this is Allison Janney and you're listening to And The Award Goes To...

[0:08] Ilana Levine: Hey everyone, this week is a very special episode of And The Award Goes To... I am so thrilled to have multi-award winning, but today we are focusing on her Oscar. Welcome Allison Janney to the podcast. And the Oscar goes to... Allison Janney.

[0:33] Allison Janney: This is the first Oscar and nomination for Allison Janney.

[0:51] Allison Janney: I did it all by myself. Okay, nothing further, nothing further from the truth. Thank you to the Academy. My fellow nominees, you represent everything that is good and right and human about this profession. You are all extraordinary. Stephen Rogers, look what you did. Look what you did. You're a brilliant writer. Thank you for the gift of LaVonna. I did not see this coming. You did. You give new meaning to the word friend. To my I, Tonya family, the magnificent Margot Robbie, the fearless Craig Gillespie, a cast and crew and bird that elevated my work. To Tom and Brian, Neon, 30 West, my team, Janney, Leslie Siebert, Chris Henze, Ilana Rice, Karen Sanfilippo. We've been together a long time. Thank you for all of your work.

Joanne Woodward, I want to thank you for your encouragement and generosity that gave me the confidence to think I could pursue a career in acting. To my mother and father, Jay, my family, my family of friends, the staff at GATA. You know who you are. I love you. And this is for Hal. You're always in my heart. Thank you very much.

[2:14] Allison Janney: I remember pretty much every moment of that night and that moment. So I don't have to relive it. So without re-listening to it right now or re-watching it, when you say I remember every moment of that night, let's just start with the brilliant first line that you used in the speech, which was, do you recall? Of course I do. I did it all by myself.

[2:43] Allison Janney: Yes. And that line, actually, everyone who knows me and knows Stephen Rogers, who wrote I, Tonya, thinks that it's a very Stephen Rogers line. And it wasn't. My friend, Nick Bakai, who I went to Kenyon College with, who's a dear old friend, and he was one of the writers on the mom program I was doing. And he gave that to me as an opener to say, in case I won. And I was so, I remember, I wasn't 100% sure I was going to win, even though everyone says I was crazy. There was everything up to there. I had won, and it was an amazing run I was on. But I thought, it's never a sure thing. It's never a sure thing. So when they called my name, it was a mixture of relief. Because all the people that were involved in getting me to this moment, which makes that opening line so funny, because there's so many people invested in me doing this.

My publicist, my agent, my manager, all my entire family, all my friends, everyone was saying, of course you're going to win. I just had this fear that it was not going to be me, and I was going to let them all down. So when they said my name, it was just a sigh of like, oh my God, thank God. Oh my God, it was more like a relief that I didn't have to deal with everybody feeling that awful, awkward feeling after. I don't know. It was just more a feeling of relief, and the joy and everything came later. It was relief and being overwhelmed and then walking up those stairs. Was I going to say that line? Am I going to make it work? I don't know. This is such a room I'm not familiar with. I mean, I'm familiar with a lot of the people in the room, but not this event and the importance of it and everything.

And then, since then, I think about what I should have done. What I should have done, as every actor does, I should have really started to walk off the stage. But people not knowing me as well, they might not have gotten it as well as I just stood there. So I think I made the right choice, but also that year, there was an award for the shortest speech ever, and it was some like jet ski thing or something like that. And I thought, well, do I go for the jet ski and just say I did it all by myself and walk off? It would be certainly the most memorable Oscar speech. I mean, it would go down as one of the great speeches because it would be so funny and so unexpected. But I couldn't do that because I had to thank so many people.

And as it was, I didn't thank enough people. It's such a tricky thing to try to get everyone in as many as you can but you always leave feeling like you didn't leave it all out there. You forgot someone and my God, my God. I love that every time you thank Alana, and every time you win something or acknowledge the people in your life, the unbelievable number of calls I get each time you win is really, really satisfying. So thank you.

[5:55] Allison Janney: Thank you. I get flowers. I get like, can you help me win an Oscar? I'm like, absolutely. Of course I can. What do you need? I think about, you know, we're talking about my sister Alana, who is that's why she's getting all this.

[6:11] Ilana Levine: Your assistant Alana Levine. Yeah, you have two Alanas in your life that love you and support you tremendously. When I think back to I, Tonya, and I think about the character that you play, when you mentioned Stephen Rogers moments ago about people thinking the screenwriter also wrote your opening acceptance Oscar speech line, that would have been on brand for him. But I think it's a pretty remarkable story that someone who's known and loved you for so long wrote this part for you and wouldn't let anyone else do it. And so can you talk a little bit, I know it's been a few years since the I, Tonya film was front and center in your life, but if you can harken back to sort of how it came to you and how somehow this character who was so different from anything you'd ever played before and so opposite of you as a human being, how it came to you? And what made you decide to say yes?

[7:10] Allison Janney: Well, Stephen Rogers and I, of course, we went to the Neighborhood Playhouse together. So we and we've been friends for ever since then, that was 1982. So we've been friends for quite a long time. And he told me he was writing a movie about Tanya Harding, and he knew of my past figure skating life. And he told me when he started writing it, that he was going to write a part for me, and I was going to wear a fur coat and have a parrot on my shoulder. And I just started laughing. And I was like, you know, I thought, how can that be? I can't even imagine sounds like, you know, sounds like a character that I would want to play. I can't wait to see who she is. And he's like, it's Tanya's mother, and blah, blah, blah.

So he just kept telling me about it. But I never saw a script for, you know, he, while he was writing, he didn't send me anything. He just said, this is going to be this is going to be such a great part for you. You're going to love this. It's so funny. And he sent me a picture of her. And that's when I really got excited. When I saw her visually, I thought, Oh, my God, oh, my God, can I is that is that? Who is that? Who does that? I want to find out more about this woman. And I don't understand how you look like that. What is that about? How do you? How do you? How does that woman get up in the morning? Why does she feel that? Why the parrot? What that would all of it was just such a mystery to me.

And so much fun. And then, and then of course, he wrote it and sent it to me. And it was, you know, it was hilarious. But I was like, I want to be in it more write a bigger part for me. I want to have more to do in it. And so he kept putting putting little things in like, you know, I just love that scene of like, you know, where I can't even remember halfway through the three quarters. I'm like, where the fuck what the fuck happened to my story? Yeah, yeah, she does. Yeah, she does. Like that that kept me kind of in the loop in the in the film, but and then, you know, he wrote it and was going to do it. And I, I was doing mom at the time. And then, and then I also had committed to starting rehearsals for six degrees of separation with our dear friend, john.

Yeah. So I was starting rehearsals for a Broadway play, I was doing mom. And then I, Tonya was being filmed in Atlanta. So it was kind of a miracle that I even did the movie because I said to Steven, I didn't think it was going to be possible. I said, I'm doing too many things, honey, I think you're gonna have to go with somebody else. I can't I'm doing rehearsing for a play and doing mom. I don't I don't know. I thought I can get to Atlanta do this. And he said, We're not doing without you. And I think at some point, I felt like, Oh, just do it without me. I can't I'm just I'm too tired. I can't do it. Just go on. I love you. Thank you for writing this part for me. Someone else is gonna he's like, No, we're doing it with you.

And, and the fact that they did is a frickin miracle because the producer of six degrees separation, the producers of mom and the producers of I, Tonya all had to come together and agree to letting me go for basically it was eight.

[10:38] Allison Janney: But in this scene she's eating, it's a restaurant, you're smoking, this kitchen, it's such a small set. The crew, you're smoking like I was gonna smoke in every single scene and I really smoked. I chose more cigarettes for Lavona because they were those brown long cigarettes and I thought, make a statement. Yeah, yeah, they're the only ones they couldn't make fake marshmallow stuff, so they were real cigarettes I was smoking. And it was just, you know, I just wanted to scrape my tongue at the end of every scene, it was so disgusting. But the final address to camera with the bird, the bird wrangler was like, oh no, no, no, you can't smoke with the bird. And we were all like, oh my god, we didn't think about that, of course we can't smoke with the bird there.

And I just said, what if I said to Craig, what if we are the prop guy? I think I said, do you have one of those, you know, like she has emphysema now and she has to have an oxygen, what are those things you put in your nose? And he said, oh yeah, I like, I said oxygen. He said, I've got a cannula and an oxygen tank. I said, look, get it, bring it, get it off the truck, get it in here. And it was perfect, so I had that and the oxygen tank next to me and the bird. It was the perfect solution. I felt so proud of myself for that. But my god, what an experience that was. Craig Gillespie was so much fun to work with, I love that man. And Margo, and oh my god, I mean it was, and having Stephen Rogers there with me, you know, in the trailer before every scene, I was like, should I say that?

Give me something else that I could say in case she does this or whatever, you know, having him right there just helped me through everything. And I don't know, it was eight days, it's just eight days. Fun moment, I know, magic, eight days of fun, unbelievable. And all of the work that goes into that from the beginning of Stephen Rogers' idea to me getting up on that stage saying I did it all by myself is, oh my god, it's just, it's just, it's just the, you know, whatever, you know what I'm saying? It's, it couldn't be less true. A million people made that possible for me. I should have thanked all those producers, although it was, it was, well, I think the work, I think the work is how you thanked all those people by like helping this thing that they worked so hard to make, by elevating it. I mean, you and Margo together, everyone's, Sebastian Stan, I mean, it really was a really uniquely gifted group of people on every side of that project, behind the camera, in front of the camera.

[14:12] Ilana Levine: I feel like, you know, one of the things we've talked about before is sort of how do you access a character that in so many ways is so different from you? And you said something really interesting to me, and I wonder if you would share it here, which was the mean, mean things that Lavona said to her daughter, Tanya Harding. You once talked to me about how what you did for that was actually sort of, I'm going to use the word pretend, which is not an acting term, but you know the term I used when I was six about acting, that you were talking to yourself, right? Like the sort of a little bit about the ways in which we can treat ourselves really badly. And is that how you thought about it, sort of accessing kind of the worst possible things to say to somebody else?

[15:08] Allison Janney: Well, yeah, because when you start working on a film, and I had to immediately have this relationship with Margo Robbie, who I just met and was totally intimidated by her in every way, her beauty, my everything. She was like, my god, I had to be mean to this woman. And I had to have that instant relationship with her that you do when you're acting in films and you don't often get time to rehearse, and you only have eight days to film. So I found that the way I could talk to her and be mean to her was to pretend that I was talking to myself. I was pretending I was talking to the part of myself that, that let me get this right. It's like if I was, I used to work with Phil Stutz, and I was just watching Jonah Hill's movie about him because he's such a great therapist, and I loved that man.

And he talked about the shadow, and it's sort of like my shadow, or that was X, it was the X part of me talking to myself like, you're lousy, you don't work hard enough, you're an embarrassment to the family, you are so, you know, it's just so easy. We all are judgmental and mean to ourselves, I think to some degree. And I just had to pull that up, which was fairly easy for me because I'm pretty hard on myself and try not to be. It's such a daily struggle to just edit that part of me and say, hey, back off, back off, back off. But for Lavona, I let it come out, I let it come out, and it made me feel absolutely confident as hell talking to Margo, telling her to fuck off or whatever I was telling her to do, throw a knife at her.

Like, I was like, I also feel like that costume, that wig, those glasses, the bird, the coat, all of her things, talk about like permission to escape completely into this other human skin. It's so freeing, it's so liberating to have the old age I had put on and everything. I didn't have to worry about what I looked like, I didn't care. It was like, I, it was just, it was very free and fun to play someone like that. I didn't have to worry about my jowls or anything. I was like, bring on vanity, just character.

[17:30] Ilana Levine: You had won so many awards before for The West Wing, and I mean Emmys and Golden Globes and Critics' Choice and the BAFTA. What did it mean to you to win the Oscar?

[17:41] Allison Janney: Well, that's, I mean, that's the ultimate award that you can win as an actor in my mind. It's something that I actually, I mean, I always dreamed of but never thought it was really, as my career went on, I thought, I don't know if that's gonna happen, gosh. You know, it was filling, but then I thought, I'm always sort of a late bloomer, but I didn't expect it to be I, Tonya. Even after doing it, I had a great time, but I never thought that that would be the result of that movie, that work. So I sure, I think it's better too that I didn't. I think if you go into something thinking this is going to be my Oscar role, I don't know, there's something that would be very, a lot of pressure to put on yourself going into a project thinking that. I don't know, for me it would be. So I didn't even, it wasn't even in my mind that that was a possibility. So that it happened was just a dream come true, really.

[18:53] Ilana Levine: When did it hit you that you actually won?

[18:56] Allison Janney: I think, I always think is that Faye Dunaway shot that famous picture of her after she's won her Oscar out by the pool with the magazines around. She's just sitting there with a couple, which is like, what just happened? I think it wasn't even the next day because I had to do this, I had to go to work on Mom, the show. I had to do a morning show at 6 a.m. and then went to Mom to work, and I was exhausted the day after, after I won. The next day when I woke up and I didn't have to go to work, then I just sat there in my kitchen and looked at it and just was like, oh my god, oh my god, I can't, I just, and then this rush of joy and happiness came over me of what had happened. And I got to really enjoy it because it really is a, you have to work hard to get it, going to everything and, you know, going to film festivals and going here and there and Q&As, and there's a lot of campaigning. You really do campaign for that.

[20:14] Ilana Levine: Anyone who knows you knows that literally like Lavona Harding is the polar opposite human being on this planet. You, Allison Janney, are all things warmth and generosity and all about holding people up and making them feel like the best selves that they can be in your presence. I know I have been the recipient of so much love and you're shining your light on me in my life. And I think it goes without saying that that night, that win was just an extraordinary thing for everyone who loves you because no one has more talent than you, but no one works harder than you at your craft. And everything that you make as an artist is just so filled with truth and integrity, and I am in awe of you and love you very much. So thank you for being on And the Award Goes To. You're a national treasure.

[21:08] Allison Janney: I love you too.