Everybody's Mom with Sharon Lawrence • EP 809

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Hello everyone, guys, it's such.

An exciting episode today. It's season eight episode nine, between Amazing Grace and Raising Hell, which aired November sixteenth, twenty ten. Are incredible Thanksgiving episode directed by Bethany joy Lenz.

Hello, thank you very much.

I freaking love this episode. Joy. Do you want to tell our friends at home what it's about?

Yes?

This is the Thanksgiving episode of season eight. It is uh, it's the whole gang ends up at Nathan and Haley's house to spend Thanksgiving with their friends and non friend friends and family and people they wish weren't family, and all of just.

The most fun. You crushed it.

Thank you, and Nikki Shfflbeine wrote it. She did a great job too.

Because this episode is such a special one. It's not even just the three of us who get to walk down memory Lane. We have a friend coming to join us today. Producers, will you bring her in?

Who could it be?

Who could it be? Dun Dun, dun dun.

I saw her face for.

Friends, family, listeners, the myth, the legend, the icon. As Rob Buckley just said, the National Treasure Sharon Lawrence is here with us today.

Welcome.

I am so excited to see you all together. It's very rare that in my life I've been in the same room with all of you. As a matter of fact, I'm not even sure it's happened even on One Tree Hill.

No on this episode.

In this episode, did well were you were briefly though?

That's very very very briefly.

But you must have been sitting at another Thanksgiving table because.

You had a wound.

You you had been you were injuredewing play football.

He was injured.

He was injured from being shot.

Yes, I had been shot.

And then Clay. I mean we're jumping ahead, but when Clay and Quinn go home, when you think about the number of days and enjoy I wonder if you remember how many days we were in the Nathan and Haley House to do Thanksgiving dinner because obviously it was a lot of days. Yeah, Rob, you probably were there for two days. You probably had a real nice schedule on this episode.

I had forgotten how the episode played out, and so when Quinn shows up and she's like, let's get out of here, I was like, oh, did I have a light episode?

Hey?

Is it just going to be one seat in the bedroom after this?

For me?

And it was?

It was congratulations, sir, Thank.

You everyone, Thank you line producer Joy. You did such a good job with this episode. It was so fun to watch. It was so damn funny. You had so many spinning plates, like this episode was jam packed. But I just I want to start by just saying like you did an incredible job with it.

Yes, thank you so much. I'm really I loved getting this episode put on my plate. Pardon the pun. Thanksgiving That Okay, maybe it's not that good. I was really happy about this because, and I think maybe they knew I was the right director for it, because I love props, and I love choreography and the movement, the constant movement of things, and I was always really I have a very natural inclination toward physical memory. So whatever I do

That we have the same manager.

Yes, she's amazing and Sharon, You're just incredible. So I would love to know, like how this job came to you and what was appealing about it for you and what brought you down to Wilmington.

It was an offer, which is lovely, Yeah, and it was a character that I had started to begin to play, these sort of monster in laws, the polish pain in the ass, and.

I, for me, it was I enjoyed those kinds of roles.

I still do because they typically are there in the show to change.

The temperature, to create another vibe.

It's what I do on Joe Pickett as a matter, it's what I did on Dynasty. They all have a different profile to them. But I enjoy knowing that I can come in and hit be asked to sort of do hit some trick moves, and by that I mean just change the temperature in whatever way it requires.

Whether it's.

Someone who is mercurial or someone who is can can be many different things.

In a short period of time, shift.

Within a condensed period, so that you can't necessarily know if this person is one you're going to if you're going to be on their side or not, if you have an ambivalence about them because they are not They might be one note on the page, but I like to play them what they call the blue notes, which are the in jazz. It's what isn't the notes that aren't there. So that's fun for me. On NYPD Blue, I was required to be a good woman and it

And for an actor, you understand that's.

Fun because ultimately what you want to do is be able to just be layered, create a person who's layered, because that's more interesting anyway.

The way that you played Sylvia with all those layers becomes an extremely generous thing for you to do as an actor because what it does is highlight the other layers in different characters that we don't normally get to see.

Well, and particularly because Brook and Victoria are butting heads in such an intense way, and Victoria's just said, we don't need to talk, and Brook's like, fine, I thought I had a mom, and I guess I don't. The heightened fight. Sylvia stepping in as an ally for Victoria actually lets Victoria be more gentle because instead of I see you yeah, instead of us just screaming at each other, you give her a soft place to land, and so

And if I may, and all are i've played your mother's or your mother in laws now since the beginning of the.

All three of ours right, yes, yes.

Bob's on the Hallmark hit movies The Christmas House as a good woman and joy and points out us for Christmas as a good woman, and of course yours Sophia that the mother.

In law in One Tree Hill.

And what I think most people who I realize that they're watching your show, you all realize too that women your age are watching them as mothers. They were younger women when watched, through younger people when they watched, and now Rob as parents they're watching, so they I believe you're the show's fans can perhaps have a more gracious understanding of the parents in that show. The authority figures that show, who weren't just someone to push against or

Oh yeah, we'll get there.

And sipping on day drinking, I should say, just day drinking.

Yeah, they've earned it.

They have they have earned it, and they need to to be careful that they don't forget how their uh input and impact is still influencing people. You know, we we're looking at the generation ahead of us to see how they're doing it. And is day drinking a good idea in your what we were I think both Daffy who we'd worked together. We were in class together in Larry Moss's acting class together, and then we done any serious So it's also part of the environmental movement avandia.

So I think we were in our forties.

Then maybe fabulous.

Women drinking in the day. Women that age have to be careful. We can't just anesthetize ourselves. So even though there's a compassion that I hope we recognize for that generation of characters in the show, it's also a tale about how do you want to how do you want to be in your in when you're the parents of your grown kids.

It's to your credit and Daphne and a lot of the other adult actors on the show, I think in large part why the show is still resonating because so many of the kids that were our age when we were airing are now in their adulthood enjoying the adult storylines because they weren't just figures to push against, because you actually brought in all these extra layers that as an adult, I can really enjoy the adult storylines now more than I enjoy the kids' storylines, even because I can relate to it.

Yeah.

And who can sit around in the afternoon and drink some but it's Thanksgiving?

Yeah, only I had of alcohol all problem she did.

Yeah that's true. Yeah, also a whole through.

And it's not even that's subtle.

You know, it's not a story, but it's there and I yeah, Oh they wrote it for a reason, and I think it's important and I'm glad that they I'm glad that we're able to talk about it now.

Yeah.

One of the things that I think is interesting too is to see the sort of level of success in career and life of these two women of Sylvia, of Victoria Sylvia. Now as I watch this back, would be

I have so many notes about that, like my.

Favorite thing to get to do, and then I got to do it with you. And I remember being in the kitchen and being like, and then we're gonna come over here, and then we're gonna come over here, Like it did feel like a dance show. There's so much comedy and under it, there's this really beautiful life stuff. That's really it's not like we have to hit you know, beat a dead horse or whatever that phrase is. It just simmers through the whole episode. And I think you're right, Joy.

Yeah, totally cool.

All right, we gotta talk about we're gonna get physical comedy. We have to talk about the fire extinguisher Bitwe I had to rewind it and watch it again because I obviously I know how great you are, Sharon, so I figured this was just a choice. When Sylvia runs out, she starts spraying it, and in the span of spraying the turkey, you make and break eye contact with Brooke three.

Times you counted.

And it's so perfect because it's like you're still going and you're like, are you gonna stop?

It's this weird thing because it goes on.

To me, I felt like it went on too far, But the fact that you keep bringing attention back to Brook was just so wonderfully awkward and fun, like almost like you were maybe is you're taking a little pleasure in it now because it feels like three.

Seconds too far, you felt like, is this this is this is what but you want me to this isn't this is not what you wanted?

Oh yeah, Well, first of all, I love how silly the wardrobe was for this, and I think that's part of what makes that that she's already dressed before.

The you know, already yeah right, and wearing wearing a shrug.

By the way you were wearing a shrug.

It's a little half sweater that you know comes only to hear that covers up your Yeah, it's a shrug. It's so eighties.

I remembered loving those in the nineties as her Fiona Apple's like favorite and a skirt.

She's going someplace she hasn't been before, right.

So she's and she's very she's overly excited, I think, and in heels, which changes the physicality of every year. When you're doing something like that, it's it you feel.

Almost like a bad ass, but not quite.

And I think that's what that's what was showing up in in that uh, the fact that she's going to be the hero here. I am going to fix what Brook is always.

Going to break. I will always fix it, and I can do it wearing my silk blouse and heel.

Yeah, and uh, she's certainly not a cook, but she she's been criticizing Brook the whole time, right with the apple.

Pie, justifiably so though justifiably with the apple tar apple pie?

Was that the delivery on that was so good?

Is that?

Is that a peel? Oh that's interesting, I hope no one jokes.

Yeah.

So she's not straight up mean, but she has she has an opinion, and she notices everything. I think she prides herself on noticing everything. And the fact that she knew where their fire extinguisher was, uh huh. How many do you know how many people in your lives that don't live in the household have figured out?

That struck me as odd that someone as with such a good eye as Brooke would have a fire extinguisher in open visibility, like an open eyesight, and like it felt like I would have just guessed at Brook's house it would have been in a cabinet somewhere.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, we should have done that. We should have done that.

It was it was accessible for a three shot. I wonder what that stuff was that we breathed in. You know, you have to the safety factors of that is My favorite was the three shot of us staring at it, looking at it like an American Gothic go on exactly.

And I loved the beat of quiet before Austin, who committed again. Hats off to him. He commits to the bit so hard that he's just the most precious person all of us looking at it and knowing we have to replan our whole day, and he just says, maybe we can scrape it off. And that's where you see you and you and I fully agree. We both just go oooh. It's just like a perfect moment.

Also the way that I didn't even realize it was happening until a bit in that it was perfectly contrasting Brooke and Haley like that, like their domestic abilities.

I didn't realize.

It's like the second time that it went immediately back to back where Haley is so calm, so in her elements, so in control, and then it goes back to Brook, which is hilarious because Brook is normally very poised, very aware and in control, and she is wild out of her depth, putting apple peels and tarts.

Oh so fun to see though, the level of commitment you committed fully as well. I mean you were just rushing around, like your hairs in your face. The glasses, which I loved, this element of the glasses, which you know as have we even seen brooking glasses before? I don't know, but it worked.

And the glove, yes, me very happy.

I'm going to do a callback here which is not about this show, but the gloves give it a level of accessibility. They're awkward, but they are very relatable. And on NYPD Blue years ago, actually when sil when Andy.

Proposes to Sylvia on and that's the other Sylvia I played, how weird I played two?

I know, I was wondering if they named you Sylvia on this as sort of like a nodmage.

Yeah, maybe it's it's just a weird, weird thing, Yeah, weird Sylvia Costas and IPD Blue is doing the dishes.

No one are work.

Clothes, but I have an apron on and gloves, rubber gloves, rubber gloves. And that's when he proposes, Oh there to get and it's it's so sweet that domestic life that we all relate to you, no matter how nice our kitchen is yeah, what we'd say a palace or a galley that just speaks to something in our culture.

It's such a lovely moment for Brook two because just the season that she's in of exploring totally new parts of herself, her personality, like, Okay, I'm I'm going to branch out and do something very different. I love Julian in this too, the way he just sort of stays out of your way and gives you the space to explore. There was something about fluffy salad another line he threw over.

His shoulder that I love.

I love this whole back and forth. But jello salad, fluffy salad, and ambrosia, which are all the same thing, maybe the same thing. Maybe they're not, Sharon, I don't know. You're southern, tell us is there resolutely?

Are they involved canned fruit? Typically, if you're going to make it, it's it's usually canned fruit that you've drained some of the syrup off of if you don't want it as sweet.

And jello and cool it.

And you know, another reason I said yes to the offer to do Auntrey Hill is because I'm from North Carolina. I got to go home for three months because that's pretty much how long I was in the show and be on the coast, and I know, as we say, sort of white trash Southern.

Food, and that's.

And it's because it is accessible your ingredients that you can keep in your pantry.

Is it regional whether you call it fluffy salad, yellow salad or ambro.

Let's let's not also forget that it's also called pink Charlene by Skills, who is making green and green stuff, you see green stid of the way that runner is so freaking funny that green stuff is like the panacea for everyone.

Yes, and that you hit me with it, And I'm like, is that a money joke? Like it's such a good this this this regional thing. Which then it also is interesting because to your point, Sharon, it's it's a Southern commonality in a kitchen, but every family has their own nicknames for things.

Yeah, where does that come from?

I just think it's a really sweet runner about what everybody does. And of course Victoria is going to call it ambrosia because it's fancy.

Well we called it ambrosia in Jersey, but in Texas it was fluffy salad. But I don't know in North Carolina, it's jello salad here. Just that last thing is giving. Somebody brought green stuff jello salad and nobody called it fluffy salad or no.

People in California say jealous out.

Well, you can also make a jellow mold with the fruit in it that doesn't have the cool web, so it's not it's the bright green, like, yeah, he is beautiful green sweater today rather than the light green, which is because you've added.

What did you grow up calling it sharon ambrosia?

If that had the whipped cream, it was ambrosia because it's ambrosia, right, That whipped cream makes it more. It's it's just lighter, that genteel, genteel. And I'd like to think that pig Charlene was also what Skills was thinking of Sylvia because read.

I'm obsessed with this.

It's flirtation, which hilarious.

So good, and all the boys lined up to play cornhole. So when he walks in and sees you and you guys are throwing the looks and Julian's like what. All the boys are like, oh yeah, he's he's done this before.

And I never realized, like until that moment, how badly I really really wished Barbara had been there too, because we needed way more scenes with the three of you guys. Where is Deb by the way, when was the last time we saw her? Did she go somewhere?

I don't know she's been gone for her.

I don't feel like we've seen her in this season?

Have we no?

When was literally?

When was the last time we saw Deb?

Have we seen Dan yet this season?

No?

I don't think so.

Definitely not all right?

So that was weird. That's weird.

Do you get Gregory Harrison?

You get Paul finally getting to act with greg because we are friends from way back and friends again for environmental stuff Hell the Bay, which well know my passion for here in California, but we just water an ocean conservation in general, And how he and Treat were Treat Williams, who played Rob and my Father, I mean Rob and my and I and the Christmas House movies.

They were friends so so great.

They talked about each other, you know, yeah, yeah, it was so sweet.

Do you guys want to go in order of the episode because the next stuff we have is like Chase, Yes.

Let's get into that because I want to I gotta say that is. I was surprised at how invested and entertained I was watching Chase be by myself in an empty bar, ye being himself entertained. Yeah, he was so good, So I was curious, like, I was that fun to shoot?

I mean, did you did you just sort of let him rip?

How was that so fun?

Yeah?

It was so fun. A lot of this episode what I prefer to do as an actor and what I hoped that you guys enjoyed was I'd like to just show up up and say, like, where do you guys want to be, Like, tell me where you want to be in the room, and then we'll put lights up and if something is going to really make life complicated, then I'll tell you. But otherwise, like, let's just do this a few times and see where everybody ends up.

So with.

Steven, because it was just him, it was really fun to just be able to say, like, we have to make each moment here a little bit different so it's not just the same thing over and over. And obviously there was some written in, but he is so reliable as an actor to know that he's not going to do a shtick or a bit. He's not looking for the laugh He's not a needy actor, so when the camera's on him, he's just in the moment and doing

He turned up.

The amount of dust on the bottle that he pulls down from that shelf was like somebody did drywall work on the ceiling of the bar and it only fell on that bottle. I don't know what happened.

It was like he unearthed a relic in Indiana Jones in the temple.

It was like it was the oldest I've met. It was a comedic amount of dust.

And what's hilarious is you can see everything else around the bottle is perfectly clean. It was like he picked up a bottle from fifteen twenty five, yes, and brought it back.

I mean, it was so much dust.

It has to be my fault. I just don't know what I said, Like maybe because I was watching on the monitor and the monitor's so small, and I was like, I can't see the dust. This is what I feel like. Probably happened is that I was like, I can't see the dust. Can we add more, and I just didn't understand that I was going to see a lot more because.

Now we're watching it all in the updated four K and you're like, oh, oh goodness, it has to be my fault.

Oh God, Peter Kowawska, he didn't stop you.

He might have.

He might have tried.

I also might have just been like, no, because I want.

To stop about ball.

Pete's also so sincere and supportive that, you know, if I had been excited about this thing with the dust, he might have just been like, just give him more dust. Whatever.

Honestly, I kind of loved it. It gave me that that vibe of like an extinct spirit, you know, something that was really important and to your point, watching Stephen is so fun, and it it gave me you know, when you look at your friends and you have those sort of out of body moments where you're like, God, I'm so proud. And I don't mean that to be annoying. I'm not like your mom. But I remember how nervous Stephen was when we first started working together in the

And I was like, God, this is really this is.

So cool, Like we literally grew up together. Yeah. I just love it.

He learned so much and he grew so much, and it was really fun to watch him in this episode.

That vocal gobble that he did with.

Tim McKinney standing behind him.

Beyond very impressed.

Steven is a man of many talents.

I just love that Nicky thought of having a bartender on Thanksgiving be so bored. First of all, why is trick open on Thanksgiving? It's another story, I guess, but why. But the fact that she thought of having a bartender come up with Thanksgiving drink meals in a glass like drinks in a glass, Yeah, feels a glass. This does stuffing, eh unrare.

There is a little beat and you almost missed it, but it came out of the Millie, Marvin and Skills storyline where mouth alludes to the fact that Chase isn't coming because he wanted people who were alone on Thanksgiving to have somewhere to go, which is so sweet because it gives you this button of like, oh that's really nice. You know. He just is he's newly single and sad, his heart's broken. He's going to go open the bar for the other lonely folks, and then it's just him.

And then literally the one guy that shows up who walks right back to Tim McKinney was our He was one of our stunt coordinators, right or like the facts effects thank you. Yeah, oh my gosh. I mean what a what a good old boy. And it was really fun having him and he's one of them got to talk to. I was like death, He'd like real you know, royal South Southern, and I loved that he'd never been

Like, never mind. I also fun fact about Tim just the sweetest man who was the one who taught us all about every sort of North Carolina wildlife, from like the weirdest and you know, the weird insects, to like the things you wanted to avoid in the water. He

Oh, I love that.

Sweet man who is the one who would bring moonshine, because I got some moonshine from what.

Oh yeah, no, we're not allowed to say scratch scratch that.

I still have two jars, left chair and stilt.

Oh.

And people ask, they're like can I and I'm like, don't touch it, don't touch it. I'm hoarding the last of the supply.

I like imagining the next time something so special and big happens in your life and everyone's sending you really expensive champagne and fine wines and like forty year old whiskeys, and they're like, what are you going to open? And You're like, I have a mason jar in my garage with.

Some moonshine saving each Moonshow is it in the blue bottles? Like the little literally little water bottles.

I have two of the small sized mason jars with the screwtops left, and one's blueberry and one's peach.

I got that much. I was there for a few months.

Is that like it came in a in a it was glass, Thank god, whatever it was, it was glass.

He knew to do that.

Yeah, you know something that I find I want to mention when you're talking about the natural world. One of the things that gave me such joy watching it again and made me remember about it because I've had a recent experience with it. That beautiful coastline, that Coastal Waterway football game happened that exterior.

Yeah, piers and the taking.

The trees with the moss on them. Then did we film it?

Was it the fall or was that?

I feel like it was u yeah, like late, like summer was headed out. I don't remember us being exceedingly warm that day. The weather was perfect. It couldn't have been better.

Oh yeah, Victoria turned around when she was leaving prison and there were beautiful trees in their own foliage behind her.

Yes, well, if you think about it, you know, we started shooting in July and like mid July, because it was always I always had to fly back, like the day after my birthday, so I'd travel usually the ninth, that we'd start on the tenth or eleventh. And then this episode aired November sixteenth, so you know, every week we got closer and closer to the air dates because we'd start airing in September, so I would think we filmed this mid September early October, and.

Twodos to you, Joy, because that house and that property, Nathan and Haley's house was so stunning, and I feel like it was criminally underutilized. It was like, yes, we would get as far as the pool and never any farther. And I love that you did the steady cam walk and talk of Nathan and Haley where I believe they end up walking out onto the docks, so you really get the full scope of how big and beautiful that yard is.

Yeah, oh, thanks, There was so much that we because it was a stacked episode with so many people as often as I could rope shots into yeah, like as much as I could put into a condensed moment, like one steady cam shot, like even the opening with the plates on the table and everything. I was like, we just have to do this in one we don't have time for everything else. Yeah, because it was it was a lot of stuff.

But it was such a cool way to Rob's point, you had to be efficient because you know, shooting a football game is a nightmare, but that walk and talk used the space and one of the kind of gags of you know, a show like ours, Nathan and Haley's house, including the pool for our friends at home, was built on stage. Yeah. So so often when we filmed on their patio, you never saw the yard because we weren't there. We had to rent that house and move the family

It's so.

Breathtaking and that golden light that starts in the fall and the water behind everyone. I mean, there's a shot on Kate Vogel and you know her and Jana are fighting as Mia and Alex, and I know I'm supposed to be caught up in the drama, and I'm just like, wow, look at the water behind her shoes.

We're just look at look at the look at the lawn.

And I was like, oh my god, stop stop doing that. Rewind and watch the scene. But I got lost in it.

Our show was so much about the town like that. Wilmington really was a character in the in the story when we started, and you know, eight seasons in, I think, and we had so many directors that would come in and they were doing there, they were doing good work, but it was all focused on us and the so much interior stuff. And I think that, Uh, I'm just really glad any chance that we got to spend time outside on camera in Wilmington, because I missed it. I

Well, it's all that you got that many good days of weather in a row that you could kept on, you know, because the weather's men and the storms and the rain will come up. So you have you were blessed by the directing gods, as you should be. And I'm going to take this moment right now to say that you should have started with congratulations to all of you for your interest in directing in film is made.

How I was.

So proud to know that you all, that I got to work with you Sophia as a director in the Halloween episode, and of course you because my work with women in film years earlier was all about that happening. So I just shouted out that the show, the show delivered on what our my generation of women was really working for and hoping for.

We see the results and you all did us proud. So thank you Jans.

That's great.

Thank you all right, King, here's the deal.

Uh, you don't get National Treasure Sharon Lawrence and not talk for hours on end, which is exactly what we did. So we're going to cap this off here and come back for another episode chalk full of Sharon Lawrence, grace, behind the scenes stories and all kinds of goodness.

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