I am all in again.
Oh that's just you.
I Smell pop Culture with Eastern Allen and I heart radio podcast Here everybody, Easton Allen, I am all in podcasts. iHeart media, iHeart radio, I heeart podcast one eleven Productions. It's I smell pop culture. I smell pop culture. I don't just smell regular culture. I smell pop culture. And in case you were wondering, that is short for popular culture. My name is Easton Allen, and we are exploring the people that create the pop culture references we love in
Gilmore Girls. There's so many in Gilmar Girls. Every other word is a pop culture reference. That's something we love about the show. We're going deeper with you here on the podcast. Thanks for joining us, Thanks for coming back this week. Oh my goodness. I know I say this every time, but I'm really really excited about this week.
Oh my god, I'm excited.
We're talking to someone so cool. You know, you look at an actor sometimes or a director, and you look at their IMDb, you look at their line of work, and you're like, everything is so cool. They have never done a like sometimes people have like a weird bad movie or something, or something like embarrassing on their resume. There's some people that don't. They just have cool stuff. That's who we're talking to this week. Brenda Strong. Who
is Brenda Strong? You ask that's embarrassing? You don't know if in case you don't know, she was Mary Alice Young in Desperate Housewives. That's right, Desperate Housewives. We're going to be venturing into Asteria Lane. And the reason we're doing that is because Brenda Strong has is a first on this podcast. She wasn't just mentioned in Gilmert Girls. She was in girl Mert Girls. She was a guest star in Gilmurt Girls. We're going to talk about all
of that Desperate Housewives. In case you're keeping score at home, it was referenced in season six, episode nine, This is the Prodigal Daughter turns. Luke and laurale I are having dinner and they're arguing and Lucas upset that Laura I was talking to Christopher. It's a very tense conversation. Laura admits to Luke that she hates his grandmother's bedroom set, to which Luke replies, well, thank you very much for
your honesty about my grandmother's furniture. I wish you'd been a little more forthcoming about the other men in your life. And then Laura says, oh my god, enjoy Withsteria Lane. You major drama queen. So I went on the internet. I know that was a mistake, but I went on the internet and I saw some people on a you know, one of the message boards saying that they didn't get that reference. They didn't know what she was talking about when she said enjoy with Steria Lane. And so that
blows my mind. I feel like everybody knows Wassteria Lane with Siria Lane is the street in Desperate Housewives. It's in the fictional town affair View. It's where all the characters live. All the drama happens on Westeria Lane. And something that connects it to Gilmore Girls that I kind of love is that Siria Lane still stands today. It's like the permanent there's a permanent fixture on the Universal
Tram Tour. If you come down here to Los Angeles, the entertainment capital of LA and you go to Universal Studios, go on the tram tour, you will drive down with Siria Lane. You'll see all the homes. It's so cool. It exists, just like stars Hollow, not many feet from where I sit currently at the Warner Brothers a lot. You can walk around stars Hollow. That is like a permanent fixture there. We're going to be going to Withstiria Lane. With Brenda Strong. She played Mary Alice Young. She is
the first voice you hear. She's one of the first images you see in Desperate Housewives. She narrated every episode except for two. That's all only two episodes she didn't narrate. She's incredible. I'm such a big I mean this resume. We're gonna get into this with her. But like Starship Troopers, Twin Peaks, space Balls, Sue Ellen Mishki on Seinfeld. You know Scott Patterson are our illustrious host. He was on Seinfeld too. She was on Seinfeld. She's done so much
incredible stuff and she's in the waiting room now. I don't want to keep her waiting another second. This is a legend we're talking to here. Let's get into it on. I smell pop culture. Brenda Strong here with us, the legendary Brenda Strong. We're so excited, thank you for doing this.
I am so happy to be here with you.
There's so much to get into, but we have to start with Desperate Housewives.
That's that's where we're going to jump in here.
So you're I rewatched the first episode of Desperate Housewives earlier, and something that I think is so exciting is like the camera pans down on withsteria Lane. I think you see evil agoria like Jogby, But the first thing you hear, you see you, and you hear your voice. That's the very first like word in the show. How did it feed? I mean, you're like the inciting incident of this show, your character.
I got the series off with a bang, a true bang.
Yes, if you haven't seen Desperate Housewives, I'm sorry this is a spoiler for episode one minute two, I believe. But Mary Alice Young, you tragically take your own life in the very beginning of the first episode, and then you're they're the narrator for the rest of the show.
Can you tell us how did you get involved with Desperate Housewives? How did that happen?
Well, it's kind of an interesting thing because it wasn't something that was available to me when they first shot the pilot, because I was on another series with the WB and so I wasn't available to audition for any of theirs. And then I had done a comedy that I really it was so hard, and I thought I need to go back to my roots, and so I went and did some Shakespeare in Montana with one of
my professors from college. And I was up there doing much Ado about nothing and Midsummer's Night's Dream when I got the call from my agents saying they're replacing one of the characters on the pilot of Desperate Housewives. It's Mary Alice Young and she narrates every episode and there's a lot of great buzz about the show. We think you should audition for it. And at the time, I was doing a film called The Kid and I with Tom Arnold, and I happened to be in la right
when they wanted to audition me. So I flew down and luckily I had been, you know, using all of my instrument doing Shakespeare. So you know, I'm out in the waiting room waiting for them to bring me in, and one of the girls comes out of the audition room and said, Oh, they're so nice, and don't even worry about having it memorized. You know, they all close their eyes, they just want to hear you. And I thought, okay, that's a different you know, And of course I didn't
not I had it memorized. So I walked in and Mark Cherry was very sweet and he said, I hope you don't mind. We're all going to close our eyes. You know, this is we need to hear the story. And so I proceeded to tell them the story of my name is Mary Alice and continued on and he opened his eyes and I kid you not, there was this cherubic grin on his face and he said, I understand you're working in Montana. How long are you going to be there? And can you get out of that contract? Oh?
And I said, funny enough, it's with friends of mine. And I told them that I needed an understudy on the off chance that I got some work. So cut to I ended up being one of I think two that they tested in the booth with the whole narrator, and I ended up getting it. So I became the new Mary Alice Young. And then we had to reshoot all of the scenes with Mary Alice from the pilot with Charles McDougall.
Oh, so what and you go to the stereo lane's a real place. I mean, for intents and purposes, a Universal Universal Studios. If you've been on the Tram Tour, you've been on Westeria Lane. So going there to shoot reshoot those scenes, what was that like? I mean walking to that big set. Had you worked on like a big, full neighborhood like that before?
Yeah? I had done a few shows where you know, we're working on a back lot, either at Warner Brothers or Universal or Disney or any of the places that have you know, those types of things. But Withsteria Lane is a character in the show. I mean it is a full blown character, and it has become immortalized as Wasteria Lane. Now it historically so many different shows had used those houses and they just redressed the fronts and
changed the paint and whatever. But I think it's so great that it's now kind of historically going to be with Steria Lane from now on.
I love it.
Yeah, It's just a permanent fixture of a I mean, the legendary Universal Studios. I think the Munster's house is like on Wassteria Lane, which I love that.
That's right. I think that might have been Alfred Woodard's house when she came on season two.
Yes, yeah, So what was a typical I mean, you narrated what one hundred and seventy eight episode of Oh No, it's one.
Hundred and seventy eight, because there were only two episodes that I did not narrate. One was narrated by Edie Britt and the other was narrated by Bree's husband's character. Yes, and those were the only two that weren't narrated by me and kind of broke the molds. I'm looking at my dog trying to figure out what he's doing under my.
Desk, the eternal question what do dogs do?
So what was like a typical because again, you're in you act in some of the flashbacks, you do appear in the episode as not the narrator. But what was like a typical episode, like you just go into a vo booth and read the narration?
How did that work?
You know? It kind of evolved over time, but generally, I mean when we first started, it would take hours to do because we're trying to find the rhythm of it and trying to find how to match the voice to picture, and it was kind of an new technique, not a lot of voiceovers, kind of narrated throughout episodic TV, and so we had to kind of create through trial
and error, a way to make it efficient. And I finally, after a few episodes, I finally said, you know, it would be really helpful to me to have the cut before I come into the booth. We would save so much time because I could do some homework at home and I could practice where it is placed based on where you guys placed it to picture. So the order goes like this. We'd get a script, sometimes the day before, sometimes a week before, depending on where we were in
the writer's room development. Of course, starting out we had scripts in advance, but as we went on tour the later episodes, we'd always get it last minute and we'd sit and we'd have a table read. And that was really helpful for all of us to a meet all the characters as they came into the street and b just here out loud, so all the characters could hear the narration based on their storyline and how it was going to fit in with what they were doing, etc. Etc.
And it really gave the directors a chance to kind of see the overall kind of episode that they were getting into. So that was first off. Second off, I would leave from there and I would go to the
Alfred Hitchcock Theater at the Universal kind of lot. I'd go down pairs into the basement where they did all the editing, and they've done so many major feature films, and we had kind of a designated booth that was just ours, and I would record all of the lines, all the narration, and then they would take that recording and the editor would use it to cut the picture.
So every episode was cut to my voice, and sometimes if things changed, then the script supervisor would end up reading one of the lines, and so you'd sometimes hear my voice from the temp track, or you'd hear Linda's voice from the script supervisor, which always sounded a little different, although she tried to sound more like me as time went on, which was funny. And then I would get
the DVD, I'd watch the show. I do all of my copious notes and do all my intentions, break down the script and everything, and then I would go into the booth on Fridays generally and record, and if I wasn't working on the show on camera, then I would come in you know, off camera, and my sweats and my sneakers and do my work.
Were the other cast members jealous that you got to roll in and like your pj's and they had to be in like full makeup and glam and everything.
Oh yeah, yeah, I have to say it was really funny. I got a lot of got a lot of kind of envious comments from especially marsh Across, who is still a dear friend. She said, I really wanted to be Mary Alice Young. That was the role I wanted. I said, that's so fun because Mark said he probably may have cast me as Bree had I been able to audition, so we would have swapped roles. But yeah, even Felicity, you know Felicity. One day, because I was doing a movie,
Felicity decided to read my part. Oh wow, and she came up to me afterwards she goes, this is a lot harder than I thought it was going to be. And Felicity is an amazing actress. So in a lot of ways. You know, what Mark Cherry does is he writes music. It just happens to be. And he actually said the MAVO, which is the Mary Alice voiceover, was the hardest writing that he had to do on the show because it had to be succinct, and it had to be deep, and it had to cut to the heart.
So in a lot of ways, that was the thing that took the most time, was getting that succinct kind of human connection to why any of us were doing all the Michigoths things that we were doing.
I love learning that you like as then air are you coming for the table read and do it with everybody as It's like, because this is so naive of me, but I assumed it was like the episode is filmed and then the narration is written, like at the end. I thought it was like at the end of the whole process, like you make the episode, you write the narration, then you come. I love that It's a part of it from the very beginning.
Yeah, it was the infrastructure. It was the bones that everything was organized around, and the editor would cut to my voice. So it was really I don't know, it just it was a different template than anything I've ever been part of before, and I loved it. I just loved it.
Would you ever have an experience where you're like at the grocery store something and people like recognize you from your voice, like they recize, oh, I know that voice is that that.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, it happened a lot during the filming of the show, for sure, and it's now happening again because a whole new generation of young women have discovered Desperate Housewives because it's now, you know, on Netflix. So, I mean, I don't walk around talking like Mary alast I don't have this melodious voice, but there is a tenor to my voice that people are like, have we
met before? Or oh your yeah? They get it. During the show, I would be in line and I'd start to order a drink and all of a sudden, people would be like, Oh, it's you, you know, so that was fun.
Oh my god. Brandon Strong is with us. We have so much more to get into.
I mean, this is a Gilmore Girls podcast, and you were in Gilmore Girls. You were in the show. I want to ask so much about that. We're going to take a really quick break and we'll be right back. Branda Strong with us. It's I Smell pop culture on the I Am All In podcast. We're talking about Desperate How's whis We're talking about this immense resume. Every thing you've done. I am a fan of. I'm just going down here listening. I love that love that love that
we got to talk Gilmore Girls. Everyone listening pleasure here, Yes, everyone loves Gilmore Girls. You were in Gilmore Girls Season two, episode seven, Like Motherlike Daughter. You're at the You're the leader of the Chiltern Booster Club. Uh, you get to tell Laura that she's going to be a model in the charity fashion show. What tell us about that experience. What was it like getting on the set of gilmart Girls being Did they tell you to talk fast? That's something we hear from a lot of people.
Well, the thing that was so cool about Amy was that not only am I a huge fan of her work and her later work, I just Man, the marvelous Missus Mazelle, I just Materie, Masterpiece, masterful running, masterful production. She was a fan of Aaron Sorkin's and I had done Sports Night with Felicity Huffman or Aaron Sorkin, And so when I came on the set, she wanted to know all about working with Erin because she was such a huge fan. And one of the reasons she wanted
everyone to speak quickly is that's the sorkinism, you know. So, so I was very accustomed to having to speak really quickly and get it all done. And the funny thing is is you feel like it's fast when you're doing it, but the ear doesn't feel like it's fast. And Lauren Graham was a master at speaking quickly. She just she
she was so impressive. And I got to play kind of kind of an uppity, you know, booster mom, where I was organizing everybody, and of course she you know, she didn't quite fit the mold, yes, let's say, but it just kind of revealed. It's so funny because that show in particular was about a legacy of women. Yes, right, And during that time, a show about all women and my show with Desperate Housewives about all women. We were
changing the landscape of television. And before Us came Golden Girls, and Mark Cherry had written on Golden Girls, and it just felt like we were part of this kind of moving movement of empowerment around telling family stories, telling friendship stories. Women's lives became really interesting to watch, and heretofore it had been all about men and procedurals and power and crime.
And these were beloved shows because they touched on something we had never really seen before, which was honest complexity in women and women's lives.
Yes, it's so right and it's so cool that you are, that you're part of this. You know, at this momentum, this shift in television when when you were doing Desperate house like when you get onto the Subjusperate Housewives, was had you worked on anything that was like that before in your career ins of like the way they were telling women's stories or anything like that. Was there anything else you had done before that?
I don't think so. I had done. I had done a series called The Help for Warner Brothers, and it was, Yeah, it was. It was about a wealthy woman who kind of ran a household of women and made and you know, a cook and you know, the trainer and all of that. But it wasn't really it didn't really resonate in the same way. I think this had had just taken a whole nother step.
Yeah.
One of your characters that I I admire so much is Sue Ellen Miske on Science So Sue the brawls, uh oh, Henry Candy Barner Brothers. Wonder I you know she Sue Allan's a complex character. I admire her confidence so much. I aspired to the level of confidence that Miski has.
It was I just.
Wanted to say, like watching the watching those episodes, it's it's funny because it's it's only four episodes that you're in, is Mishki, But like it feels I mean, yes, it feels like if you just walked up and asked someone like, oh, how many episodes of Sula Miski? And I think people would say like, oh, she's in like every episode of Seinfeld, right, Like you feel like such a such a base part of that show.
Uh.
I loved it because growing up I had a friend, like a friend of me who was the heir to the Easy Bake Oven fortune. So it was kind of a similar thing. But he he didn't have a need for a bra. But can you can you tell us about exactly exactly can you tell us about developing that character with with Larry? I mean getting on the set of Seinfeld, working with Larry David?
What was that?
Like? It was a dream? It was an salute dream. I adore Larry. He is so gifted. He is a comedians comedian And you know this is before Curb Your Enthusiasm, which I was also on as doctor Flom. But you know, It was truly cooler water cooler, you know, did you see Seinfeld last night? Because it was all on the Thursday line up, and everybody would talk on Friday morning about, you know, the incredible storylines that they would bring up.
And I ended up wanting to audition and my managers at the time, and I really appreciated this, they said, wait, just wait, we're looking for something that's going to stand out. And nothing against any of the actresses that played Jerry's girlfriends. They didn't want that for me. They wanted something that would stand out a little bit more because usually with the girlfriends.
It was one and done yes.
And also I'm taller than Jerry, so it might not it might not have played out well. But when Sue Ellen, when that part landed and they described it, they told me and I said, you're kidding, I had what And at the time, I had just had a baby eighteen months before and I was still nursing. So I was a little nervous because you know, Russ were representing a lot of other things at the time, and so I went into the audition and I just said, so, how
do you see this character, you know? And they said, oh, she's very classy. She's you know, she's she's confident, and so I played it the way I was going to play it, and then I asked one really important question before I left the room. I said, can you can you tell me how tall Julia Luis Dreyfus is? Is she about this tall? And I held my hand up to my brawline and you should have seen Larry and Jerry's eyes pop open, and they went, yeah, that's about
how fault she is. And I knew that I just planted the seed that her eyeline and my breasts were going to be a joke. And so I got the job, and Julia could not have been just kind of more welcoming. I had done a series with John O'Hurley Wow Gorge, and so he and I had a really great relationship. So when I walked on set, it was like walking into Old Home Week where everyone just welcomed me. And Jason was great and Jerry was great, and Michael ended
up casting me on one of his shows later. It just became this collective find the funny, joyful experiment, and I to this day it was one of the happiest experiences of my life. And they take comedy seriously, like we're looking for it and until we find the gem, we're not going to leave a stone unturned. And that was great.
That makes me so happy to hear because I just I look on those episodes so fondly and I just love hearing that it was such a great experience for you and and uh, you had such a great time on the set.
Uh.
Scott Patterson who hosts this podcast, he plays Luke and Gilmour Girls. He's also he's also in the Elaine Orbit because he was sponge Worthy. Yes, so that was really exciting to get another Scienfeld connection on here. I you have the coolest resume, like like honestly, honestly, I mean I don't want to while I don't want to jump around too much, but like I mean like Twin Peaks, Starship Troopers, like all these sports nights, yes, Spaceball, I cannot Like, I'm just in awe.
I am in awe.
I'm so curious, how, like someone, how do you pick these? Like how does that work? You just have like hit after hit after hit? How does that happen?
You know? I wish I could say that I did it, you know, I pitched these. I'm so smart, not that at all. It's you know, Treat Williams, who I got to work with on Everwood, said that, you know, interviewers would come up to him and say, you know, why did you do that role that wasn't you know, that wasn't a very good role for you, or that wasn't a great movie, And he basically say, because I have a family and a mortgage and it was the job
that was offered to me at the time. And the truth is I have always been able to get jobs as they come. But it's not that I choose them. It's more that they finally chose me, like I fit whatever they were looking for, and thankfully it all just worked out that they were high quality, high visibility, you know, kind of popular shows that had a listening in the audience's heart and mind. So I don't feel like I
can take any credit for it. I can. I can actually say I have really great agents and a great manager, and I've been with them for almost thirty years, so I give them a lot of the credit. I mean, they really know who I am, and they know what I'm good at, and they've put me up for the right things and I end up getting the work, and I'm just grateful. I'm just grateful because you know it could have turned out very differently.
Is there anything that you said no to that you could remember that You're like, Oh, I wish I had.
No regrets in I wish I had if I said no. I've said no to a few things, so it's not like I say yes to everything.
I don't.
But I said no during a filming of something, which was a first. And John Ritter and I crossed paths many times in my career before he passed, and I adored him. He was such an incredible human being and talent, and I adore his son now too. But we did a film together called skin Deep that Blake Edwards directed, and I was cast in it, and nobody told me that there was any kind of nudity in it. And then I got a nudity writer right before I worked, and I'm like, why am I? Because we weren't allowed
to read the script. I said, why am I getting a nudity writer? This is this is not what I signed up for. And he ended up having a conversation with me and my agent and assured us that it was all going to be tasteful. And fine, and nothing was going to be seen. It was all going to be backlit, you know, YadA YadA YadA for a sign fellow reference. We shot the scene. It screened at I believe Warner Brothers, and they asked for a reshoot because
and I can guarantee this, it was too graphic. You could see things that I hadn't agreed to be seen. And they didn't want to have it go into a different category. They didn't want it to be X or or whatever it was. So he wanted to do reshoots and I said no. I said no. You you told me to trust you. I trusted you. You didn't do what you said you were going to do. Why am I going to give you a second chance? You've already Nope,
use a body devil. And it was the first time I said no, and I took my name off the film Wow. And there were acting scenes that are still on the cutting room floor that John and I had together that never showed up. So it just looked like a It looked like a walk on with a sex scene. I'm like, that's not what I signed up for. I'm an actress. What are you doing? You know? So sorry to be so blunt, but I said no, So that felt good.
I admire that so much.
Come out on it.
Wow, Well, thank you for sharing that story.
I really I admire that, and I think that's a great lesson to everyone listening, like to you know, stand up for yourself and what you what you believe in, and what you're uh, you know, you have to.
Now we have antimasty coordinator exactly. That very easy to make sure that things don't go places that people haven't agreed to.
Absolutely, and it protects.
The artist because it's a very vulnerable position to be in. You know, you wanted, you want to cooperate, you want to do the right thing, you want to serve the piece you're an artist, but you also don't want to be taken advantage of. And it's hard to be that person to say no, I'm not comfortable with that.
So it's it's hard to do, but it's yeah, it's it's important to do that, and it is hard, and a lot of people don't And I just I admire you for that.
I haven't I don't think I've ever told that story. By the way, really that's a first.
Well, thank you so much for sharing that with us. It's such an important story I think for people to hear, and I just really appreciate your honesty. I do want to talk Twin Peaks a bit sadly just lost David Lynch. I mean, I'm sorry. I don't want this to just be like what was that like? But like I mean, he's one of those directors, like not many people get to work with him.
He's got like this core group. Well, tell us about that experience.
Well, first of all, I admire him as an artist and a human being. Yes, on so many fronts. He was unique and an incredible painter as well. And he did have a family of actors that he trusted and continued to work with, Kyle McLaughlin from Desperate Housewives being one, so he and I share Twin Peaks and Desperate together.
I actually never got to work under David's direction. I worked with wonderful directors during those five episodes that I did, Diane Keaton being one of them, Lead Adele, Jamie Foley. There's amazing, amazing directors, but I didn't get to work with David. But his fingerprints were all over of course that art and that show, so I feel like I got to live in his world. For a little bit, and that felt really great. It was quirky and bizarre and fun. It was very creative. Actually, David Warner and
I had no idea what we were doing. We didn't know why we were there. We didn't know where the storyline was going. And I finally looked at him one day in the makeup trailine. I said, do you want to just make it up? Just make up? Let's make up a backstory. At least we'll know what we're doing. And so we came up with this really kind of fascinating, twisted backstory that we started playing subtexts with, and apparently it was interesting enough that they ended up giving us
three more episodes because we were only signed on for two. Wow, So we ended up kind of squeaking five episodes out of it. And and I remember we had a kiss in one of the episodes. And I ran into David thirty three years later, thirty five years later at a comic con in Germany.
Wow.
I walked on his table and I said, Hi, David, I don't know if you remember me, And he looked at me, he goes, how could I ever forget you? You're my one and only on screen kiss. It was so great after all these years that he still remembered me. Oh. Working with Piper Laurie was amazing. She was such a powerhouse and just sitting opposite her was like being close to the sun, Like she radiated so much energy. It was great.
I love it so much. Brenda Strong is here with us. This is I Smell Pop Culture. I you have you have directed some television yourself. I would love to talk about that. We're going to take another quick break. Stick around, We'll be right back. It's I Smell Pop Culture on the Iamlin podcast. Brenda Strong here with us, where we've been talking about your your career, just so many incredible things.
Now you have you directed an episode of Thirteen Reasons Why, two episodes, making the move to behind the camera directing. Tell us about that transition. What was that like for you?
So as we were talking during the break, we were talking about Monterey, California, because you were raised in Santa Cruz and my husband's originally from Carmel, just south from there. And so my husband, being the son of a general and his father used to teach at DLI at the Defense Language Institute here in Monterey, and so he had written a couple of short films about the military, and he's employed a lot of veterans and a lot of
his theater work. His theater called not mana part Physical theater ensemble, and he really gets veterans to do physical theatrical work as part of their healing from ps and
war and it's incredible. But he had written this short film we were editing his first short film called I Did Not Forget You that we shot in Dallas when I was doing Dallas, and he told we were waiting for the you know, the kind of cut to upload, and he told me this second story about a young army wife and this program where families get cutouts of their live service member in order for their young children
not to miss mom or dad when they're deployed. And so I burst into tears when he told me the whole progression of the story. And I said, why didn't we do that film? And he said, oh, yeah, great, that's what you want to hear when you are cutting your first filme, So why don't we do the other one? So I said, you have to write that. You have to write that, and so he did, and I ended up shooting it up here in Monterey, California. Amazing and once it ended up going to twenty two festivals and
winning fourteen awards. I showed it to my cast and crew of Thirteen Reasons Why when I got that and we were filming in you know, in and around Vallejo and Napa and the San Francisco Bay area, and Brian Yorkey and Joy Gorman Weddles asked me to direct two episodes in the following season.
Incredible, and I.
Couldn't believe it. For first of all, because I felt so connected to the show and it was such a perfect segue for me, and it was such a safe place to kind of go into a larger forum. And I loved it. I just loved it.
Was there a challenge when you start directing this? Was there a challenge that you hadn't anticipated?
Like?
Was there something when you were actually doing It's like, oh my goodness, I wasn't prepared for this, or I wasn't expecting this anything like that happened.
You know. It's so interesting because I think in a lot of ways, actors are such a natural fit for directing because we know what is necessary in setting the tone for the crew and the cast to do their best work. All the preparation is something that you learn. You know, you learn about the production meetings and the tone meetings, and you know the cost and talking about casting and all of that. Those are just adjuncts to getting ready to be on set, and they're all very important.
And the one thing that I learned is how much work goes into production before an actor ever sets set steps on set. And I it just gave me such an appreciation and such a respect for production and all the people that work so hard to do their best work to bring us to the table. We're the last ones to show up, so if anything, it just gave me a greater appreciation and gratitude for everyone else's work around me. And it is hard work. Directing is not
you know, it's not an easy job. It's a stamina job. You have to be available and ready and prepared and present. And it's almost like being a psychologist. You have to know how to create the environment where everybody gets their needs met, you know, and hold it all together and problem solved. And I loved it. It used every part of me and I can't wait to do it again.
I love it.
I can't and I can't wait to watch. The next thing you do is you know, is there something you've done? So many different things, like so many different like I mean Fear of the Walking Dead, You've done a Supergirl. I mean you've done like superhero stuff. Like is there something you have not done yet that you're like, Oh, I've always wanted to do this kind of thing or or this part of the process.
Yeah, you know, it's really interesting. We're actually developing something right now, my husband and I we're developing a limited series right It's something that we've worked on during COVID and it's kind of gone through a really interesting evolution.
It started out as a screenplay. It's based on an idea that I had, and then I ended up up deciding we needed an underlying ip so I wrote the book to create the characters, and then that book became the foundation for the series, and then we ended up with a limited series format. So that's where we are right now. So the next thing in my career actually is being a showrunner. I want to be in charge.
I want to help shape an entire story from beginning to end, and in do it with all the people that I love working with and bring all the fabulous production designers and customers and editors and directors into our story. So that's the next thing that I want. I want to really kind of launch a new story into the universe that people will be talking about ten years from now or twenty years from now. We really have built
a new mythology and it's all around female empowerment. And I'm really super excited.
Oh my god, I can't I.
Can tell you, but it'll be shown Europe and it's a period piece.
Oh my god, I'm so excited. I can't wait.
I love your Your creative energy is so infectious, and I just love listening to you talk about like how you get these ideas you make them happen, because there's people in like I talk to people in my life that are like I just kind of I'm just kind of doing my thing, you know, and then I meet these people that are like, I want this thing to happen, and I do this in this to make it so,
and it's such an incredible thing. And I just appreciate people like you being in the world and creating these incredible well.
You know, It's it goes back to I I really believe if people understood quantum physics more they would understand that they are actually creating the world that they're living in. I know that, you know, it might sound woo woo, but scientifically it's proven that you are creating your reality. And because I'm all also a yoga teacher and a yogi and I a philosopher, I really believe that the world isn't as it is, it's as you are. So however you want the world to be, you're participating in that.
And so you do have to believe in yourself because you're actually at the source of it. You know, you're the source of your life. And I know your mom is, but mom and dad, but you're participating, you're co creating as we go. And that's one of the reasons I loved David so much, is you know, he understood that as a as a meditator and a creator, is is. It's all imagination, It's all whatever you can see it, you can believe it, you can have it. I really believe that.
You know, you talk about quantum physics and I watched a documentary years ago called what the bleep Do We Know? And yeah, yeah, And in that documentary they talk about like they put they put like ice crystals under a microscore over some and then they like yell at.
It and doctor Emotos work.
Yes, that blue.
I think I was in like I was a freshman high school. So when I saw that and it blew my mind, I was like, oh my goodness, this is incredibly this is like quantifiable scientific method proven. You can see these effects happening. And it's not just like, hey man, it's all about vibes. It's like it's so far beyond that, and it's just such an I don't know. It's an incredible way to think about life and how you affect the world around you.
Yeah, and what you focus on gets more power. I mean, I know, you've got a plant behind you. It's probably not real. Yeah, But when I was in in high school, we did, you know, experiments where we would talk to certain plants and not talk to the others, or we'd play classical music to one plant, play hard rock to the others and see the difference in their growth patterns. You know, everything is a living organism. Water is a living organism. Water actually can conduct energy. It can it
can you know, change its vibration and its structure. It can freeze, it can you know it's it's an We're almost all made of water. We're like seventy percent water. Yes, if what you can do as a thought pattern like screaming at water, if the vibration and the pattern in the water changes when you freeze it. Think about yourself, how you talk to yourself. You know, when you talk to yourself in negative ways, your body is listening. Yes,
So it's really about for me. I think I knew from a very young time that that I had something to do with how my life went. And I did not grow up knowing anything about the entertainment industry or performing. It was not part of my environment. There was no way that I could have dreamed this and had it come true.
That's so I love that so much because like if you think about like starting out and then the life you have now, I mean incredible that that it happens this way. So you you up in forgive me Portland Organ m h. When you were growing like when you've thought about your life as a child, like what what did you what did you visualize?
What where were you thinking? Where were we expecting for yourself?
You know, you can only know what you know. My dad was a teacher. He was a horticulture teacher and a farmer, and and then he went to go get his master's in psychology. And he was an incredible composer. Had he not become deaf in one year, he probably would have been a concert pianist.
Wow.
He was an incredible piano player and wrote some beautiful music that we all was heard growing. My mom was an incredible singer, but she was a homemaker. She raised six kids. I'm the youngest of six, and so she had a full time job, you know, raising us. The thing that happened to me was all of my siblings played instruments. My parents wanted each of us to choose an instrument to play, and being the youngest of six, everybody else had chosen an instrument, and I didn't want
to compete with anybody else. I went no, no, no, thank you. I'm going to dance. And so my dad would play music and I would dance around the house. And then pretty soon they went, well, you know, she seems really interested in this, let's get her in some dance classes. So I ended up going to Madam Schumacher in Portland, Oregon, who was a Russian like serious ballet mistress and she brought Nuriev in to give us master classes. It was incredible. But at the time I was you know,
I was flat and skinny and short. And then I had this huge growth burst and I soon realized that I would tower over any of the men in ballet, and there was no way anybody was going to hire me as a dancer. So I took that and I started to sing in musicals, and I started choreography. So I choreographed Le Fiddler on the Roof and that led me to being in the Wizard of Oz as the good Witch. It was Glinda, which is still popular right
now with Wicked. So I did that, and then I played the lead in Music Man, and I was marrying the Librarian and I would love to do that a Broadway with Hugh Jackman.
By the way, I want to see that.
Yeah. Anyway, So my dad said, well, you know, he's a college counselor, so his job is helping people find their their thing. And he said, you know, what do you want to do? And I said, well, you know, I was a tennis player, was on the tennis team. I was number one seed on the high school tennis team. And I said, you know I could be a high school tennis coach or in teach literature because I love language, I love Shakespeare, I love all of those things. And
he said, ah huh. And then he gave me this test and it was called the Strong Interest Inventory, and I tested off the charts and formance arts as someone who would really love being a performer.
Wow.
And so he said, I think that's something you could look at too, because he'd seen me on stage and said, you kind of got something, kid. You know, and most people either have parents that absolutely don't support them at all, or they have parents like mine who said, you're good at this, you love it, go do it. And so I did. I became a musical theater major in college and that the rest is history.
I love it.
I love that so much. That's incredible, incredible parenting. Yeah, yeah, that makes me so happy. This is the ice small pop culture podcast. You haven't the most recent show you did, Unprisoned. I want to make sure we talk about imprisoned. Yes, tell us about that.
Carrie Washington and Delroy Lindo were the executive producers along with Tracy and you have that Bowser and it was based on Tracy's life and it's a story about her growing up with her father in prison and what that was like being in foster care. And I play her father's main squeeze, who is the woman who actually ended up raising her for over ten years from eight to eighteen.
Wow.
And she had kind of a very difficult time accepting this woman as a role model because it wasn't ever really fleshed out. But she was a sex worker at one time, and her dad was a pimp and a drug dealer, and it's based on true story. So I
kind of tailor made. And I don't think I've really said this outlined, but I kind of taylor made the character after Sharon Stone and decided that she was kind of this straight, tough talking, no holds barred, really strong woman who decided to help her ma love interest, raise his daughter and do the right thing. And she ended up getting an MBA and becoming a successful part of society. And so this character was something so different from anything
I'd ever played. She was just ballsy and sex positive and brash and you know, dressed in like leopard skins, and it was just it was so much fun to do such a departure from anything I'd ever done, and that was on the heels of doing sixty first Street with Courtney the Evans, where I was this high powered prosecutor who was kind of tough as nails and you know, kind of a I don't know, dressed down kind of I'm going to get you in your face kind of now.
So I've been having so much fun playing these characters in kind of the later stages of my career because I'm getting to do really fun stuff and the comedy is so good.
Oh yeah, and we're so lucky to be able to watch this and have this out there. So this is just so great. I'm Prisoned is on Hulu. You can watch it on Hulu now to.
Carrie's Wonderful and del Roy's Wonderful. It's a great show.
Everyone should check it out. Brenda Strung, you've been so generous with your time. Thank you so much for talking to me, for sharing all your stories. This is We're all such big fans, and thank you for stepping into stars Hollow with us for a bit.
This has been just the best time.
Happy to be with you, happy to be back in Stars Hollow.
Thank you so much.
Yeah, take care, hey everybody, and don't forget follow us on Instagram at i Am all In Podcast, and email us at Gilmore at iHeartRadio dot com.