I’d advise young actors: ‘Remember that when you go into an audition you have the right to be there. Your talent gives you the right to be there and don’t let anyone put you down. Make them see you as a person. Engage. Make the first move: take control.’
Sometimes I went too far. There was one occasion that I particularly remember. The part was for the secretary of a detective, who was the lead role in the TV series. I was called in and as usual there was a panel of producers facing me. They told me a bit about the series and then asked if I knew who would be playing the lead role. ‘No, I don’t know,’ I replied. ‘Oh, it’s James Woods.’ I blinked. ‘James Woods. Oh, I see. He’s a bit of a cunt, isn’t he?’ You should have seen their faces. (Because he is!) I didn’t get that part.
My Turn to Fail
The thing about living in LA is that everybody is afraid of Failure. And Fatness. And I was afraid of neither. They’re so in thrall to success and celebrity that they’re terrified it might not happen. You shouldn’t fear failure. It’s not something that we relish — no one wants to fail — but it may be something we have to endure in order to improve and succeed.
I was lucky; in LA, thanks to Norman Lear’s extraordinarily generous retainer, every door was open to me. I’d never had so much money in my life and I didn’t have to do anything for it. But eventually, the work had to start. The show that we finally landed was Frannie’s Turn, created and written for me by Chuck Lorre. CBS picked it up and it was first aired in September 1992. Chuck was a former professional guitarist and songwriter turned scriptwriter; now he’s one of the richest and most successful producers and writers in Hollywood, with hit shows including The Big Bang Theory, Two and a Half Men, Grace Under Fire, Young Sheldon, Dharma & Greg and the Cybill Shepherd series Cybill. I didn’t like Chuck much; he was too desperately focused on succeeding and it was an angry focus; you were always conscious of his presence as a smouldering, choleric intensity which might erupt into rage at any moment.
The producers, Marcy Carsey and Tom Werner, were delightful, however. We first met at Art’s Deli in Studio City. The LA delis were bliss for me, a Jewish girl brought up on chicken soup. Art’s Deli was the power-meeting place of choice for many Hollywood executives. But I knew most of the delis around. I ate my way in chopped liver from Zucky’s and Izzy’s and Fromin’s in Santa Monica to Canter’s (24-hour chicken soup and matzo balls) and Nate ’n Al’s, and Junior’s nearer to the studios. Marcy and Tom were unfailingly supportive and human. Despite the show’s failure, they never made me feel it was my fault. (It wasn’t!) I honour them still. A third producer, Caryn Mandabach, came to London and produces the wonderful show, Peaky Blinders. She’s never asked me to be in it. Pity.
We shot our sitcom in one of the many huge, sand-coloured, concrete hangars on the CBS Burbank lot. In the studio next door, they shot Roseanne, the hit sitcom at the time, on which Chuck had been a writer and was also co-executive producer. People who worked on Roseanne were always escaping to our studio, telling us about how ghastly Roseanne Barr was, and how frightened everyone was of her. They all loved John Goodman, who played her husband. He visited too one day, a glorious chap. Our set was a happy, inclusive one, unlike theirs.
Chuck Lorre’s work on Roseanne had impressed the producers and Norman gave him the opportunity to make his first sitcom — Frannie’s Turn. He desperately needed it to succeed, so perhaps that’s why his attention to every aspect and detail of the production seemed overbearingly intense. Naturally, he came to every read-through, pre-shoot rehearsal, camera run-through and network run-through. The latter is a fearsome thing, a weekly rehearsal early in the production schedule, attended by all the big cheese executives. They write copious notes; anything which doesn’t get a laugh gets cut and they demand instant rewrites. Then there’s the live taping.
The series was my show: designed and built around my comedic talents and vocal versatility. I played an Irish-Italian seamstress called Frannie Escobar, a happy, gregarious woman muddling through a mid-life crisis: at work she has her arrogant couturier boss Armando to deal with; at home in Staten Island, Frannie has to contend with her cantankerous, old-school Cuban husband Joseph, his eccentric mother Rosa, a dimwit son Eddie, and a headstrong daughter Olivia, who seems destined to make the same bad choice in marriage as her mother. Frannie is a middle-aged woman finding herself, a late-blooming feminist. I felt it was a role any woman of a certain age could relate to; I knew what it was like to be plain and to be fat and to be overlooked. I lived with that all my life; in a sense, coming to America was the same transformational journey for me.
My routine during the run was unvarying. Round about 2 a.m., the new script would be pushed under my apartment door. Each version came in a different colour, and it was useless to learn the first offering, as pink, blue and yellow amendments would follow nightly — that was the worst part. Then the early morning swim followed by the long drive from Santa Monica to Burbank in traffic which was bumper-to-bumper the whole way. It was gruelling, we earned the money and I truly wouldn’t want to spend my life in that world. Stress and tension were overwhelming, the gossip was poisonous, and yet I met dear people there too.
Frannie’s Turn was taped in front of a live audience, who filed in shortly before we appeared. No deviation from the script was allowed. Each episode took about six hours to film; Chuck constantly sent in new lines to be learned, sometimes seconds before recording. If anything went wrong, or we paused, the tireless stand-up hired to maintain the energy of the studio audience would restart his stream of banter. I was worried that he was funnier than we were. Sometimes I joined in — I can’t resist a live audience.
There’s a terrible hierarchy in television, especially in America. They’re so up the bums of celebrity over there that if you’re the star, they’ll do anything to keep you happy — but they treat any underlings and extras like dirt. On Frannie’s Turn we often had extras; I would make a point of talking to every single person, laughing and joking with them, ushering them into the backstage kitchen for a sandwich or some M&Ms, and sitting with them at lunchtime. I always said, ‘Hello. You’re joining the mad scenes, are you? Where are you from? I’m from England.’ I talked with everybody, not in a deep way, but so that they felt comfortable and confident, because if you’re eaten up with nerves and fear, it prohibits the creative process. I’ve been there: I know what terror is.
Frannie’s Turn premiered on 13 September 1992 — and ended barely four weeks later, on 10 October. It was meant to be thirteen episodes, but CBS, principally Jeffrey Katzenberg, cancelled it after five! I rang Jeff to try to change his mind. He wouldn’t. The cancellation did seem somewhat random; other shows at that time were no better than ours; the show was gaining traction and we were finding a loyal audience as the series ended. Chuck Lorre was incandescent with rage. Some American TV sitcoms don’t seem to reflect real life; Frannie’s Turn did feel believable. It didn’t gloss over things, it was about good people who were having a rough time and trying to work it out, but for some reason we were axed and other shows were signed up.