This transcript was automatically generated and might contain errors.

[0:06] Gordon Cox: Welcome to Stagecraft, Variety's Theater Podcast.

[0:10] Gordon Cox: Bringing you backstage and behind the scenes with the stars and creators of the hottest shows on Broadway, off Broadway, and beyond.

[0:16] Gordon Cox: I'm your host, Gordon Cox.

[0:19] Gordon Cox: On this episode of Stagecraft, I'm talking to the actress Lois Smith.

[0:23] Gordon Cox: The stage and screen veteran hasn't stopped working since making her Broadway debut in 1952, followed soon thereafter by her film debut in East of Eden.

[0:32] Gordon Cox: She worked with Elia Kazan.

[0:33] Gordon Cox: She originated a role in Tennessee Williams' Orpheus Descending.

[0:37] Gordon Cox: She was nominated for a Tony Award in Steppenwolf Theatre's adaptation of The Grapes of Wrath in 1990, and was nominated again for Buried Child in 1996, but surprisingly, has never won.

[0:48] Gordon Cox: On screen, she's appeared in TV shows like True Blood and Ray Donovan, and in films like Lady Bird and Marjorie Prime.

[0:54] Gordon Cox: Right now she's wrapping up her latest Broadway gig in The Inheritance, playing an important featured role in playwright Matthew Lopez's two-part look at contemporary gay life lived in the long shadow of the AIDS epidemic.

[1:05] Gordon Cox: Smith is in the studio with me to talk about her favorite roles, her biggest influences, and the luxury of a three-show week.

[1:12] Gordon Cox: Hi Lois, thanks for joining me.

[1:14] Lois Smith: Oh, my pleasure.

[1:15] Gordon Cox: So you've been in The Inheritance since late September when it started previews, and now it's wrapping up its run on March 15th.

[1:22] Gordon Cox: What's the experience been like for you?

[1:24] Lois Smith: A very special one.

[1:26] Lois Smith: I first met this piece probably three years ago or so when they were doing workshops of it here.

[1:34] Lois Smith: And I spent some days in the room while it was being developed, and it was so fascinating.

[1:42] Lois Smith: I love the piece.

[1:43] Lois Smith: The part is very interesting, though it's two three-act plays, and I come in in act three of part two.

[1:51] Lois Smith: Yes.

[1:52] Lois Smith: So there's a lot of it.

[1:54] Lois Smith: When you get there, you have a lot to do.

[1:56] Lois Smith: Yes, when I get there, I have a lot to do.

[1:57] Lois Smith: Yeah.

[1:58] Lois Smith: But I was very, very pleased to be part of this because I adored being in the room while it was being made, and watching Stephen Daldry, who has the extremely creative and enormously concentrated presence and a way of working, which is so much fun.

[2:24] Gordon Cox: Oh yeah?

[2:25] Lois Smith: Yeah.

[2:25] Gordon Cox: Tell us about it.

[2:26] Lois Smith: Tell us about what that was one of my questions for later on, but tell us about it.

[2:29] Lois Smith: He'll just come up with he's always on in terms of the material and always living it and thinking it and finding it.

[2:40] Lois Smith: It's a beautiful thing to watch.

[2:44] Lois Smith: That was my beginning with it.

[2:48] Lois Smith: Well, the very beginning was when I was first sent it and told that this man was making a play based on my favorite novel for as long as I can remember.

[3:01] Lois Smith: Oh, yeah, I didn't know what is he going.

[3:03] Lois Smith: What is he doing with my favorite novel?

[3:05] Lois Smith: Well, something quite unusual, as it turned out.

[3:07] Lois Smith: Yeah.

[3:08] Lois Smith: That and that also has been very pleasing.

[3:11] Lois Smith: Do you know the novel how it's you know I had never read it until right before I saw the show in preparation for seeing the show.

[3:18] Lois Smith: It's a good it's a it's lovely to have it inside you, yeah, though it's not necessary.

[3:23] Lois Smith: No, it isn't, but it is actually it does something really interesting with the connection to the novel.

[3:28] Gordon Cox: Yes.

[3:28] Lois Smith: And you what did you how did you respond to that and what a oh they exactly that way, yes, the connections are fascinating.

[3:35] Lois Smith: It took a while to sort them out.

[3:38] Lois Smith: And one doesn't entirely ever do that, or is it the point?

[3:43] Lois Smith: But yeah.

[3:44] Gordon Cox: And what did you respond to?

[3:47] Gordon Cox: How finished was the play by the when you first became acquainted to it?

[3:52] Lois Smith: It really is hard for me to tell.

[3:53] Lois Smith: I know it was not finished.

[3:55] Lois Smith: I know there were many changes made when they first did it in London and some more here.

[4:00] Lois Smith: It's hard for me to know.

[4:02] Gordon Cox: Yeah, and so what do you recall responding to in the role and sort of your character's story?

[4:07] Lois Smith: Oh, she has such she has such a life and experience to speak about, and it's an unusual and it's an unusual situation.

[4:22] Lois Smith: Well, the writing is unusual anyway, but what she's talking about happened you know, 20 years or more ago, and yet it's so immediate.

[4:32] Lois Smith: So it's finding all the truths about this moment of talking about this situation, her story is a lot it's just a lot of fun.

[4:50] Gordon Cox: Were you living in New York during the AIDS crisis?

[4:53] Lois Smith: I was, yes.

[4:54] Gordon Cox: Yeah, yeah and what how did this how did this play and this character sort of chime with your memories of that time?

[5:00] Lois Smith: I had no memories of the kind that this play is dealing with directly, or this character certainly, right?

[5:08] Lois Smith: But you know, like so many people, you the horror and the friends dropping and the shock, continuing shock.

[5:20] Lois Smith: And it's I think he's done an amazing thing to write this play.

[5:25] Lois Smith: The playwright, Matthew Lopez.

[5:26] Lois Smith: The Matthew Lopez.

[5:27] Lois Smith: Indeed, yes.

[5:28] Lois Smith: Something very special.

[5:29] Gordon Cox: Yeah.

[5:31] Lois Smith: And you are the lone female in a cast of men, largely under sort of 30-something.

[5:38] Gordon Cox: What's that dynamic like, do you find?

[5:40] Lois Smith: The loveliest company.

[5:43] Lois Smith: It's absolutely wonderful.

[5:45] Lois Smith: I have the best dressing room.

[5:48] Lois Smith: It's on the only one on the stage floor.

[5:51] Lois Smith: Well, I'm the only girl.

[5:52] Lois Smith: Yeah, and it's all to yourself, right?

[5:54] Lois Smith: Yeah.

[5:54] Lois Smith: I have my own bathroom.

[5:55] Lois Smith: The most convenience.

[5:59] Lois Smith: It doesn't seem fair, but it's very nice.

[6:03] Lois Smith: The worst of it is I have very little I work with two wonderful actors, but the rest of the time I have very little interaction with the rest of the company.

[6:16] Lois Smith: And they are so busy and work so hard, and there isn't anything like a green room backstage, and so I miss having as much to do with these beautiful people as I would like to have.

[6:32] Gordon Cox: Yeah.

[6:33] Gordon Cox: Because you're seen as mostly with those two actors that you mentioned.

[6:36] Lois Smith: Right.

[6:36] Lois Smith: Yeah, yeah.

[6:36] Gordon Cox: And that is in fact, exclusively, right?

[6:39] Lois Smith: Yeah.

[6:40] Lois Smith: Just two people out of this wonderful cast.

[6:43] Gordon Cox: Yeah.

[6:43] Gordon Cox: And so over the six months that you've, or I guess it will be six months by the time you finish this, that this you've been in this run.

[6:51] Gordon Cox: How you were saying just before we turned the mics on that you feel like it's gotten better.

[6:54] Lois Smith: How so?

[6:55] Lois Smith: How has the show changed over the months that you've been doing it?

[6:59] Lois Smith: It's deepened, and I suppose I was thinking particularly about me.

[7:04] Lois Smith: I certainly got better.

[7:05] Lois Smith: I think I had just barely gotten to having a performance when we moved into the theater.

[7:11] Lois Smith: It was a rehearsal of struggle for me.

[7:17] Lois Smith: It was hard.

[7:17] Lois Smith: I was working on a the mock-up set in the rehearsal room was not at all the floor that I work on.

[7:29] Lois Smith: And so I was working on it on it was some sort of a mountain climbing hazard.

[7:33] Gordon Cox: Oh, well it was not relaxing.

[7:35] Lois Smith: You know how our set is, and I'm working on a basically level.

[7:43] Lois Smith: But they didn't build that aspect of it, you know, this the floor changes.

[7:49] Gordon Cox: Right.

[7:49] Lois Smith: And so there were two versions of it, and either version was anything like what I worked on.

[7:53] Gordon Cox: I see.

[7:54] Lois Smith: So I would be on the stage and then I would have an enormous step to another level, which had nothing to do with and it was with reality, right?

[8:03] Gordon Cox: No, it was very hard.

[8:04] Lois Smith: Yeah.

[8:05] Lois Smith: It was hard, it was hard, it was um and it's a hard part, I suppose, maybe.

[8:11] Lois Smith: And there are times when it's not as though I haven't ever before felt, oh my goodness, I'll never get this.

[8:19] Lois Smith: But this time I really did feel, oh my goodness, I'll never get this.

[8:23] Gordon Cox: Do you have a sense of what it is about the part that was the role in particular that was hard for you to get your head around?

[8:29] Lois Smith: I found it in I found it very it wasn't even I kept thinking, I can do this role, what's what's the matter?

[8:36] Lois Smith: I think it was that there was so much detail thrown at me.

[8:41] Lois Smith: And production detail or in the scripts in there.

[8:45] Lois Smith: No, no, no, no, director directorial detail, yeah, yeah.

[8:51] Lois Smith: And making sense of it all and putting it all together and in time was very challenging.

[8:59] Lois Smith: Yeah, very exciting.

[9:00] Lois Smith: I was always interested.

[9:03] Lois Smith: That's nice.

[9:04] Lois Smith: You know, I have been in rehearsals where you think, oh, let me out of here.

[9:07] Lois Smith: But this was of great interest.

[9:11] Lois Smith: And then after we got into the theater and I could actually play it, I got better.

[9:17] Lois Smith: And that I got I knew what I was doing.

[9:23] Lois Smith: So that's been a great joy because that's still happening.

[9:26] Lois Smith: And I love going.

[9:27] Lois Smith: I only get to do it three times a week.

[9:29] Gordon Cox: Yeah, I was gonna say you only you you work three days a week.

[9:32] Lois Smith: Um I think now what's going to happen to me?

[9:35] Lois Smith: This may be this may be the end of me.

[9:38] Lois Smith: How suppose somebody asks me to do eight shows a week.

[9:42] Lois Smith: What am I gonna say?

[9:43] Gordon Cox: Oh right, yeah.

[9:47] Lois Smith: It's hard to imagine at this point.

[9:49] Lois Smith: Yeah, yeah.

[9:49] Lois Smith: Also, I'm a very old person.

[9:51] Lois Smith: So it's that's another reason I have the best floor on the stage the best room on the stage floor.

[9:57] Lois Smith: And I'm the only girl, I'm no older than anybody.

[10:01] Gordon Cox: Yeah.

[10:02] Gordon Cox: Was there a line or a particular character trait in that you found in the monologue and in your development of the character that sort of unlocked her for you?

[10:16] Lois Smith: Um very early, Margaret tells Leo when they just arrived there at the house.

[10:39] Lois Smith: The house, which in Howard's End would be Howard's End.

[10:42] Lois Smith: Right, exactly.

[10:43] Lois Smith: Very important character in the piece.

[10:47] Lois Smith: And there's a tree, a famous, very old tree.

[10:52] Lois Smith: And very, very early in this scene, Margaret describes this tree to the young man she's talking to who's ill.

[11:03] Lois Smith: Doesn't seem at all clear whether he's going to get well, etc.

[11:09] Lois Smith: And in that, and in that in those lines, she talks about the nature of this tree.

[11:19] Lois Smith: It's been here for 400 years.

[11:21] Lois Smith: There are stories about it that go all the way back.

[11:24] Lois Smith: The histories tell stories about the tree and goes back to the colonial days, and it proves that people have come to this house.

[11:34] Lois Smith: Its legend has it that if you eat its bark, you'll cure your toothache or you'll get better.

[11:42] Lois Smith: And that happens very early in the scene, and it seems to me that it's a kind of touchstone of what's it's very important to her.

[11:52] Lois Smith: This place, its healing quality.

[11:55] Lois Smith: She has a new candidate right now.

[11:58] Gordon Cox: Yeah, we should say for people who maybe haven't seen it that she's running what would you call it, a hospice or no, no, but she was present in the in the 80s in the yes, of course.

[12:07] Lois Smith: Right, right, right.

[12:08] Lois Smith: But no, she's not no, this house, she doesn't live there either.

[12:12] Lois Smith: Right.

[12:12] Lois Smith: This belongs to one of the characters in the in the in the it's an important house and it has it has meaning throughout both part one and part two of the play.

[12:23] Lois Smith: Yeah. But for this character, its meaning comes from the time when it was basically a hospice during the 80s and 90s, and she is so in a certain way that is a touchstone, I think, to the person in the house. You've been on stage regularly over the course of your career. You've been around here in New York working in theater for a long time.

[12:24] Lois Smith: Yes, I came to New York when I began in 1952. That was my first job in New York, my first job ever as an actress, and I've lived in New York or near ever since.

[12:24] Gordon Cox: And how has the theater in New York City changed over the years, do you find?

[12:24] Lois Smith: When I began, there were many, many Broadway shows and plays on Broadway every year. I mean many, many. And now there are a few, and then a few more musicals, but that's it. It was a very different scene. Off-Broadway really didn't even exist. It kind of developed in my young days in New York, where there began to be this second kind of smaller productions, sometimes revivals. One of the first really notable ones, which is considered like the start of Off-Off-Broadway, was a revival of one of Tennessee Williams' plays, Summer in Smoke with Geraldine Page.

[14:06] Gordon Cox: Of course, yeah.

[14:18] Lois Smith: And then companies developed, and now we have quite a number of established theaters who have seasons of maybe five plays a season. That became a national new idea when the resident theater movement developed later. I was also part of that. I was in the beginning of the Theater of the Living Arts in Philadelphia in the mid-60s.

[14:30] Gordon Cox: Right.

[14:51] Lois Smith: I remember when that was going on, having the sense that they were all over the country developing these things, and that everybody had the same story. Each city would start out with trying to develop a board of directors, they'd get an artistic director, but no one quite knew how. There were constantly stories about the difficulties, sometimes quite vivid, where the board didn't know what to do, and the audience didn't know what to do. It was very exciting, I must say.

[15:30] Lois Smith: I was with the Theater of the Living Arts for its first three seasons, which then kind of fell apart, but it continued under very different auspices before it fell apart. Many of them didn't fall apart and really grew and still exist. When people come to Broadway, and then maybe they're working on Broadway for the first time and in the New York theater community for the first time, they often say that what they really appreciate is the feeling of community that there is in Broadway.

[15:58] Gordon Cox: Did that exist back when you first started out, and has that changed at all over the years?

[16:04] Lois Smith: You know, for me, it was my very first job. I felt enormously lucky about it. Melvin Douglas was my father, and I played one of three teenage girls in it, in a domestic comedy.

[16:20] Gordon Cox: What was that called?

[16:21] Lois Smith: Time Out for Ginger. At that point, I probably didn't realize what you're talking about, which I certainly do now, the sense of community. I was lucky to enter the community so quickly. Within the first few years I was here, I not only was working on the stage, but there was lots of television drama in New York.

[16:30] Gordon Cox: Yeah.

[16:49] Lois Smith: In a way that's hard to even realize now. There weren't many series; there were beginning to be a few series, but every week there were probably maybe eight, some hour-long, some half-hour-long dramas at play.

[17:06] Gordon Cox: Yeah, these were like standalone stories, right?

[17:08] Lois Smith: Exactly. And based on plays as a rule. It was so exciting. The people, even the crews, they were so exciting because they were doing something they hadn't done before. The equipment was very different. Cameras were huge. They had enormous long cables attached to them, so a camera couldn't cross another camera, so they had to be choreographed the same way the actors did dashing across the sound stage.

[17:35] Gordon Cox: Um, and it was very exciting.

[17:37] Lois Smith: But I started to say I started to work in television. My first television job was a craft theater, was one of them. Based on his, Fielder Cook was the director, and George Roy Hill was the assistant. They would talk about staying up late at night thinking, "What shall we adapt this week?" That sense was really fun.

[18:04] Gordon Cox: Does TV pay better than the way it does now?

[18:08] Lois Smith: Even then it did.

[18:09] Gordon Cox: Oh yes.

[18:10] Lois Smith: The pay scales were very different from what they are now, but yes, even then it was better than that.

[18:20] Gordon Cox: Yeah, yeah.

[18:18] Lois Smith: And then within the same couple of years, I had my first movie, which was notable. I was so lucky to start the way I did. I mean, I'm so fortunate. It meant that I could work all the time, as I don't mean all the time, but really steadily, and make my living as an actor all these years, which is sometimes hard to do. I was able right away to work in both television and film and stage.

[18:47] Gordon Cox: Did you ever think about going off to Hollywood and just being a Hollywood actor?

[18:54] Lois Smith: I never, no, I never had to, and I didn't want to.

[18:58] Gordon Cox: Oh, okay.

[18:59] Lois Smith: So I was lucky. I went there to work, of course, often, but no, I never was tempted to move there.

[19:06] Gordon Cox: And why is that? What do you think?

[19:09] Lois Smith: I like New York and I like to live in New York. I feel a big difference. I did then. I think I probably do still. I mean, the world and I are different after all these many years, but it's a different... I don't mean to romanticize the New York theater, but theater is sort of where I began, and it's where the actors who work basically in theater, if that's where you begin, it's a very different kind of work.

[19:47] Gordon Cox: I mean, of course the seeds are the same, but putting on a play is different from making a film or putting on a television show.

[19:58] Lois Smith: The speed of work, the intention is different.

[20:05] Gordon Cox: Oh, that sounds very odd, isn't it?

[20:10] Lois Smith: Yeah, I was just gonna ask how so.

[20:10] Lois Smith: Well, certainly in television, the intention is to make money, and in the theater, it's not to lose money, but it is a different nature of work. I used to think when I was much younger, "Oh, well, on television, we're skimming the cream off of what we know how to do." You're not actually... the rehearsal process is something that feeds and deepens and grows, you know, something I treasure and like a lot.

[20:56] Gordon Cox: I'll have more with Lois Smith right after the break.

[21:07] Gordon Cox: And now here's more with actress Lois Smith. You mentioned coming to New York in the early 50s. How did you first find acting, and when did you decide that you were going to pursue it professionally?

[21:19] Lois Smith: When I was a very small child, the youngest of six children, my father, and this was in Kansas to start with, and later in Seattle, he wanted to put plays on in the church. He had taken acting and directing courses in night school, which I knew nothing about at the time.

[21:38] Lois Smith: I still will never know much about it. He had no experience; he worked for the telephone company. He almost never went to the movies. It was the damnedest thing. But I was very little, and I went with him, and that's clearly how it started. I would be at rehearsal, and I would learn all the lines just by being there. If there was anything for me to do, I would do it. That's clearly how it started.

[22:08] Lois Smith: Then I always did what there was to do. I happened, when we lived in Seattle, to go to a high school that had a drama department, not just an English department. So I had far more. As it developed, I think what happened is I realized I could do this, and that any level I got to, I would rise to the top. I began to have not only a pleasure in it but a confidence in it.

[22:38] Lois Smith: I was given a little scholarship to the University of Washington, which had a notable drama department when I was finishing high school. It was a state university, and I lived there. It was extremely inexpensive, but still, I was just, "Here you are, you can go to the university." So I did and went to the drama department there, and that's where it began to be more training, where it began to be all the things I had just wanted to do were now, "Oh yes, people actually do this," you know, and work at it. That was a great pleasure.

[23:23] Lois Smith: I went from there, from a couple of years at that, where there was an amazing kind of experience in that there were two theaters on campus that played six nights a week. Every play played six weeks, six nights a week to a paying audience. It was unheard of; I've never heard of any. It was the kind of experience that put me in very good stead to begin.

[23:46] Gordon Cox: And then was it in New York that you studied with Lee Strasberg?

[23:49] Lois Smith: Yeah.

[23:50] Gordon Cox: Yes, at the Actor Studio.

[23:51] Lois Smith: Yeah, and what was that like? What were the biggest lessons for you during that time in terms of shaping your craft?

[24:00] Lois Smith: The kind of training, the tactical sense... I had studied the Stanislavski method a bit while I was at the University of Washington. I had a teacher there who had been in New York early on when the Russians came over and sort of changed the face of theater for us and for many.

[24:29] Lois Smith: So I had had some training in college classes and that so it wasn't new new to me. And at the Actors' Studio, I think I learned very much about how to when you're not on, that is when you're not performing that day and you're responding. I learned how to see, how to listen to what the technique was, which is often actually not followed, it seems to me, but to see what you're shown, to see what the person has to say about it at the actor performing, and then to learn from that for oneself. And I found it hugely informative, I guess, learning to both take responsibility for being up there to being on, and what the task is, and I learned it partly by watching others and learning to incorporate that. I think I still pay attention to that already without thinking about it, you know. And you worked with Elia Kazan as well, another great big director, yes, in my first movie, yeah.

[25:57] Gordon Cox: In your first film, did he impart was there any lesson that you particularly learned working with him in terms of he was such an actor's director that he had a very energetic and vivid way of directing, of asking for very specific things, you know. I when I watched that scene in East of Eden, I'm just amazed at how beautifully directed it is. It's so staged and it's just what a lucky beginning. I think who do you consider sort of the biggest influences on your career in terms of shaping who you are and how you work?

[26:51] Lois Smith: Oh gosh. Oh I guess I guess I guess my especially the one teacher, Dan Harrington at the University of Washington, and the fact that I worked so much that it actually performed in plays and not just like a night or two, but did a little run of each play there at the University of Washington. There at the University of Washington. And I think I still feel that way. That the main thing each time is to do it. And each one you learn that there is a way they go, a pattern, but each one is entirely separate. And that's endlessly exciting and sometimes frightening.

[27:46] Gordon Cox: What in your more recent work, what do you consider your sort of most memorable projects? What has really sort of stood out for you?

[27:54] Lois Smith: Oh I did The Trip to Bountiful, a beautiful play of Horton Foote's. Um, about I don't know, maybe what is it, 20 years ago? I was gonna say 15. I think it was 2005. Yes, I think you're right. Yes, I think it's 15 years ago. And a beautiful production, yeah. That was a very satisfying and I loved everything about it, and I loved the way it was directed. I love the way it grew. I love the pleasure of who directed that I forgot.

[28:31] Gordon Cox: Harris Eulen.

[28:32] Lois Smith: Oh yeah, okay, sure. And he came up with a way the first time Harris and I knew each other and had worked together, both as actors and he had directed me before, but when we first spoke about the play, and he mentioned his idea of how it never stopped once the trip began. And then it was designed so that you know originally it was a three-act play with many different sets and now the different scenes were still there, but each one moved into without and a week a couple of weeks into rehearsal, I think Horton said, you know, we could do it without an intermission. It had been a three-act play in the 50s, isn't that amazing? And we did. He did some cutting and it was just thrilling.

[29:30] Lois Smith: Yeah. And it was probably maybe there are some of the probably the most satisfying that one. There are some others, The Grapes of Wrath, which was the first thing I did with the Steppenwolf Company. Yeah, right. We did it, Steppenwolf, and then at La Jolla, and then in London, where we were part of an international festival, and then on Broadway. And then here, yeah. And that was also a most remarkable thing. You don't usually get three different productions, each one re-rehearsed and building on the one before. So that's a very special joy. And again, a wonderful piece of work, a wonderful company. I was at that point just falling in love with the Steppenwolf Company. That was my first working with them. Buried Child, which I also did with them, and Gary Sinise directed it.

[29:36] Gordon Cox: Yeah.

[29:36] Lois Smith: Frank Galati directed The Grapes of Wrath and adapted it. Yeah. And then Gary did a remarkable job with Buried Child, I thought that production with James Gammon and so those were very special. And then recently, I really loved doing Marjorie Prime, Jordan Harrison's play at Playwrights Horizons, and then made a film of it.

[30:41] Gordon Cox: And then, yeah, what was it like to then make a film about the thing?

[30:44] Lois Smith: Oh, that was pretty wild. It took a while to incorporate what was happening because I love the play and the film, which I love also. Yeah, but it was so different that there were, yeah, they're two very different things, right? And my character probably changed less than anything else. And so I what I didn't feel like I was suddenly asked to do something really very different.

[31:09] Gordon Cox: Right.

[31:09] Lois Smith: And the director, Michael Almereyda, is an old friend, and we've worked together.

[31:13] Gordon Cox: Oh, yeah, I didn't know that, yeah.

[31:14] Lois Smith: Very happily. And you actually, you uh recent the new Wes Anderson film you have a role in. Is that right?

[31:23] Gordon Cox: What he seems, but oh as an observer, you feel like he must be this like crazy micromanaging, like super precise director. Is he that way to work with it?

[31:34] Lois Smith: That's part of it, and also it's as relaxed, as inclusive, as comfortable and much fun as you can imagine.

[31:53] Gordon Cox: What felt like to you the role that you were born to play?

[31:57] Lois Smith: Ooh. Um, I suppose early on when I this probably happened in college. I don't think I had read The Seagull before that, but The Seagull became the favorite play, which and I suppose Nina, ah, you know, I mean how many actresses, young actresses must feel that way. Um and I worked on it in class, I've worked on it in and then later I was once auditioned to play Masha in the production at the Guthrie, directed by Luchin Pintalia, the remarkable Romanian director. This was quite a while ago, and I had worked at some kind of a workshop that had been done up at the O'Neill with a couple of English teachers, and one of the things I worked on was, you know the, yeah so I asked Luchin if I could audition for Arkadina. He said, No, I love your Masha. That's it, but he agreed, and then he gave me the part. So I got to play Arkadina.

[33:13] Gordon Cox: Wow.

[33:14] Lois Smith: I never played Nina. I've never played Masha, which I also love, but I did get to play Arkadina. David Hyde Pierce was my son, my Constantine, yes.

[33:26] Gordon Cox: So was there a role that got away? Is there a part that you thought, oh, that you think that's the part that got away?

[33:34] Lois Smith: Oh. Hmm. Well, I think there's probably just lots and lots. And especially Shakespeare, because I've had very little Shakespeare. So I never played Juliet except in class, you know, and The Inheritance is closing on March 15th. Do you have what's on your plate after that? Do you know yet?

[33:53] Lois Smith: I don't know yet. No. Yeah. And I actually I don't mind. I've been very busy. I had a very busy year even before this. And it seems like you as you mentioned, theater is a place that you always come back to. How do you think of the how do you how have you thought of your career in terms of how theater and film and TV all fit together?

[34:17] Lois Smith: Oh, you know, given the world I live in and the place I live in, I've just been so lucky that I've been able to do them all with and you know, at first early on I would get little movie parts, and that was fine. But then I've had some lovely ones as well.

[34:39] Gordon Cox: Right.

[34:39] Lois Smith: And so that's nice. And in television, I haven't ever well, True Blood was a series, although I came to a terrible end in the first series.

[34:48] Gordon Cox: You sure did, yeah.

[34:49] Lois Smith: So I didn't so I didn't play it for I haven't ever wanted to do one for a long, long time. Right. So I've done some, you know part guest stars that sometimes they go on for a little while, sometimes it's a single one. Right. And sometimes they're wonderful. I was given a scene in The Americans. It must be like, I don't know, maybe what, seven, eight years ago, something like that. And when I saw it, I thought, oh, they're not always that good. The writing was such it was just a wonderful scene. And I'm very glad I got to do that. I had a conflict reshooting a movie and it waited for me so I got to do it and I loved doing it and thought it was thought we had really done it right both the writer and me and everybody involved. So that was a pleasure sometimes it can be very very good indeed.

[35:46] Gordon Cox: Right. Yeah well it sounds like even though you don't know exactly what's next for you it sounds like you'll be back on stage sometimes oh who knows maybe maybe you know maybe maybe playing a Broadway show three nights a week is the epitome and how am I ever gonna match that for satisfaction that was Lois Smith now appearing in The Inheritance which finishes its Broadway run at the Ethel Barrymore Theater on March 15th.

[36:18] Gordon Cox: If you like what you're hearing on this and other episodes of Stagecraft you can rate and review us on Apple Podcasts and you can subscribe and find past episodes there on Spotify on the Broadway Podcast Network and on all the other pod places. And if you've got feedback find me on Twitter at G Cox Variety. I'll be back next week with another new episode. Until then see you at the theater.